Break My Fall (No Limits)

by Cameron, J. T.

  It was early May, two months after the break-up, and everyone was preparing for exams, looking forward to the last summer being college students, and eager to get on with our senior year and become adults.

  I shared a two-bedroom apartment with my best girlfriend, Liz. I was up late one night, cramming for my ecology exam—the one I dreaded most—so I was already not in a great mood. I thought Liz might be asleep because I heard no noise coming from her bedroom. It turns out she was quiet because she was studying, too, but she had taken a break to answer a text from her boyfriend, Travis.

  Liz knocked urgently on my door and when I asked her what was up, she came barging in and sat down on the bed next to me, where I had papers strewn all around my laptop.

  “Travis just texted me something you have to see.”

  “Can it wait a few minutes?”

  She thrust her phone at me. “No. Look.” As I reached to take the phone, she said, “I’m so sorry.”

  I looked at the screen and there, staring back at me, in full screen was…me. A picture of a naked me. Well, the top half, anyway. Totally bare-chested, with my hand up near my face and one finger at the corner of my mouth, my eyes half-shut—a forced seductive pose.

  A pose I had struck for Kevin.

  It was one of several pictures I had allowed him to take a few months before the breakup, and which he promised me no one would ever see.

  Liz was silent, and I couldn’t bring myself to let her see my face.

  I had to stop looking at the picture and my head just dropped. “Where did Travis get this?”

  “Here.” She reached out and I handed her the phone. She pulled up the text Travis had sent her, then handed the phone back to me.

  He told her that a mutual friend of theirs had texted him, asking Isn’t Liz friends with this girl? and included the link to a site called My Hot College Girlfriend, where there were pictures of naked girls. Girls like me who had trusted guys to take intimate pictures of them. They call it “revenge porn.”

  How fucking stupid could I have been?

  Liz hugged me. “I’m so sorry. I feel so bad showing you this.”

  I held on to her tight. At that moment, she was more than a best friend, she was the only person in the world I could have sought refuge in. No longer was Kevin that person.

  I cried for a few minutes as we sat there on my bed, and then the anger set in. More than anger, actually. It was pure fury.

  I didn’t bother calling Kevin. It was almost two in the morning and I left our apartment, got in my car, and sped the entire four miles to his house. I banged on the door violently for a solid minute until I heard the door unlocking.

  Kevin’s roommate, Ari, opened the door. He looked like he’d been in a deep sleep.

  “What the hell, Leah? What’s wrong?”

  I barged into the apartment, shoving him out of the way and hearing him say, “What the fuck?” as I made my way to Kevin’s room. I opened the door and found him just waking up. A faint beam from one of the parking lot streetlights shone into his room and I could see him stirring beneath the covers.

  He mumbled something as I flipped the light switch. I half expected to find him with a girl. Not that I would have cared. But he was alone.

  My voice came out high-pitched, almost a screech. “How could you do that to me?”

  “What’re you talking about? What time—?”

  “What the fuck does it matter what time it is? You posted those pictures on the Internet and showed your friends. My friends. Our friends!”

  We argued for almost an hour, with Kevin denying any knowledge of it whatsoever, saying he didn’t know how those pictures got out. When I pressed him for an alternative theory, he had nothing to offer.

  I ended that night by saying, “For the last few months, I knew you were a cheater and a liar, but now I know you’re a disgusting piece of shit.”

  He tried to get in touch with me all during that week of exams. He had waited outside one of the classrooms where my history of oceanography exam was held. I blew right past him, ignoring his pleas for me to stop and listen to what he had to say.

  A few guys I didn’t even know said hey to me on a few occasions during the following two days after I found out about the pictures being posted. People in general seemed to look at me differently. Maybe I was being paranoid, but that was enough of a scare.

  Anyone who didn’t know me would have no idea who it was in the pictures. I was just a face. There was nothing that identified me by name, by school, by city, or anything like that. But if you knew me, there was no mistaking that it was me in the photos.

  But nothing was as bad as the shame I felt when I saw my friends. Our friends. People Kevin and I both knew and hung out with all the time. I wasn’t so much embarrassed about the pictures themselves as I was at the fact that I had trusted him enough to take them and that I’d been so blatantly violated and betrayed.

  It wasn’t as though Kevin got off the hook. Some people—mostly other girls—saw him for the asshole he was.

  Kevin kept up his insistence that he hadn’t posted the pictures and within those first two days, there was some doubt as to whether he had really been the one who posted them. Maybe someone had picked up his phone and done it. At least that was the word that was going around, a theory perpetuated mostly by his closest guy friends.

  I tried to push the drama out of my head and finish exams. I managed to make pretty decent grades on all of them, and as soon as I could, I got the hell away from school and went home to my parents’ house.

  The next several days were horrific. I spent hours debating with myself whether to tell them and finally decided I had no choice. I could see no clear way of avoiding it. The fallout from Kevin’s actions would so dramatically impact my life, it would have been impossible to keep it from my mom and dad. Plus, they had always raised me to believe that I could tell them anything, especially if I’d gotten myself into trouble.

  The first time that happened was when I was fourteen and had slept over at my friend Mollie’s house. Her parents were out of town and she’d invited three of us girls to spend the night. By eleven p.m., we’d become bored. Stacia, the wildest and oldest-looking of our group, suggested we raid Mollie’s parents’ liquor cabinet. I was so sick the next day, I thought I was going to die. I told my parents what had happened. They nursed me through the hangover and cut a deal with me: No more drinking, and as long as I kept my end of the bargain, they wouldn’t tell any of the other parents what had happened, providing they didn’t hear about any future drunken slumber parties. It turned out all four of us had gotten sick, we all stayed away from alcohol for several years, and my parents kept their promise.

  The first night I was home, I told them what Kevin had done. They were horrified. Dad took it worse than Mom, no doubt because I was still his little girl and the thought of me allowing Kevin to take those pictures was mortifying to him. Mom, being the more tolerant and forgiving of the two, set him straight. Still, they were crushed for me.

  After the initial shock wore off, all of their emotions turned into disdain for Kevin. It’s a good thing my father’s protective nature didn’t involve violence or Kevin’s physical well-being would have been in serious danger. Dad took a different, and more rational approach, first calling the police department. They told him that no crime had been committed under state law because I had willingly posed for the pictures and I was of legal age, 18 or over, when they were taken.

  Frustrated, he then he called an attorney who confirmed what the police said. Luckily for me, no personal information was posted along with the pictures, but that also meant there was an extremely weak case to be made for harassment. The best we could do, he said, was try to force the site to take down the pictures, but that would cost a lot of money and because I wasn’t a celebrity it was probably a waste of money and time.

  I knew it was a lost cause anyway. Once something is on the Internet, it’s there, somewhere, forever.

 
; I woke up a few days later and had made my decision. I needed to get away for a while. Get away from friends, family, everything that was familiar to me.

  My parents thought it was a drastic move, but I assured them it was just for the summer. I needed to go somewhere unknown to me, and where I was an unknown to everyone, somewhere I could begin to put my life back together.

  After promising to check in with them and at least let them know where I was and that I was safe, they didn’t stand in my way. There wasn’t much they could do about it anyway.

  I knew from looking at the “revenge porn” website that I wasn’t even close to being the only girl this had happened to, and I’d heard about it long before. It seems like there’s a story like this in the news all too often.

  But whether it had happened to five girls or five million, what mattered in my life was that it happened to me. Just like any other bad experience in life, you deal with it in your own way because it’s your life.

  Was I overreacting? Maybe. But I don’t care. It was the choice I had made. It was right for me. And it had led me to Charleston, where I might find some peace of mind, some decent surfing, and…meet this intriguing guy named Drew who somehow saw right through me.

  Chapter Five

  The morning after the storm, I ventured out to take a look at whatever damage might have been inflicted on the island. Other than downed twigs in the streets, you could hardly tell a tropical disturbance had rolled through the day before. Having spent almost all my life in Florida, I was well aware of how fortunate we were. Even a tropical storm can wreak havoc on a beachside community.

  I got to work just before nine a.m. Rick and Marla, the owners, were already there when I arrived. They liked to work in the mornings and take the afternoons off. Sometimes there were a couple of guys working—Chad and Warren, who both had girlfriends and knew their boards but were really just working for weed money—but that was mostly at the peak hours, so it was usually just Rebecca and me.

  I couldn’t have been luckier in finding somewhere to work. The surfing stuff was perfect for me, but I also had incredibly nice employers.

  They were unboxing some new t-shirts when I arrived. Rick threw one to me and said, “See what you think.”

  I looked at the beige shirt with the store logo on the left breast as well as on the back of the shirt. “Oh, wow. These came out great.”

  “You can wear that one today,” Marla said, sipping her coffee.

  Rick and Marla were in their mid-thirties, and easily the coolest people I’d met in a long time. Marla always had on some wild earrings she made as a hobby and she’d been nice enough to give me a couple of pairs that I really liked. Rick’s defining feature was a tattoo on his left calf—a replica of the JAWS movie poster, with the shark swimming toward the surface, ready to chomp down on the unsuspecting swimmer. At first, I thought it was an odd tattoo for someone who not only loved the ocean and surfing, but for someone who made their living from people who were eager to get in the water. But as I got to know him better, I realized he had done it with a sense of irony.

  Business was good that morning. The visitors and tourists were out in droves after being cooped up the day before, and now that the storm was gone they were ready to resume their vacations.

  Things slowed down around lunch, right when Rebecca showed up. That’s also when the four of us were standing around talking and I brought up the fact that I had been arrested the day before.

  “Holy shit,” was Rebecca’s response, along with some laughter.

  I didn’t have any qualms about telling them. It wasn’t as though I’d committed some kind of major crime, and it wasn’t as though I needed to hide it from them.

  Rick shook his head with a grin on his face. “It’s not a huge deal. They’ll issue some kind of fine and you pay it.”

  “I already paid it. Well, actually, someone else did.”

  I explained how Drew had covered the fine and got me released, and how it turned out that his grandparents owned the place I was renting.

  “Whoa.” Rebecca’s eyes widened as she thrust her head forward. “That guy who was in here and bought the board and wanted the lessons?”

  “What lessons?” Marla asked. “Are you girls moonlighting and giving surfing lessons?”

  “No,” we said in unison.

  “Oh,” Marla said. “Because if you were, I would have been impressed.” She looked at Rick.

  He nodded. “Me, too. But we can’t get into that. The insurance alone—”

  “You guys are getting off topic here.” Rebecca looked back at me, then tapped me on the arm. “So then what?”

  I told them about the lunch, leaving out the part where Drew perfectly analyzed my situation and I got uncomfortable and ended the whole thing. But I did tell them about Drew surviving a plane crash.

  Rebecca slowly shook her head back and forth. “Wow. Plane crash. Unreal. Is he, like, messed up from it?”

  “Not physically, I don’t think.”

  Marla said, “What’s that mean?”

  “Nothing,” I said, laughing a little. “He’s just kind of…different. I don’t know. He seems really smart and he has a different outlook on things after the crash.”

  Rebecca didn’t hesitate to give her input when I finished. “Well, at least you don’t have to pay back the money.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I do. I’m not going to let him do that.”

  “How are you going to afford it?”

  “We’ll give you an advance on your pay,” Marla said, looking at Rick for his input.

  He nodded and said, “Sure. I don’t see why not.”

  “You guys are missing the point,” Rebecca said. “If she pays him back, then he doesn’t have anything to hold over her head.”

  I looked at her, shocked at what I’d just heard. “What?”

  “Yeah, what?” Marla said.

  Rick laughed.

  Rebecca sighed. “This is perfect. Hot guy bails her out. She promises to pay him back, but doesn’t have the money. So next time she sees him, he’s going to insist that she go out with him again. But this time, it won’t be for lunch, it’ll be dinner, or something even better. A real date.”

  I looked at Marla for some help with this one. She put her hand on Rebecca’s shoulder. “Your imagination never ceases to amaze me.”

  I responded to Rick and Marla’s offer to help before Rebecca could continue with her crazy scenario. “If you really don’t mind loaning me the money, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Not a problem at all,” Rick said. “And we know you’ll be around for a while, so we’ll work out a reasonable payback plan so you won’t be broke.”

  “Thanks.”

  Marla started walking toward the little office in the back, where they had a safe. “Eight hundred, right?”

  . . . . .

  Rebecca and I were “work friends” almost from the start, but as the weeks went on, we became actual friends. We had only hung out a few times outside of work, but I really liked her, and she always had some drama going on that she was more than eager to share, usually involving this guy named Kyle.

  When we first met, she had asked me a bunch of questions about where I was from and how I ended up in Charleston. I had told her plenty about Florida, about school, but didn’t tell her the details of why Kevin and I had broken up or why I had left Tampa. I didn’t want anyone to know the real story behind why I had left, though, so I kept that to myself.

  Rebecca seemed more than eager to share her life story, the most interesting aspect of which was her recent dating history.

  Connor was twenty-six, an engineer at the Naval Weapons Station in Charleston, and seemed to be the perfect boyfriend. He helped her move. He let her use his car when he was at work and she needed to look for a job. He spent all of his free time with her. He was athletic, smart, good-looking, and well on his way to a successful career in the Navy, or in the private sector—as an engineer with his service record, he w
ould have to work hard not to be successful.

  She broke up with him after only four months. When I asked why, she said, “Well, it’s like he’s too nice, if that makes sense?”

  The more I got to know her, the more it did make sense. She had a penchant for the “bad boys” and Connor was on the opposite end of the good-bad scale.

  That’s when Kyle entered the picture. She met him one night at The Market Street Saloon in downtown Charleston, and two nights later she was in his bed. After sex, he told her he had trouble sleeping if someone was in his bed, so she was free to sleep on the couch if she wanted. Instead, she walked home, two miles, in the rain, at three a.m.

  Four nights later, she was back at his place. Kyle and his roommates were having a party and he’d texted her, asking her to come over.

  Within ten minutes of her arrival, she was in his bedroom. Kyle stripped down, got on the bed, and looked at her.

  “That’s when he says, ‘You’re gonna make me come and then I might make you come.’” I looked shocked when she said it, but she smiled and put her hand over her mouth, trying to cover it. “It was so hot the way he said it.”

  I guess it could have been hot. Depending on how he said it, of course. I kind of saw it more as him sounding like a cocky jerk, but I didn’t tell her that. And I didn’t ask how the “might make you come” thing worked out for her.

  I wasn’t going to judge her. It wasn’t my place, and among the many things my own recent experience taught me, one was that people do all kinds of things that they think are fine and later turn out to bite them. She seemed to know what she wanted and had at least some control over her actions. So I listened and tried to be supportive, like a friend should.

  Later that afternoon, I was feeling guilty about Rick and Marla fronting me the eight-hundred dollars. I knew I would pay them back, it was just more a feeling of lacking the independence I was trying to achieve.

  When Rebecca and I were getting ready to close the shop, she said, “We’re lucky to be working for Rick and Marla. They helped me out, too, when I first started working here.”