I Remember You

CW: Physical violence, gore or abuse; Mental health

I Remember You

It was August. The air was thick, and just breathing outside was a chore that left Gloria winded with her asthma as she reached the grocery store that morning. It was just starting to really heat up, and it was expected to reach higher than ninety degrees. The crisp, cool air in the grocery store was a blessing. She was slowly sauntering around the corner of the bread aisle.

“I remember you!”

Gloria froze. She had not heard that voice in years. Her chest started thumping, and she felt it all the way in her throbbing temples. Gloria was having a panic attack in the grocery store… again.

“Not really,” she lied. She laughed nervously and touched her hair. She lived a few blocks away. The truth was, she hadn’t seen Frank in seven years—not since the restraining order, not since the endless phone calls and the chilling feeling of being watched had finally faded into a dull, persistent anxiety.

"You look great, G. Still as beautiful as the last time," he said, his eyes lingering for a second too long, a ghost of the intense stare that used to paralyze her.

Gloria's hand went instinctively to the pepper spray she kept clipped to the inside of her purse. Frank had been her first serious boyfriend, a whirlwind of passion that had soured into a nightmare. They had dated for a year, a year of grand gestures and suffocating control, culminating in months of him showing up at her apartment, her work, and her gym after she ended things. The memory was a cold knife in her gut.

"Come on, don't be like that. We should catch up. Get some coffee. It's been too long."

Seven years, she thought, seven years of rebuilding her sense of safety, and now he was here, smelling of old regret and the fresh scent of threat. "No," she said, her voice firmer this time. "We have nothing to catch up on."

"Frank, I... I need to go," she managed, her voice thin. She reached for the shopping cart, her fingers white-knuckled on the metal. Be normal. Be calm. Just walk away.

He stepped closer, a predatory casualness in his posture. As relaxed as a tiger about to pounce on its prey. Hungry. "Come on, don't be like that. We should catch up. Get some coffee. It's been too long."

Seven years, she thought, seven years of rebuilding her sense of safety and self, and now he was here, smelling of old regret and the fresh scent of threat. "No," she said, her voice firmer this time. "We have nothing to catch up on."

Frank's face fell, a mask of wounded sincerity. "Look, a lot's changed. My mom... she died last year. And you remember Mittens? She went too. I just... I needed to see a friendly face."

"Do you live around here? I don’t really come here,” said Frank. “We don't have to talk about us,“ he interrupted. “We don't have to talk about our personal lives.”

She stopped shopping and left the store as fast as she could, leaving her half-full cart. She barely heard him calling her name over her heart pounding in her ears. She lived just blocks away. Gloria really wished she was in better physical condition. By the time she reached her door, she felt ready to black out and her legs were as weak as jelly.

After she was comfortably behind her locked door, she quickly realized that it wasn’t poor cardio, but an anxiety attack. Odd, how even after many years, she didn’t always recognize the anxiety attacks that crippled her. Therapists give the advice that they do for when you are just overreacting. There aren’t really any anxiety tactics that work on real fear…

It’s not that there was any specific fear – that he was going to punch her, or shoot her. The fear is in the pressure and control. He wanted “her” to be with him, but his ideas of what or who she was seemed to be merely a list of flaws and mistakes he wanted rectified. She didn’t even always agree.

For a man who seemed so soft-spoken and mild-mannered he was really totally judgmental. He spoke like that to women because he had no real respect for them as equals. It took her a long time to learn that. A few temper tantrums when things weren’t perfect on dates that were already too much should have been enough of a red flag.

It was her birthday, a hot August day, just like that morning on the way to the grocery store. He refused to go to the restaurant after an afternoon at the movies. He said he was just too sweaty to be presentable after the walk to go eat. He had insisted on making unnecessary reservations for an earlier than typical dinner time.

Gloria suggested he could go home and shower quickly, and they would have plenty of time to eat there or anywhere else in the city. Frank decided her birthday was unlucky, and they never celebrated it together again.

The air was cold and biting, but fresh. It was almost Thanksgiving, and colder than usual for the time of year. Gloria had decorated her modest apartment a bit for the season without really buying anything new. This seemed a good reason to start Christmas shopping. Waiting for the bus, she watched a very small, but very pregnant cat begging outside of the bodega. The stark breezes were stirring up the leaves, which had almost finished dropping out of the trees. The freshness of the air and natural sounds were marred by the rumble of her bus arriving and the smell of diesel exhaust.

She did her usual. Gloria zeroed in on the first empty seat and sat in it without a glance at anyone else.

“Gloria!” It was Frank. Again. Now the bus was moving, the door was closed, and there was nowhere to hide or run until at least the next exit. “I’m so glad to have run into you again. I went back to that store a few times… I’m not sure why you ran from me?”

He had moved to sit across the aisle already. Her chest was so tight she could barely inhale. “Can I sit with you, please? Can we talk?” he asked.

“NO,” she barked, roughly. She jumped to the aisle seat to stop him from sitting down, anyway. Other people were watching. She felt her face flush full red from the embarrassment. Her mind raced. Had he been watching her? Did he have her address? Her stop was right outside her building. How much had he really been creeping around already?

She kept her jaw so hard it was hurting. She had to make a conscious effort to loosen it a bit, afraid of cracking a tooth she was clenching so hard. She had not moved her eyes from facing straight forward, as if she could not face his evil gaze.

She was trapped. Nothing was stopping him from following her right off the bus wherever she stopped. Maybe there were police at the bus station. Security guards, for sure, that she could stay near while she called the police…

Next stop was the women’s prison. It was in the middle of a stretch of highway – no other stops around and nowhere to go. Not the place to get off. She did not think that she could tolerate this for the ten stops to the bus station. Her breathing was faster now, and unsteady. She found herself gulping at the air unsatisfyingly, as if there was no oxygen in the air at all. She thought she was going to pass out. Her anxiety attacks sometimes progressed to that point.

Fight or flight response gone wrong. If she were out in the wild, trying to survive with predators, she would have been lunch years ago. Passing out cold is neither fighting nor fleeing. That was her brain short-circuiting. She was glitchy, like a beta version – and about to crash – in public – on the damn bus.

Then she felt his hand, as if it weighed a thousand pounds, and was a thousand degrees hotter than hell, resting on her shoulder. Lower, calmer, and far creepier, he continued, “ I don’t know why it always has to be like this between us. Things were fine until you started acting this way. Things could have been perfect, but you had to be difficult.”

“DON’T touch me, you sick jerk.” She yelled and threw his hand off of her. “Don’t you ever touch me again!” Then something suddenly switched inside her. She wanted revenge. She looked to her side, suddenly catching her breath and gaining composure, and saw how he wasn’t really that strong of a man. She started sizing him up – and saw no evidence he had even been keeping up with what used to be his usual fitness routine. Narrow shoulders, soft in the middle.

She just glared at him. “Gloria!?”

“I’ve been learning martial arts these past few years, Frank,” she growled right into his face. “You inspired me.”

“I don’t understand!” he gasped, as if he were having his own trouble breathing. He noticed suddenly how tight and toned she really was. She had just kicked ass in an over-35 MMA tournament the previous spring.

“I could beat your raggedy ass, Frank!”

The bus jerked to a stop a good thirty feet past the bus stop at the women’s prison. The bus driver had been completely absorbed in Frank and Gloria’s drama. He enjoyed these things as long as they didn’t escalate to police or injury. Boyfriend-girlfriend problems were his favorite because they made him feel better about not having his own girlfriend or wife.

Frank sprinted off the bus… Gloria never felt less anxious. She continued on the bus, not to do her Christmas shopping, but to renew that restraining order. It felt good to see the old paperwork again. The way she imagined it would be to run into somebody nicer. The universe was back as it should be, and Frank never did try to find her again.