"So what did you want to talk about?"
It's Monday, and Lea has agreed to have a morning coffee with me. She is sitting across from me in the staff kitchen sofa with a large cup in one hand, her usual package of cigarettes in the other and with a curious look on her face.

I want to tell her, that's why I asked her to meet me. I need to tell someone, and Lea is one of very few people who knows what has been going on over the past three months. She is also one of the few friends I have introduced to Sam. But now when we sit here I don't know where to start.

"I feel miserble again" I start hesitantly.
"What did he do?" Lea asks with concern in her voice.
"Well it's all the usual stuff.. he still doesn't let me be friends with him on social media, he still seems to care more about his ex than about me, and he still has all the control over when we are meeting..." I continue.
"Yeah he's a jerk and doesn't show you any respect at all, but this has been the case for months now, and you never asked for an emergency coffee break before. Did something else happen over the weekend?" she probes and I feel like she is looking straight through me.
"Well, you know on Friday night when we met with you guys?" I feel a lump grow in my throat, and I try desperately to fill in my memory blanks. Why did I have to drink so much? But I'm always drunk nowadays. I'm in a dark place I've never been before, and Sam has spent the past three months encouraging me to fall deeper and deeper.
"Yes...?" Lea says and pulls me out of my wandering thoughts.
" Well when we were walking home that night I could tell that he was really drunk. And he kept talking about how hot my friends were and asking how I had manged to get such attractive friends"
"Are you serious?" interrupted Lea annoyed, "that guy is so disrespectful!"
"Well, anyway" I continued, "combined with everything else that didn't exactly make me feel very good".

I thought back to that night. What had happened , or at least what I thought had happened, was still sinking in, and when I thought about it I sometimes felt sad and anxious, but sometimes just numb. Once again I cursed my own stupidity.

"So we got back home at last and he started touching me immediately. I was feeling awful and just wanted to talk, but he was all over me."
"Right..." Lea sounded concerned now.
"I still wanted to make him happy. I wanted him to like me... and I felt like I had to compensate for not being as hot as my friends".
"Oh no! Come on, let's go somewhere else and talk!" Lea stood up and dragged me along from the kitchen down to the entrance and out to bench lit up by the pale November sun.

"So, you were saying that you were trying to keep him happy?"
"Yes, I wasn't in the mood at all, but I couldn't say anything. I just let him do what he wanted and tried to make him happy" I remembered the drunken haze and the cold feeling growing in my chest.
"Then he started becoming more heavy handed, and I tried to pull away. But I still didn't say anything". I thought of his strong hands gripping me and the panic of knowing that I had let it go too far.
"This is serious, you know that right? You can't see him again" Lea told me severely.
"Well that wasn't the worst of it" I said quietly looking down.
"Really?"
I told her of the pain. The tears I couldn't stop. The tears that didn't help. The lump in my throat had grown so large that I found it hard to continue telling the story, but I told her. I told her of the hours alone in the bathroom. The tears mixing with blood.

"Did you talk to him about it the next day?" Lea asked.
"Well I asked if he remembered what had happened the night before"
"And what did he say?.."
"He didn't know what I was talking about, so I told him that I had cried. I explained that he had gone further than I felt comfortable with and I promised to get better at saying no" I admitted.
"You made it sound like it was your fault?"
"Well it feels like it was" I whispered.