Escaping the gravitational pull of Tyler Durden was a difficult feat to say the least, especially when I had to continue working for his family for the rest of the summer. Things were going smoothly, however, until he showed up at the office one day to work on the computer systems. I avoided him at all cost, but Tyler forced me to stop and talk with him. He wanted to know if we could still be friends. I responded to this request by bursting into tears. He reacted the way he had for the past three years: by rushing in and giving me a hug. It was a completely familiar feeling, yet foreign at the same time.
As he calmed me, stroking my hair as he had so many other times, something snapped within my mind. I don't know quite how to explain the coinsurance. I've tried so hard to hide what happened at this point that I've managed to forget exactly how things went down. Basically, I decided at that moment that I was going to do everything in my power to coerce him into doing something stupid. I wanted to seduce him if I was able, just to prove that I could. I wasn't making too much progress, but I managed to get him talking about his new girlfriend, who was already claiming she was in love with him. He discussed, at great length, how he planned to cheat on this girl while she was at school. I laughed along with him and explained how it was the perfect situation for me. I couldn't ask for anything more: the guy who crushed me destroying my backstabbing ex-best friend's heart.
Then, as he was leaving, just when I thought I had failed, he did something I didn't expect: he kissed me. It wasn't passionate or meaningful. He did it as quickly as he could before darting out the door. He texted me a few minutes later, laughing about what a terrible person he was for kissing me just to confuse me. I couldn't help but laugh, myself. It was like I had won some sort of sick game. He left me for another girl but in the matter of 15 minutes, I had him crawling back to me. I contemplated telling California about what had happened, but I decided not to interfere with Karma. Besides, she probably wouldn't believe me, anyway.
My mother, who was on vacation in Myrtle Beach at the time, decided to buy me a plane ticket so I could be with her and out of the house. I was grateful for the gesture, but I knew that this is as far is the motion would extend. My parents don't really know me. They try, I think, but they missed out on the majority of my life because work always came first in their eyes. They showed up at my baton recitals and sat through my musicals, but if it came down to it, they couldn't name any of my friends. Hell, I was lucky if they could remember that I was coming home on the weekend.
So, for a week I sat on the beach with my mother and my aunt, drinking rum straight out of the bottles they continually supplied me with. I really opened up to my mother throughout this trip, but she still doesn't know a lot of my secrets. As far as she's concerned, I'm still a virgin. Obviously, she knows nothing about my being raped. However, I finally told her about my experiences with cutting. She seemed shocked, but when I brought up potentially receiving counseling, she really resisted even when a close family friend urged her to support me. I think she's still too afraid of damaging our family's image.
I heard from Tyler one last time a week before school started. I received a one sentence text message: "I hate you more than any other person I've ever met". Presumably, California had left for school and Tyler was alone once more. He blamed me for how alone he was. It was apparently my fault he didn't make any friends in college, because I "required" him to come home every weekend. I also forced him to live in off-campus and behave like a miserable prick. I don't think he was ever able to own up to the fact that he had no friends because he chased all of them away with his greed and hubris.
I received the text while drinking, something I did a lot that summer and into the beginning of the school year. I wasn't drinking to cope, but drinking to be social. If I was surrounded by other people, I couldn't focus on how alone I was. If I was drunk, I could fall asleep at night without thinking about how empty my bed felt.
Anyway, it was with the help of these friends that a response was written. "Who is this?" I asked. I haven't received a text from Tyler Durden ever since.
