Chapter 19: Broken

Chapter Cast:

Carrie Minberg, Female, 20-21
- Narrator, rising junior at Harvard
- Beige, freckled skin, 5'6, 145lbs, curly back-length dark-red or blue hair
Elise, Female, 20-21
- Rising junior at Harvard, Norwegian
- Pale golden skin, 5'10, 155lbs, shoulder-length light blonde hair
Evan, Male, late-40s
- Stranger in a bar
- Ruddy complexion, 5'7, 170lbs, short black hair
Julens, Female, 21
- Junior at Harvard, Bitterwood graduate, French
- Light olive skin, 5'8, 140lbs, long silky black hair

Elise and I were able to talk several times a week while I was in Killeen. Her dad had given her a phone card and we talked excitedly about our upcoming trip to Europe. I let the festering guilt fade out for a while, almost excused myself from the responsibility.

I rationalized what I'd done, as most people would have. I acknowledged that the racing clock at Bitterwood had been quickly bringing the end to my time there. I was a horny young woman, and my bisexuality ran strong in both directions. I told myself that I'd missed Elise, that I'd needed to fuck Drew to have one last cock inside my body before fully committing myself to my girlfriend.

It was all bullshit, really, but that's how I was able to manage the secret and push it deep, where it didn't surface as often as it could.

Elise knew nothing about me and Drew, and I planned to keep it that way.

I turned twenty-one that summer. I hung out with Michael those few weeks, but just as friends. My nights with Drew had sated me, almost, and Michael and I enjoyed just being friendly, nothing more. He never tried to fuck me, never suggested anything intimate at all. He'd dated a few different women during his two years at Rice, and his current girlfriend stayed with him for a week while I was there.

Her jet black hair, mocha skin, and the way she wore her cut-up jeans one-size too small framed her as a physical beauty, and when I got to know her over beers on my birthday, she seemed to be a really nice girl. I was happy for Michael, was glad he'd found someone who seemed to fit perfectly.

It made me consider my relationship with Elise, and I hated that I was again digging for holes to exploit. I can't say why. Elise was perfect, beautiful, loved me passionately. She was a great friend, a great lover, and I knew that her future and mine were bound to be bright.

But emotionally, I'd become agitated. I didn't really see it then, but it was obvious as I thought about that time in my life years later. I wasn't perfectly happy, and when I was still that young, I didn't know that 'perfectly happy' was an illusion.

And it wasn't Elise. I've written so often about all of her good qualities that I failed to mention that she had no bad ones. Not that I saw, at least. Despite that, I found myself questioning our relationship, and I don't know why. I loved her, wanted it to be forever, but I had a very restless energy that threatened us, even if I wasn't sure what the hell was wrong.

But for a while, we were good. I flew to Milan and met Elise there, and we set off on trains and on foot across Italy, hitching rides in Greece, and hiking mountains in Austria. It was a fantastic trip and it did a lot to quash my self-doubt about my relationship with my lover.

We fucked everywhere. In hostels, hotel rooms, along canals, near ruins, and my favorite places were when we fucked on our hikes through the mountains and valleys of Austria.

And it was great sex, not just loving. Elise knew when to spank me, when not, when to slide a third finger into my pussy, or a second into my ass. She was a giving lover and I loved doing the same for her.

We spent a week apart before our move to Harvard, Elise in Sweden for ski training, and me sitting on my ass on a beach in Texas. It was relaxing. I got a bit stressed out about the decision to go to Harvard, felt already the pressure to jump in as a junior and immediately live up to the Ivy League expectations. Mom reassured me, gave me some tips for living off campus. Elise and I had rented a small apartment not too far away, and for the first time in my life, I'd be responsible for paying bills and keeping house.

The week ended quickly, and I kissed my Mom goodbye in the morning and kissed Elise hello when I landed in Boston that afternoon. Most of the things I'd shipped had already arrived, and we spent two days unloading, unpacking, and getting settled in. Our apartment and our school were technically in Cambridge, but it was easier to understand for most people when we called our home 'Boston.'

We had several days of free time before classes started. We had our courses set, most of them we shared, though I signed up for a course in African anthropology while Elise selected an extra Lit course on Mongolian mythology and poetry.

Boston felt like a fresh start. I left behind Drew, and Lawton, checked to make sure Henri and Brown and the others were still long gone in my thoughts. Drew still tugged at me sometimes, and it wasn't just the hatred for my infidelity. Sometimes, I thought about his cock, and many times when Elise fucked me with the strapon, I imagined it was Drew inside me again.

I really did try to fight those feelings, to forget that I liked it. I had a very hard time balancing the fantasy and the reality, but Elise never knew. She was perceptive about my moods, my tendencies, but she never saw this one. I hid it well, and I knew opportunities would challenge me to reject what I was beginning to crave again.

Classes started and Elise and I settled into a comfortable rhythm. We saved our cash and bought bulk food and other items, spent our lunches and evenings together studying or in the new computer lab. We fucked a couple of times a week, and for the most part, our time at Harvard began to feel, well, comfortable.

I guess I never did 'comfortable' well. I tended to seek out new experiences, want to meet new people, had urges to fuck them. I'd held back since Drew, but barely. Elise being at my side kept me in line, though she never knew how much I wanted to stray.

I started to obsess with the idea of cheating. I started to get chills when I fantasized about a classmate meeting me in a car, or in the trees. It wasn't just the sex I dreamed about. It was the cheating. I was disgusted with myself, but day after day, I found myself masturbating to some new illicit secret hookup with someone I'd seen just hours prior which played out in full color and sound in my imagination.

I couldn't talk to Elise about it. She was pretty stressed out as it was, and our sex life took a nose dive very quickly. She had no sex drive, she admitted to me, and she blamed it on the intense stress to perform at Harvard.

I understood, mostly, as I fought those same demons, too. But my other demons, some of them, were driving me to cheat, to find a new thrill, to learn how it feels to fuck just one more person.

Before I crossed that line for the third time in our relationship, a letter arrived at our apartment addressed to Elise. When I'd grabbed it from our mail slot that morning, I thought nothing of it. I wished I'd have thrown it away. Burned it. Never let the words it contained be known.

I went out while Elise napped, classes over in the mid-afternoon. I enjoyed reading in a park, spent time in the library, and splurged on two gyros to bring home for dinner.

I opened the door to a painful sight.

Elise was red-faced, puffy, crying. She sat on our couch, head in her hands, didn't move when I came in.

I raced to her, took her arm, asked, "Sweetie, Honey! What's wrong?"

She said nothing at first, didn't move, and I held her a moment. She picked up the envelope, the one I'd seen addressed to her earlier, and pulled out the letter inside. It was then that I noticed the stamp that marked the letter's origination as the UK.

My heart sank.

It was a long two seconds between her handing me the letter and me seeing enough to know it was from Drew. I knew, before I read it. I think I did, anyway. It seems so obvious now.

I read it quickly, my tears flowing before I'd finished.

It was over. I knew it, and the shouting hatred that Elise hurled at me, including, "get the fuck out, Carrie!" several times, just piled on to what I knew three seconds into the letter.

I was in shock, really. I cried, pleaded with Elise, promised her everything. But she was done with all that, I'd gotten a second chance and I fucked Drew with it. We were done, and it was only later, when I slept in an alley, curled up with a small bag of my clothes, that it really began to hit me.

I was crying softly, a bit delirious, exhausted, dehydrated, when the paramedics arrived. I don't know who called them, but they took me to he hospital and I stayed the night. They called my emergency contact from my phonebook, who was, of course, Elise.