The next day was a mild-weathered one on campus, as the season was switching from summer to autumn. Ruse found Henry sitting at an outside table under the shade of the central courtyard elm tree, seemingly waiting for her even though she was the one had who initiated the meeting. He was dressed in a red sweater with the NASA logo image on the front, khaki cargo shorts, and a hideously bright pair of white Air Jordan sneakers. He was always cleaning those dumb things with a toothbrush, which seemed obsessive to Ruse. His hair was in short brassy dreadlocks; he had been growing them out for almost a year. The sparkle in his single diamond stud earring matched the joyous sparkle in his eyes. He was smiling so hard and poised so proudly, it looked like he was bursting at the seams trying to contain his excitement over…something.

Ruse had put on a wheat brown peacoat over a black turtleneck, leggings and boots for this special outing. Her coat tightened around the waist and blossomed out below, making it appear as though she had an hourglass figure when the truth was that she certainly did not. But Henry liked her to dress that way, so she did. To keep him happy, and all. The few times in the past she had worn form-fitting clothes, Henry had been outraged, claiming that he wanted people to think he had a girlfriend with a perfect figure, unlike the one she actually had, and she didn’t want to face him in a mood like that ever again.

She gripped the strap of her flower print bookbag-purse she had brought with her as she approached the table, and in doing so, she could feel her heart pounding all through her fingertips.

I have to be brave, she coached herself in her mind, brave like I’ve never been before.

The vicinity was empty aside from the baristas inside the cafe to her left. Through the large cafe window she could see them skittering back and forth with orders of beverages and pastries, and empty plates. She wished she could be indoors with them and not outside alone with Henry, but she didn’t dare say anything about that. That would make him unhappy.

She sat down across from him, looking anxious.

They both spoke at once.

“Henry-”

“Ruse-”

Ruse sighed and averted her eyes from his sinister, grinning face. In her experience with him, it was best to just back down and let him have his moments, even if it meant she had to regularly silence herself and her frivolous wants and needs. She hoped what he would say would be quick, though, because she could only be brave for so long. “You first.”

The smug look on Henry’s face told Ruse he knew he would get to speak first. After all, that was how he had trained her. To hold her tongue in the presence of a man like him. And because he was the man here, that meant he had something infinitely more important to share. And Ruse’s obedience made him grin even harder.

“Ruse, I’m so happy,” he began. His voice was a mellow baritone, raised ever so slightly in his moment of happiness. He stuck his hands out to her across the concrete tabletop.

She hesitantly placed her small, thin hands in his, strong and secure.

“Ruse,” he continued in the same tone, ignoring just how on edge she was. He didn’t have the time or the patience for woman problems. All of that was on her to deal with, alone. And he made sure she knew it. He finally declared with pride, “I got accepted into MIT. I’m so excited. I worked so hard for this, for us.” He squeezed and shook her little hands enthusiastically.

Ruse’s lip curled; she was dreading what he would say next. He was always making over-the-top grand plans for things, and she could never keep up. And she could never avoid being punished for not being on his level. She was so anxious she couldn’t even be happy for him and his accomplishment. Her heartbeat continued to steadily up its pace. He had to have physically felt it, too...

“I’m moving to Massachusetts—we’re gonna go together.” There it was. “I have everything planned out.” He spoke those words as though Ruse had already agreed to go with him. She certainly hadn’t. She wasn’t even close to finishing her degree, how could she leave? And how could she tell him what she had come here to say in the first place? He wasn’t giving her an opportunity to speak! “I’ll keep working for NASA, of course,” he assured her, “but now I’ll be able move up in the aeronautics program.”

Ruse could hear the sanity leaving his voice, and the sudden ringing in her ears did not help.

“We’ll be so happy.” He sounded so full of himself. “Finally, we can have that picture-perfect life together.”

Henry had been interning at NASA for a few months leading up to this encounter. He had been filling Ruse in with what seemed to her like random information about ‘computational fluid dynamics’ and other bizarre astrophysics-related conversation for weeks, and she could hardly keep up with nor begin to comprehend or even care about his achievements. He had even taken her to a museum in Russia the year previous just to see some old space pistol used by the cosmonauts, but she was just simply not interested even after seeing the damn thing up close. What a waste of money on a passport, too, just for them to be thrown out of the museum after Henry tried to steal and claim that the pistol was rightfully his, due to his space-inclined ancestry. Honestly, Ruse thought it was a miracle NASA had even bothered with him after that stunt, nonetheless MIT of all places.

“Henry…” Ruse said so quietly even she could barely hear it herself.

Continuing to ignore her, Henry released her hands and reached down into his hoodie pocket. Ruse felt a jolt of fear.

And then it all happened so fast. Henry sat a small brown velvet box down on the table, opened it up, and Ruse stood up with so much force that the metal chair she was sitting in toppled over backwards. Her soft black bob weave swished and her large fuzzy felt peacoat swayed with the sudden motion. The few birds hunting for crumbs on the ground scattered.

Henry laughed. An entirely inappropriate reaction. “You’re that happy?”

“Henry, I’m sorry!” Ruse shouted, squeezing her eyes shut. He had such horrible timing! She didn’t even know if she saw what was inside the box, but she didn’t need to see to know that she didn’t want it. She could feel the hot tears beginning to form, and she didn’t know if she was more scared or embarrassed. Bravery was hard. “I’m sorry!”

“For what, baby?” he asked with a tone of fake concern.

“I’m g-” she gulped hard, the words being swallowed down as she attempted to speak again. “I’m gay!”

She started sobbing. The hope that he would surely understand was quickly fading from the realm of possibilities. There was no way he would take this information in stride. No way he would be graceful and release her. Not after the several years he had her in his clutches, feeling comfortable knowing she would not, and could not escape. And not after announcing such a major life achievement.

He stood up noiselessly, but she could hear his breathing quicken. She knew that frightening smile had vanished from his face.

“Now’s not the time to joke, babe,” he spoke through his teeth.

“I’m not joking! There’s someone else!” she blurted, not really knowing what she was saying. The words just came out, having nothing to do with her thoughts. There wasn’t someone else. Even beautiful Breanna had her information clear on her Facebook profile: she was straight. Ruse felt as though the world around her was shrinking, making her feel very claustrophobic. Everything was falling apart, taking the breathable air with it as it fell.

Henry let out a soft chuckle, looking up through the canopy of elm branches with an expression that seemed to say ‘this bitch…’ And for a second between tears, Ruse saw him roll his eyes in response to her coming out.

“Who,” he said between laughs, “who do you think you are? You think,” another cackle, “you think you can pull this shit on me? Here? I hope you know, I made sure I could get the courtyard free today for this, for you.” As if this moment wasn’t originally Ruse’s! As if he hadn’t jacked it from her and made it all about himself! He grabbed the tiny brown box off of the table in a swift motion and put his finger all up in her face. “You know you wouldn’t survive without me, right? You won’t make it out there with a stupid fucking art degree. I’m giving you such a great opportunity and this is how you’re gonna thank me?”

She peeked over her coat collar at him. He was hovering over her now, looking deranged. He had gotten like this before, but it had never been this bad.

“And you know you’d be snatched up by the next dude who could overpower you,” he said in a low grumble. “You need me.” He stuck his hands out from his sides and leaned in sharply at her, causing her to physically back down at his fake-out lunge. “You’d be dead if I didn’t keep you safe from all the sickos out there who wanna grab you.”

“I’m leaving you, Henry,” she asserted as sternly as she could, even though her voice was cracking and she was clearly in the middle of an anxiety attack.

And that’s when he laid his hands on her. The open side of his palm whipped across her cheek with a force so strong that it knocked her over. Small strings of hair wrapped around her face with the motion, sticking to the stream of tears on her stinging cheek. All of her perfumes, various makeup items and mini sewing kit and thimble tumbled out of her bag and rolled about on the ground everywhere.

“You ain’t goin’ anywhere, fuckin’ hoe-ass bitch.”

He reached down and grabbed the collar of her coat. Ruse knew for sure now he would never let her leave…

Then, by some miracle, a barista came bounding out of the cafe, screaming rage at Henry. And Henry ran.

The barista helped Ruse back to her feet, with Ruse stumbling a bit on her boots from the whiplash before regaining her normal posture.

Holding her hand to her puffy cheek, she told the barista that Henry had never hit her before. And the barista, still breathing heavy from her sprint across the courtyard and charged with righteous energy, assured Ruse that Henry would never hit her again. The two women quickly made their way to the university nurse’s office to get Ruse patched up.

The rest of that day was a blur, but Ruse definitely remembered ‘going anywhere’ after. In fact, the very next day, manic and full of adrenaline, she decided to drop out of university and move out of state. Her Liberal Arts degree would have to be indefinitely put on the back burner. She needed to get as far away from Henry and the University of South Dakota as possible and start everything anew.

This would not be easy, though. Henry was right about one thing he had said: she was nothing. She had nothing. Everything she had was because of him. She had no car, since he had made her dependent on him for transportation. She had little money, since she had to save up her university grant money while she tried to figure out a way to put her artistic skills to use. And she had no place to stay that wasn’t frighteningly close to him, since all she had was her university dorm room, and she had gotten that free through some program that catered to broke college kids.

She first tried to move back in with her mother in Nebraska, but that did not turn out the way she expected. The news was on when she first entered her mother’s living room and a BOLO report had been sent out in Vermillion, South Dakota for Henry after the university nurse reported him for assault.

Unfortunately but not unexpectedly, after a check on Henry’s excellent grades and good standing with his other peers and professors, he was painted as ‘such a good person’ who just ‘made a mistake’ and ‘can’t you find it in your heart to forgive him?’, as was scarily and stupidly common with men like him. Her mother had even said Ruse deserved the red mark on her cheek for daring to ‘disrespect’ Henry the way she did. Ruse winced just remembering it. When she tried to explain that she couldn’t stay with Henry, as she just wasn’t attracted to men anymore, her mother wouldn’t have it. Her mother was a very strict conservative traditional religious type. Ruse had been raised that way as well, of course, but she had drifted away from the church when she left for uni out of state. There were so many new sinful things to do there, and she couldn’t resist the temptation to turn into the heathen liberal her mother, and even Henry hated.

Her mother hated her so much in fact, that the very next day after Ruse returned home, she threw all Ruse’s belongings onto her front yard, insisting she “had no daughter anymore”.

So, since spending almost all of her money traveling across state lines to try to live at home was not meant to be, Ruse found herself in dire need to find a way to replenish those university grant funds to avoid ending up living on the streets.

On a whim, she took the soonest, cheapest bus to Japantown, a city in northern Nebraska close to the South Dakota border, to try to satisfy her desire to be around like-minded people… That, and Japantown was where Breanna lived, according to Facebook. Even if there wasn’t anything yet between them, just the knowledge that she would be nearby was good enough for Ruse.

The images of the town Ruse had found online had Japantown looking like a still of Tokyo from a classic anime, booming with life and color, with Japanese style buildings and dual English and kanji on every sign. There were cherry blossom trees on every corner, street vendors with carts full of takoyaki and onigiri, and just so many attractive Japanese women. It was a perfect little random slice of Japan smack dab in the middle of the United States.

Perhaps she would find a job there, she hoped, or a new lady friend?

* * * * *