I'm the hero of this story. I don't need to be saved. (Regina Spektor)

“Honey,” Nicky whispered, “who did this to you?”

“Me.”

“What? Don't try to cover for the bastard. Who did this?” He still spoke softly but he was getting angrier.

“I fell.”

He didn't really buy into my response but he let it be. He held both my hands in his and touched his lips to my forehead. I think he was afraid to hold me because I was so battered, a consideration I appreciated. It was a new side of the fiery man. I know I should have liked that, any other girl would have, but I liked his ferocity. I thought only boys turned soft like this but I learned then that men do too. I was fat and wounded and I needed sensitivity but it wasn't what I wanted, not from him. Sensitivity was something I considered repugnant back then, in men anyway. No matter how macho a man somehow he would turn into an estrogen-powered wuss; these were the men I picked.

I was madder about Nicky's compassion after the fact than I was that afternoon. I spent some time with him and when he left we kissed in my doorway and he walked away. Poolside, Tommy witnessed this and within moments he was rapping on my door with his chem textbook under his arm.

“What can I do for you?” I asked as I contemplated setting up a little waiting room, magazines, chairs, a little distributor of numbers with a polite “Take a number please” sign above it.

“How could you?”

“Why don't you come in?”

“Forget it. I can't believe you let him back in after he did that to you?”

“Don't be so dramatic. Nicky never hit me.”

“Who– What happened?”

“I fell.”