When I was 24, I quit my boring, mundane job back home in Australia and travel the US for a few months. I justified it to my family, saying that living in a foreign country would be a cultural experience. They were worried, of course, but I was always the smart, shy, bookish type. Straight out of uni I was offered a well-paying job with a large accounting firm. I was responsible, a mature, level-headed young woman, not a flighty girl likely to get herself into trouble.
But, in reality, I had just received a considerable amount of money from a recent inheritance and, terrified that my impressively dull job and accompanying life was “it”, I went wild.
After travelling the country for a month or so, I settled in Los Angeles and was having the time of my life. Every night ended at 5am. There was dancing, fast cars, parties and flirting with plenty of gorgeous guys. I had no responsibilities, nothing to care about. Until one night after a concert, I met Chris.
I was instantly attracted to him, all six foot of him, with his broad shoulders, big brown eyes, grungy looks and lips like heaven. He was a relatively well-known musician, but he knew friends of mine; even so I was genuinely surprised when we struck up a friendship.
We started spending a lot of time together. He’d show me all the places to visit around the city and call at least twice a week to take me to dinner — with friends. He was funny, smart, warm, generous, talented — gorgeous. Within a month I had fallen deeply, madly, head over heels in love with him.
But we’d never been anything but friends, we simply hung out and had fun — with the rest of our friends. I had become “one of the boys” and growing incredibly frustrated that he failed to see me as a potential lover. Also, he was leaving on a tour in a few months — I had to do something before he slipped through my fingers.
Chris is the protective type. His family are wonderful people who brought their son up to respect women and treat them well. He’d found occasion to play bodyguard with me before, getting men to stop bothering me in bars, telling them to “Leave her alone, she’s not interested”. It was sweet and caring, just his nature. So I did what I knew would get his attention. I created a boyfriend. A violent one.
It was surprisingly easy. During conversation, I let it slip that a guy I’d met a few days before had got my number from a friend and asked me on a date. Chris was cautious already. He told me to make sure I knew who this guy really was before I even thought of trusting him, to stay in public places, make sure I watched what I drank, felt comfortable and told me to call him to come get me if I needed an escape. Like I said, he’s just a wonderful person.
In the weeks that followed I stayed home. A lot. It hurt so bad to have to turn down invitations from friends, saying instead that I was going on a date “with my boyfriend”. I’d then order Chinese and watch movies all night.
At first, I simply wanted to make Chris jealous, make him realise that other men saw me as a more than desirable woman and not just a good friend. And he was a little jealous, after a few weeks he was asking when we were going to meet this mysterious man of mine, and that I should bring him along on our nights with friends. Seeing as he didn’t exist and thinking that the introductions would be a little difficult, I just said that he was the quiet type, he didn’t really like meeting new people.
But I knew that I couldn’t keep the charade up for much longer. Besides, apart from feeling twinges of jealously, Chris’s interest was certainly focused on me. He’d unexpectedly kissed me one night, then felt wracked with guilt because I “had a boyfriend”. It made me feel guilty that my little ploy made him feel guilty. I was creating a mess I was finding hard to find a way out of.
Then one night I tripped and fell on the rug in my apartment. The silly absent minded accident left me with a twisted ankle, huge bruises on my arm and side as well as a nasty star of broken skin on my forehead where I’d hit the coffee table.
Chris threw a fit. I didn’t say anything at all, he simply took one look at my sorry state and stated darkly that he’d kill him. I told him it was my own fault but he jumped to conclusions. While searching for words to tell him that yes, it really was my own fault, I saw an solution for our current “boyfriend” problem. I ran with it.
I even managed to squeeze out a few tears as I told him that was why friends hadn’t met my boyfriend — that he had a temper, he’d push me, slap me, he was possessive and didn’t want me spending time with anyone but him. I had never seen Chris so angry, yet torn over being so concerned for me. He told me that he was coming with me back to my apartment to collect my things — I was moving in with him that very night. I knew then that he was well and truly mine but I wasn’t out of the woods just yet.
Back at my apartment, I was in my bedroom throwing some clothes into a bag when I heard sounds of a scuffle. My neighbour was a sleaze of the highest order who was about 20 years older than me. He would constantly make disgustingly lewd comments and generally try to get in my pants.
So when he stumbled past my door, pathetically drunk, banging on doors and no doubt spouting something typically offensive, Chris saw my ‘abuser’. By the time I’d come out of the bedroom, Chris already had him pinned to the wall in the hall. I yelled at him to stop but it was already too late — he’d knocked my neighbour out cold. Without a further word, he took my bag and we left.
That night I moved into Chris’s apartment — me in his bed, him on his sofa. Within days there was no need for separate sleeping arrangements. We got married in Vegas two weeks later, partially because it’s one of those nutty things that people our age do, partially because he said he realised that he’d been in love with me all along.
I’m now almost 8 months pregnant with our first child. While I’m deliriously happy with my life and the impending birth of our baby, it’s still as if there is a huge black mark on my heart from where I knowingly deceived my wonderfully loving husband. And got my clueless neighbour beaten to a pulp.
Names in this story have been changed. Picture: Getty Images, posed by model.
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