Lista

She stared at her laptop screen, eyes bloodshot and tears having stained her face. Margaret Lista had nearly forgotten where she was as her eyes grazed over the countless pictures that filled her joint social media account with Roy Withers. So many images of them laughing, vacationing, eating dinner, acting silly, and even a few where he had caught her off guard with a kiss.

They were pictures that had once made her smile.

Then he changed, and she was forced to feign a smile every time she was out with him. She became a ghost of who she had once been--of who he had made her feel that she was.

"More coffee?"

The server's voice almost made Margaret jump. She sniffled quietly and wiped at her cheek while barely glancing up at the teenage girl who had earlier introduced herself as Judy. "Yes, please."

Judy refilled Margaret's mug. "You let me know if you need anything else."

Margaret nodded and waited until the girl walked away before staring toward the sea of pictures again. How had she gotten here? Anyone could take one look at any of these photos, and they could tell how in love she had been--how in love Roy seemed to be.

Then came the first outburst after she came home from a night out with friends. He had been seated in the dining room with every light shut off except the one that reflected from the kitchen and onto him.

"Where have you been?" Roy had asked in a tone that Margaret had only heard once before--with a cable company who had cheated him.

"I was out with Lyndie and Susan," Margaret answered, smiling despite his voice. She set her purse on the coat rack and moved toward the dining room.

"Do you realize what time it is? It's half past the two hours ago you should have been home."

"It's barely midnight, baby. I'm sorry if it made you mad." At the time, she had almost found it endearing that he had wanted her home so early so that she could spend the night with him.

Little had she known that she was far from the truth.

As Margaret made an attempt to reach an arm around his shoulder and sit on his lap, Roy took hold of her wrist to stop her in her place. Then he stood and gently shoved her aside. "Next time, I want you home by ten." He took his final swig from the Old-Fashioned glass that she just realized he had been holding. Then he firmly set it on the table and stepped past her toward the bedroom. "If you can clean up before you go to bed. I have work early in the morning."

Margaret had stood there, dumbfounded and speechless. She knew that she should have said something, but she had figured that perhaps he had a rough night and he dealt with it by having some whiskey before she came home.

But she had been wrong again.

Roy had been fine the next couple of days, but when he, Margaret, and their separate pair of friends all comingled during a bowling night, Roy had afterward told her: "I don't ever want you seeing Lyndie and Susan again."

When Margaret started to protest, Roy lifted a stern finger toward her. "If you don't like it, you can go live with them. See if they can provide for you the way I have."

"Roy, where's all this coming from?" she asked, hurt and angry at once. "What'd I do wrong?"

"It's for your own good, babe. Those two women are a bad influence for you."

Margaret closed her eyes at the memory, remembering how she had to speak to her friends in secret and how a week or so later, she had been venting to her sister, Stacy several states away. Roy had caught her and ordered her never to speak with Stacy without his presence there.

"Why don't you leave him?" several commenters had asked after she wrote an anonymous post on a forum about relationships.

Margaret had in fact thought about leaving Roy. The truth was that she initially thought they could mend what they had--that he was angry at something else and was taking it out on her. She was also afraid that, if he kicked her out, she would have nowhere to go. She would have no means of going anywhere for more than a week at most. Her only family was Stacy since they lost both their parents, and she lived over 1,700 miles away. Lyndie stayed in a small apartment where Margaret probably couldn't fit; and Susan had a family.

The world just became more and more terrifying.

Roy had become more emotionally and socially distant from her. He would come home, asked what was for dinner, and then requested some whiskey. In the morning, he would give her temple a kiss goodbye now and then, which had puzzled her further. Had he been doing everything robotically or had it been one of many manipulative tactics to keep her here?

Something had been bothering him, and a month after his first outburst, Margaret had summoned the courage to ask on his rare day off from his stockbroking career.

"Roy?" she had said quietly as he sat on the sofa, his tie undone and top of his shirt unbuttoned. He had been blankly staring at some outdoors reality show on TV. "Is everything okay?" She sat in the armchair diagonally across from him, folding one leg beneath her.

"Of course everything's okay," Roy answered with his fingers turning the glass in his palm. "I just landed my biggest client today. You wouldn't know that since you never ask me how my day was."

"What? Roy, you don't even talk to me. The last time that I asked how your day was, you grumbled and walked straight past me. When I asked again, you told me to drop it. I try, Roy. I try to--"

"Are you calling me a liar, Margie?"

He had spoken in that voice again. That dark baritone that he used when he was in his calm fury, and ready to lash at any second. It was a voice she used to melt over before he added wrath behind it.

"No," Margaret had answered. "I'm not. I'm just saying that I'm trying. I'm trying to find out what's wrong with you so I can help you. Please, Roy. I don't like us like this." She could feel her eyes burn from the tears that threatened to spill.

"Like what? Like having all this living space to yourself?" Roy gestured with one hand, making a sweeping motion toward the house's interior. "Getting whatever clothes you want, whatever food you want? Not having to work?"

"You know that those aren't bonuses for me," Margaret answered, still withholding tears, though her voice cracked. "I'm trying to go back to school for fashion design."

"You will never make it in fashion. Have you seen your drawings?" He almost snickered.

Though that hurt, she went on. "I never wanted just to sit around and take advantage of you."

"Then why do you sound so upset?"

She hadn't been upset. That was the thing. He never understand that either. She was hurt. She was sad and breaking. Before all of this, he would have catered to her. He wouldn't have stopped until she was smiling again. Now he was in his own world, probably comfortable since she had moved in with him.

He gained his newest possession, and he planned on keeping it, regardless of how neglected it felt.

It was another month later when her friends started to worry, her sister kept calling, and the people on her blog continued asking why she was in the same relationship. Some other women stood up for Margaret, saying that it was not as simple to leave a relationship where you feel trapped and threatened. These same women stood in solidarity with her, and wished her strength, and believed that she could seek it.

She always wished that she could.

One evening, after throwing his cell phone onto the couch, Roy gripped at the sides of his head while pacing back and forth through the living room. Margaret had stepped into the house after having gone for a run. She watched him, and could have kept walking. But it wasn't in her character. It never was. Despite how he had been treating her, she had to ask:

"Roy, are you okay?"

Roy shook his head, roughly running both hands through his hair. "My father still thinks I'm a failure." His voice slightly vibrated, and his face was more emotional than she had seen in a while. "Just got off the phone with him. I told him about my upcoming promotion and my new clients, and it made no difference to him. You know what he told me? 'Lukas makes less than you, gave us grandchildren, and sent your mother and I on the cruise of our dreams.' I financed his house. His house! Lukas didn't put in a dime of that."

Lukas was Roy's younger brother. The latter had always competed with the other to the befuddlement of Margaret. They had both been good men. Why the competition?

"Your father just doesn't understand how much hard work you've put in," Margaret had told him. "Maybe he needs some time. I believe in you. You know that I've always believed in--"

"I don't care what you think!" Roy had shouted, causing her to wince. "I care what he thinks. He's always set a standard I couldn't reach. Even with you, the only thing he was impressed with was your looks. That's why we never got his blessing."

A deep sting had punctured Margaret's heart that day. She had thought that she'd gotten along with Octavio, Roy's father. They had shared food and stories together. Apparently, she did not know him or anyone in his family. She was simply made into a prize, molded how to act and speak so that she could be shown off.

If only she had seen that before.

Roy had never hit Margaret at least. The most physical he had gotten was grabbing her tightly by the wrist and shoving her. Moments had occurred where she thought that he would strike her, but he hadn't. It were as though that were a line he wouldn't cross.

Nonetheless, that confession about never getting Octavio's blessing, about Roy not caring about what she thought, and about what he thought of her future with her dream career--all of that motivated her to finally pack her belongings and leave the grand house. She did not know where she would go, but she was paralyzed in not starting at all; and so, she chose to start anywhere.

It was how she ended up in this coffee shop, alone and shedding her (hopefully) final tears.

Margaret gave one more glance at a picture that Roy had posted six months ago--of him surprising her with breakfast in bed for her birthday with the caption: "This is the treasure I wake up to every day. I love you, sweetheart." Heart emojis to follow.

She closed out the image and went to the account settings. She scrolled through the options and landed on the 'password' option. When she clicked on it, a screen popped up asking:

"Reset your password?"

Instructions followed on how to do so.

Margaret stared at the black bar with a blinking cursor within it. This had been her and Roy's space. This account had been used for the journey of their relationship.

And now she planned to erase all of it--erase all of what used to be her.

She glanced at the other tabs on her screen. One tab was of a job-seeking site that reached out to her, encouraging her to apply to an internship at a formidable fashion company. The other tab consisted of her application to a fashion design school--an application of which she was halfway done for the last three months.

Margaret released a breath that she just realized that she had been holding. She clicked her mouse, which unexpectedly caused her heart to palpitate. At first, she doubted herself and questioned what she had done. She had just typed in a new set of keystrokes, verified those keystrokes with a second set that confirmed what she initially typed. She could not undo this for the next thirty days.

An initially frightening thought that she had chosen.

"Miss?"

Judy came back.

Margaret tore her eyes from her computer screen to look up at her.

"You used up your first two-for-one cups of coffee. Would you like another two rounds?"

Margaret nodded. "I would."

Judy smiled softly. "Would you like the same coffee or a different one?"

Margaret turned back to her computer screen. "Surprise me."

And as she said that, the screen displayed a set of words that read:

"Password reset!"