ch. 2
Catherine
I was a cheerleader in high school, one of those reigning princesses who never have to worry about other peoples' feelings. I usually wasn't terribly mean, just oblivious and more than a tiny bit spoiled - after all, I was Sam Braun's golden girl. Then I graduated, and things changed.
I liked to party - always had, from that night in seventh grade when Bonnie Harper stuck a glass of green Boone's Farm in my hand and told me to drink it. I liked alcohol especially. Pot was okay, but give me a bottle of tequila and I was a happy girl, until the next morning at least. Anyhow, I partied on weekends all the way through school, graduated, and got a job dancing at one of Sam's clubs.
It was fun. I'd been hit on from the time my boobs were like mosquito bites, but this, THIS was powerful. I danced for them, looked them in the eye, and knew any one of them would hack off his arm to fuck me - well, okay, a finger then, but you get the point. I had power like I'd never, ever felt, and it intoxicated me. I had stepped into a dangerous realm of sexuality and didn't even know it. I thought that because I could grab a man by his libido, manipulate him sexually so thoroughly that he would do anything to have more of me, even tuck his entire paycheck in my G-string, I thought that meant I was the one in control. It was a potent illusion, and the cocaine that flowed freely everywhere I went only served to strengthen it. I picked my lovers from the clientele like a farmer taking the best apples for himself. I traded in the old for the new when I got bored - after all, they were all the same for me - only the faces ever changed. I had a type - rich, handsome, arrogant, disposable. Over the next decade I managed to go through more men than I care to think about.
Then I met Eddie Willows. He fit my "type" in a lot of respects - sexy, charming, dangerous - but something about him was different. I don't know if it was his intelligence, his impetuous sense of adventure, or the fact that he could manipulate just as well as I could but something about him touched a chord in me, and I was hooked. He moved into my apartment, into my bed, into my heart.
We were happy the first couple of years. He hated what I did, but he never was able to keep a job, and the bills were still there even when he was unemployed. I began to hate stripping. I'd given up the coke and the pot, and I rarely even drank any more, so giving some stranger a raging hardon and knowing he'd think of me when he masturbated in the parking lot stopped being a rush for me. I realized I wasn't in control - I was being used, something I despised above all else. I resolved to change. I began going to college in the daytime, dancing at night. As classes progressed I came to understand that my looks were not my best feature - my mind was. I slowly stopped defining myself based on my sexuality and began looking inward, self-searching.
Eddie did not handle it well at all. I was rarely home, and when I was my new attitude rubbed him the wrong way. He started staying out all night, sometimes for days at a time. I'd suspected he'd had affairs in the past, even caught him kissing girls a time or two, but this bold display was something new.
It all came to a head right before I found out I was pregnant with Lindsey. I found a hot pink jewelled thong in my bed, and it wasn't mine. I was furious, packed Eddie's things, then waited for him to come home. When he did I kicked his useless ass out of my house.
A week later I took a home pregnancy test. One plus sign later I called Eddie and he came over. We shared dinner and tears, and he proposed. He said things would be different after we got married, and I wanted to believe him. I never had a full-time father, and I wanted so badly for my child's life not to be a repeat of my own childhood. We got married, and a month later I graduated and got on at the lab.
Well, Eddie told the truth in a sense - things WERE different after we got married. For one, he moved from cursing me to slapping me across the face. For another, he stopped having sex with me. My growing belly was a turnoff, he said over his shoulder as he slipped out the door - never mind that in that belly was HIS child. I bought little clothes alone, put together nursery furniture with Grissom, and dragged my mother to LaMaze. Nevertheless, when Eddie came to the hospital the morning after Lindsey was born you'd have thought he'd birthed her himself.
His immediate adoration of our child bought him five more years of marriage. It wasn't a HAPPY marriage, more an exercise in barely tolerating one another, but we had Lindsey between us and we both tried our best to keep it together. He was even gracious enough to start screwing me again. Several years passed, and my suspicions that he was back to his old tricks mounted. So did the frequency of physical abuse. Around the time Lindsey turned four I came home early to find my dear husband having sex with the babysitter I was paying to take care of my daughter.
That was the end for me. I kicked him out, got a lawyer, started divorce proceedings. It was hard, but I got through it. My mother was there for me emotionally, and Grissom was there with practical help - new deadlocks, time off, a restraining order. My heart was broken, but I had too much going on to stop and worry about that. Life went on. Then Eddie managed to get himself murdered.
When Eddie died I cried, both for my now-fatherless child and for the man I'd shared so many years of my life with. I'd still loved him, but it had been a sad kind of love, one tinged with the awareness that we could never be together. He'd taken apart our marriage with his own hands. He took apart his own life with his choices.