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September 2, 2025 – September 11, 2025
Two days after the sunset ride, Violet texted Jerry.
“Well had my first spill today 😢” Then, because even shaken, she was still Violet, she added: “It only took 226 miles.”
At first, she thought she had gotten lucky. She was hurt. Badly hurt. But she did not yet understand how hurt. A few days later, the pain was still bad enough that she went to the emergency department.
She texted Jerry afterward. “Ended up going to the ED nothing is broken but still in a lot of pain with badly bruised ribs. Don’t worry Cindy is just fine.”
Jerry responded quickly. “Oh no!!!!” Then, “Can I bring you something? Grilling burgers in a bit.” For a moment, it sounded like care.
Violet was in a lot of pain. She had pain medication, but it was only helping a little. She was trying to keep the whole thing light, even then. She reassured him about Cindy before he even had to ask.
But the offer did not become anything concrete. He did not bring burgers. He did not come over. He did not show up that night.
Violet told him not to worry. “No worries.”
Then she added, “I got some pain meds that are helping a little bit but it still hurts a lot to laugh, breathe or move. Do you have the boys?”
He did. And there was more going on in his house now too. Rick had moved in after an eviction.
Jerry’s life, already complicated, had become even more crowded. His children. His best friend. The house. The lack of a license. The unfinished consequences of the DUI. The instability Violet could sense but still did not fully understand.
Later that afternoon, Jerry asked again. “Can I bring you anything”
It was another offer. Violet wanted to believe in it. She wanted comfort. She wanted ice cream and cuddles. She wanted the peace and joy she had felt riding Cindy before the spill took that away from her.
But she also softened the ask before he even had to disappoint her. “Ice cream and cuddles have never failed to cheer me up,” she wrote. “I am missing the peace and joy of being able to ride Cindy. I do have something we could share that might also might help. You clearly have your hands full so whenever you have a chance no rush 😉”
That was Violet trying to ask without asking too much.
Jerry had offered care. But at first, the care remained mostly theoretical.
By evening, the care had shifted into something else.
“Kisses on your bruises,” Jerry wrote. That landed differently.
It was tender. It was flirtatious. It was exactly the kind of thing Violet wanted to hear from him when she was hurt and disappointed and missing the freedom she had just found.
She answered in the same language. “Among other places.”
“Where else would you suggest”
“My neck.”
“Inner thigh.”
“I have a small bruise on my right Hip.”
“I also like when you kiss my shoulder.”
Jerry asked, “Is that better?”
“Don’t forget my lips.”
Then, later, because the thread had already crossed the line from comfort into sex, Violet added, “All the lips.”
She told him she especially loved when he kissed from her inner thigh to her butt cheek.
Jerry answered with emojis. Violet kept going. She could not stop thinking about how good he tasted. How much she loved feeling him on her lips.
The conversation had started with bruises. It had started with pain.
It had started with an injured body and the promise of kisses. But almost immediately, the injury became part of the erotic current between them. The bruises, the ribs, the places that hurt, the places she wanted kissed, the places she wanted touched — they all moved into the same stream.
At the time, that did not feel simple or alarming. It felt like being wanted while she was hurt. It felt like tenderness and desire arriving together.
A few days later, she found out the injury was worse than she had thought.
“Turns out I have 2 broken ribs 😢”
Jerry answered, “Do you need two kisses?”
“1,000,” Violet wrote.
Then, “Might temporarily dry the tears of pain.”
The next day, Jerry sent her the kisses. A thousand of them, in his own emoji way.
Violet answered, “I’ll expect just as many when I see you 😉”
“Tonight?” Jerry asked.
Violet was at a music event near his house. She had taken a few days off work because of the injury, and for once, the evening did not have the same pressure it usually carried. She was not rushing from work. She was not trying to squeeze herself into the margins of exhaustion.
“I’m at a show tonight,” she told him. Then, “Took off work for a few days.”
“Yeah?” Jerry wrote. “Want to come over and hang out?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I’m going to make some potato soup…maybe a movie?”
That sounded good. Soup. A movie. A quiet night. Something soft enough for broken ribs. “When?” Violet asked.
“Maybe now?” She was already at the show. It had just started.
“I’m at the show. It just started,” she wrote. Then, because the night was fun and absurd in its own way, she added that the song choice was ridiculous and she would explain later.
“It probably isn’t over until 10.”
By then, she was thinking about the soup.
“Did you save me some soup”
“It’s simmering,” Jerry wrote.
So after the event, Violet went. She texted him when she was on her way. It was after 10:00.
“Omw.” Then, when she arrived, “I’m here.”
But when she got there, the soup was not simmering.
Jerry had not actually started it. He was in his room when she arrived, sitting in the chair, on his laptop. When she came in, he jumped up and ran toward the kitchen as if the soup were suddenly urgent.
Violet went into his room to put her things down.
His backpack was open on the bed. A bottle of Viagra was sitting right on top.
Violet was a nurse. She knew how common that was. She knew plenty of men used it. The medication itself did not shock her. But the sight of it did catch her off guard.
It was just there. Out in the open. On top of the bag.
Then she noticed the bourbon bottle on the floor beside the chair where he had been sitting.
That landed differently. When she went into the kitchen, Jerry told her he had been drinking. By then, she could tell.
He got out potatoes that did not look especially fresh. He started pulling things from the refrigerator as if the soup were less a recipe than a salvage operation. Then he opened his laptop and asked ChatGPT for an ADHD-friendly potato soup recipe.
Violet watched him, baffled. He had texted that the soup was simmering.
It was late. Way past dinner. He had cooked for her many times before, so the offer itself had not seemed strange. Jerry cooking for her was not unusual.
But this was different. He had never told her dinner was underway when it was not.
She could not tell whether “It’s simmering” had been a joke, wishful thinking, drunken confusion, or a flat lie.
Together, they peeled the sad potatoes. Jerry threw everything into the crockpot.
Violet looked at the whole thing and thought, You know this takes hours, right?
At that point, they were not having soup for dinner. They were having soup by morning.
As they cooked, Jerry told her he had not been working for a while.
That was new. Or at least, it was new to Violet.
For almost a year now, she had pictured him walking to and from work because he had no license but was still trying to do what he had to do. Work had seemed like one of the stable parts of his unstable life. One of the places where he was still showing up. One of the ways he was responsible.
Now she was standing in his kitchen late at night with broken ribs, peeling questionable potatoes for soup that should have already been simmering, while he was drunk and telling her he had not been working.
It was the most bizarre experience she had had with him so far.
She did not know what to make of it. Part of her thought maybe everything had simply caught up with him.
Maybe the DUI, the custody fight, the divorce, the classes, the shame, the walking, the pressure, the losses — all of it had finally collapsed into this.
Maybe he was relapsing. Violet knew alcoholism was a disease. She did not judge him for struggling. But she also did not know what this meant.
She did not know what was true. She did not know what had changed.
She did not know what he had been keeping from her.
She only knew that something about the night felt off in a way she could not explain away.
Later, they went back to his room.
Rick was living there by then, but he worked late on Wednesdays. He came home after Violet and Jerry were already in bed.
Violet wondered where Rick slept. There were only two bedrooms: Jerry’s and the room for his son.
Rick slept on the couch. The house felt crowded and strange. The night felt crowded and strange. Everything had layers now: the boys, Rick, the bourbon, the Viagra, the unemployment, the soup, the broken ribs, the bed.
And still, the physical pull was there. Jerry became more intense again that night.
More intense than felt wise. More intense than seemed careful, given her injury.
Violet had broken ribs. She had told him she needed him to be gentle. She was in pain when she laughed, breathed, or moved. But he was not especially gentle. After they had sex her ribs hurt more than ever.
At some point, he bit her thigh hard enough to leave a large mark.
He had never done that before. They had never talked about biting.
They had never negotiated it. He had never asked if it was okay. There had been no discussion of marks, no discussion of pain, no discussion of whether her injured body could handle what he was doing.
It hurt. A lot.
But it was complicated. Because part of her also liked how much he wanted her.
That was one of the hardest parts to name.
The intensity hurt, but it also made her feel desired. The force startled her, but it also made her feel chosen. It was hard not to respond to how much he seemed to want her body, especially after weeks of uncertainty and silence and trying to understand where she stood with him.
Pain and wanting got tangled together. So did injury and sex.
So did care and risk.
Sometime in the middle of the night, after sex, they ate the soup.
It was not great, but it was slightly better than Violet expected, considering how it had started.
The next morning, Rick gave Jerry a hard time about the soup.
The ordinary comedy of that made the whole thing feel even stranger. There had been bourbon on the floor, Viagra on the bed, broken ribs, a crockpot full of late-night potato soup, sex, a bite mark, and now Rick joking about the results in the morning.
Violet had taken time off work because of the injury, so she was able to stay later than she normally would have.
She tried to use the time. She tried to find out what was going on with Jerry.
She asked him directly to talk to her about what was going on with him.
She was not trying to trap him. She was not trying to shame him. She was trying to understand what she had just walked into.
The drinking.
The job.
The soup that had not been started.
The strange exposed details in his room.
The intensity of the night.
The way nothing quite matched the story she had been carrying in her head.
Jerry hedged. Then he said, “I know you want the truth.”
That sentence landed oddly. What else would she want?
Violet was trying to be supportive. He knew she was not judgmental. She was trying to leave room for relapse, shame, overwhelm, and whatever else he might be carrying.
But the whole thing was bizarre. And maddening.
Because even when she asked directly, he still did not simply tell her what was going on.
By midday, Violet could feel him wanting her to leave.
He said he had some stuff to get done.
That felt odd too, given that he had just told her he was not working.
But by then, Violet was ready to go. She wanted her own bed. Her own room.
The comfort of not having to decode him. The night that had been offered as soup and a movie had turned into something else entirely.
A drunk kitchen. A crockpot that would not be ready until morning. An unemployment disclosure. A bite mark on an injured body.
A conversation that still did not become honest. And Jerry saying he knew she wanted the truth as if that were somehow a complicated request.
Two days later, Violet was walking around a summer music festival with the evidence still on her body.
She texted him.
“When you’re injured and tell him to be gentle… now you’re walking around the summer music festival with bite marks on your thighs.”
Jerry answered only: “I tried.”
Violet stared at that. Maybe he had. Maybe, in his mind, that was him trying.
But her ribs were broken. Her thigh was marked. And the night that was supposed to feel like care had left her more confused than before.