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How had it gone so wrong? When I first met Glenn, he was one of those bar guys. I'd had a series of jobs I never enjoyed over my life but had landed at a large, rollicking Midwestern tavern thanks to my old high school friend Anna, who worked there. It was the kind where the beer and laughs flowed freely late into every night. I was feeling like I could begin to stand on my own two feet coming off a long, tumultuous relationship. It was just three months after the breakup, in fact, and I wanted to spend time alone to heal and then try to meet someone decent. But my alone time didn't last nearly long enough.

Glenn was a burly guy who made an entrance wherever he went. He had broad shoulders and long hair in a ponytail, and he caught my eye right away. Before I knew it, we started flirting as I brought him his bottles of Miller High Life.

He seemed so kind at first, offering to walk me to my car after closing time so that I would be safe, politely asking me if I would share my phone number with him. On our first date, he insisted that I not get out of the pickup truck until he could walk around and open my door. It was so old-fashioned it made me giggle.

At first, I didn't know if he'd actually be into me. He wasn't even forty yet, and I felt like a much older woman next to him. But we both liked live music, so we had gone to concerts and shows, and in the dancing and sweat and heat, we had our first kiss, and I spent the night at his trailer.

For months, things were great. I thought I had found my Prince Charming. We would stay up late, sleep in, make love before breakfast and sometimes after, and take rides out to the country on weekends on his Harley. I moved out of my place and into his in short order, my original plan to be alone for a while fading at the prospect of new love.

But the first sign of things going awry was when my car broke down. Glenn insisted that we just sell it for scrap and that he would drive me wherever I needed to go. I didn't like the idea of losing my car. She had been with me for almost ten years. I nicknamed her Motoring Maeve, and I didn't relish the idea of Maeve being gone, forcing me to depend on Glenn.

But he insisted that it made the most sense since he had a flexible construction job and could come and go as he pleased. The scrapyard gave us $600 for dear Maeve. Glenn declared it would go to "household expenses" and pocketed it.

Then his jealousy started. If I talked to a salesclerk at a store, Glenn would press me for whether I found the stranger attractive. He also started telling me what not to wear at work: "That top shows too much of your tits" or "That color makes you look even older than you are."

He didn't like me to be alone, not even for a Sunday stroll. "Why would you need to go without me?" he would ask. "Aren't we in love?" He always kept his arm tightly around me the entire time. At first, it felt loving, but as time went on, it morphed into possessiveness.

The rough sex was next. He wanted to try tying me to the bed and I balked. He said I needed to please him and we would try whatever he wanted, and then he pushed me down and just did it, my arms pinned to the bedpost. After that, it was sex whenever he wanted in whatever way he wanted, no matter how exhausted I was when I got home from work.

But the worst of it happened unexpectedly in the middle of the night. I was sleeping when suddenly I felt a deep pressure around my head and an inability to breathe. Realizing with horrifying clarity that there was a pillow on my face, I heard Glenn laughing as I began to flail. Just as I tried to belt out a scream, he lifted the pillow and fell over on his side, cackling uncontrollably.

Tears came to my eyes as I coughed and sputtered, finally gaining enough breath to blurt, "What the fuck?"

"Oh my God, Jasmine. Your face, your face when I took the pillow off. Your eyes, holy shit, I've never seen your eyes look like that..."

He continued to belly laugh, clutching his side and falling over, as I reached over and pounded his arm with my fists, crying and coughing.

"That. Is. Not. Funny. Jesus Christ, Glenn."

"Come here, baby, I'm just joking around." He pulled me into his arms and started kissing my head and face.

That's when I decided to take part of my tip money each night and hide it in a tampon holder in my fringed purse. He always wanted some of my tips to go to those elusive "household expenses," but I could manage to slide a bit away without him noticing. I would then transfer the cash into a photo album I kept in a cardboard box in the storage area of his trailer. He would never look there. He didn't care about my childhood pictures or the cards and mementos I had in the box. I figured he would just trash the whole thing or throw it into a firepit once I was gone.