I Delivered My Rapist’s Pizza II: The Retakening
This time, she’s serving up more than steaming hot ‘za.
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One evening in January 2022, I found myself face-to-face with the guy who poisoned my mind and set me down a path of self-destruction. He doesn’t deserve anonymity for what he did; but for the sake of being professional, we’re calling him Jake. I hadn’t seen his handsome, stupid face in close to 10 years, and was proud of that. I had put my life back together, faced some uncomfortable truths he had left behind, and moved on.
Just my luck, I ended up delivering a pizza to his apartment. And he recognized me in spite of my attempts to dodge his questions or let my hair hide my face.
I was traumatized all over again. He raped me and then convinced me that I had only myself to blame — a lie believed that for a long time. But mostly I was pissed with myself for turning into a clumsy, babbling wreck in my haste to yeet myself as far away from him as fast as I could.
And now he knew where I worked.
It was too much to hope that he would understand how upset I was to meet him again, or why, and call a different pizza joint whenever he got the munchies. Two days later, he ordered for delivery again. And he was paying in cash. Maybe cash payments are just generally more convenient for however he lives his life nowadays; but the fact that I would have to touch him twice to take his money and then had back his change was not lost on me. Nor on him, I suspect.
I just couldn’t do it. I did something I hadn’t done in ages.
I talked to my manager about it.
This dude would turn out to be a mega-jerk and a sad excuse for an employee of any level, and we were all ultimately glad to be rid of him. I expected to be told the usual — grow a pair, get over it, leave the drama at the door and don’t bother me, etc. The stuff you normally hear in a restaurant.
Instead, dude did the only useful thing he ever did for any of us:
