Session Fourteen
Normal
“… And how did you feel when he opened up to you?”
Stacy, a sight for sore eyes, was my emergency contact in the dead hours of Saturday afternoon.
I was highly emotional, volatile, on the brink of insanity –
“You’re just hungover,” Fawn had so graciously reminded me that morning. She’d brought bagels over from Kettleman’s and I fought the urge to scarf six in one sitting.
“Leave them in the fridge for when I get back?” I’d replied, sunglasses halfway down my face, keys in hand.
She rolled her eyes, waving me to go, knowing her ass would be planted on my couch for when I got back and cried about all my revelations – my Cole revelations.
There were many.
And Stacy was over the moon.
“Like a bag of dicks, Doc.” I massaged my temple. “Am I that selfish that I couldn’t have asked? Like, hey, tell me about your family tree. Mine’s fucked up but I’d love to hear about yours! Normal people behavior, Stacy. Normal people behavior.”
“Okay.” Her voice was firm. “Would you like some water?”
“I’ve had ten cups.”
“Ten?”
I flicked down my sunnies. “Ten.”
“You’re well hydrated,” she chuckled. “Anyway, back to Cole. How did you –”
“Good! Stacy! I felt good, I felt –” I groaned, leaning my head back. “I don’t know. It felt nice, to be trusted.”
“Wonderful news. Did you share the same vulnerability? Open up too?”
“Um,” I thought back to the conversation. “Details are hazy. Not really.”
“And why’s that?”
“He said something, he said ‘When you feel like running away, run towards me.’ And, I don’t know, Stace. Do you want to know all the juicy details that come after because I’m more than happy to –”
“Let’s just” – she interrupted – “let’s just dissect that for a moment, shall we.”
I shrugged.
“When you feel like running away, run towards me,” she repeated, eyes never leaving mine. “And your response was to…”
“Fuck his brains out?”
“Okay,” she nodded. “But did you say anything verbal, Beatrice? Something for him to hold on to?”
I frowned. “Why would he need something to hold on to?”
“Well,” she leaned forward. “You held on to his words, did you not?”
My tongue flicked across my teeth, back and forth, trying to figure out why that stuck with me. But it was Cole. He lived rent free in my fucking brain.
He replaced Jace.
Sort of.
“Are you afraid of getting hurt? Like Jace hurt you?”
“Stacy,” I shook my head, “how do you read my mind so well?”
She exhaled. “You have this look on your face when you think of him. You sour. You fade.”
I swallowed. “I fade?”
She nodded. “And when you talk about Cole, it’s like you’re searching for something wrong and you’ve hit a wall. But when you talk about Jace…” she paused, “you’re searching for something right and meet dead ends.”
“I don’t want to…” Fuck. “I find I compare them. Or, I don’t know. I try to. Like, does Cole laugh like Jace? Does he fuck like Jace? Does he touch like Jace?”
“And?”
“And what?” I asked.
“Does he?”
“No,” my response was fast. Ready. “No, and when he said run towards me… I wanted to. But I don’t want to sprint. I want to jog. I want to –”
“To what, Beatrice?”
“I want to walk, Doc. I want to walk towards him, and know that at the end of the road, no matter how long it took me…” I shut my eyes. “He’d be waiting right there.”
***
“It all started with coffee.”
“Doesn’t it always?” Cole chuckled, handing me my peppermint and chamomile tea.
We were sitting on his couch, late one Sunday evening. We were well into a relationship now, and he was my…
My um.
My boyfriend.
The thought of saying that. Thinking that. Feeling that. Knowing that.
Big angry Blu, she was raging inside of me with all her nasty, all-consuming thoughts. I shoved them down and buried the atrocities with a shovel.
Fuck off. Just for one night, I’d told her.
Fuck. Off.
Because something needed to happen in order to move forward.
Cole was mine. I was his.
And yet, a part of me still belonged to him.
That part didn’t get to walk into this new house that I’ve built, no.
And where Blu would always be a part of me, she didn’t need to belong to him. Not anymore.
I opened up to Cole. I told him everything.
From the snickerdoodle cookie to the painting in that infamous art gallery – to the ski lodge and beyond. Travelling to Paris, following my vision, flying home just to fall back into his thorny arms.
“I felt like I was standing tall in the doorway of his heart, and he shut me out,” I admitted, fighting back the tears. “It took a lot of time to realize that wasn’t my fault.”
Cole listened.
I spoke.
Together, we were normal.
You don’t understand how uncomfortable that made me.
Normal. Normal.
For so long, I’d never known normal.
But there was normal, sitting on my couch, golf ball socks on his feet holding a hot chocolate because I was craving both and couldn’t decide.
“You’re too good to me,” I said.
“I’m sorry he wasn’t better,” he replied.
And I burst into tears.
Because no one had ever been that gentle with me.
Cole was calm, collected, strong and masculine. Yet, burrowed inside his bones was infinite tenderness that sprouted from profound loss.
“Just because you hurt, doesn’t give you the right to hurt anyone else.” He’d told me.
And I hugged him so tight because he made kindness look so easy. How?
How?
“I don’t worry about things that haven’t happened, honeybee. And I don’t worry about things that have gone. Look to what’s in front of you, that’s what matters. Everything else,” he kissed my nose, “everything else is water.”
Everything else…
Is water.
***
I used to think I met Cole too late.
After all that I’d endured, couldn’t I have met him sooner? Saved myself the agony?
But, maybe, that’s not how life works.
Maybe there’s a right time for pain, and a right time for joy.
Suppose I believed in that, then, Jace was meant to find me.
He taught me how to lose myself in obsession.
Cole was teaching me how to exist, simply exist, inside a steady kind of love.
And for the first time, I didn’t think either one was better or worse. I just felt present. Safe.
Entirely me.
What do they see when they look at me?
I used to think that mattered.
Because if I looked in the mirror, I wouldn’t find Cole’s lips or Jace’s eyes –
I’d find mine.
Mine, mine.
And isn’t she something.