Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
C ecilia
“How is your nighttime routine? Are you still having nightmares?”
I pull my gaze from the Zen garden sitting on the coffee table across from me in my new therapist’s office. Anytime I saw sand, I had the urge to dip my fingers into it, and it was all I could focus on today. So, when she asks me questions, it takes all my strength to focus on her.
“Uhm, it’s okay. I still have at least one nightmare a week, but I can fall back asleep now after them.”
Dr. Ramorez keeps her eyes trained on me, her expression completely blank. I knew most therapists kept themselves detached and biased when it came to their clients. I’m sure it’s part of a survival technique to keep themselves safe, but I struggled to open up to people who looked at me like I was just another person paying their bills rather than someone they genuinely cared about.
“How about James? What does he do when you have your nightmares?”
“James is…usually already awake when I have them. He doesn’t sleep much anymore. He’ll stay with me when I wake up, and I can fall back asleep if he’s there, but I know he doesn’t fall asleep.”
“Have both of you tried my suggestions to help you sleep?”
I nod, chewing on my bottom lip. “Yup. The books have helped quite a bit. I mean, they have always been a habit for me, but it’s nice doing them together before bed to redirect our brains elsewhere before falling asleep.”
“I’m glad it’s helping. How about your days? Are you getting on well with your recovery?”
“Yes. I’m not really back to my full strength, but I feel good and am trying to get things back to normal.”
“So, you’ve been to the library then?”
I trace my tongue along the bottom of my top teeth as I freeze on the question. Was it okay to lie to therapists, or do they have some kind of magical superpower to see right through your lies and force you to face your biggest inner battles? Mine being going to work at Stone Corridor again. Going back to my everyday life, that isn’t so normal now that Lance isn’t there with me anymore.
It’s been three weeks since everything happened, and the place felt haunted now. Sometimes, I would forget that he didn’t work there anymore, that he’s not…a person on this earth anymore, and I won’t see him ever again.
I’ll go to the space section, expecting to see him sitting there, reading instead of working. Or when it’s kids' story time, and I think he’d have more fun with the book than I would, I forget I can’t assign him to those anymore. Or when I make my own coffee instead of having it ready like he always did. Or when I lock the place up at night all by myself now.
I made it back to work only three days a week ago. Only three days, and I had a breakdown. I couldn’t handle the change. I couldn’t handle the pain of expecting to see him around every corner and realizing he wasn’t there. He never would be. I couldn’t fucking handle knowing I had lost my best friend because he turned on me. The one damn person who should have always been in my corner couldn’t stay there, and I felt sick all the time because as much as I missed him and mourned him, I hated him. I was angry that he did this to us. To me. To him.
During his autopsy, they found drugs in his system. Same as Chuck. It explained why they were both so irrational and impulsive that day, but I couldn’t wrap my head around Lance doing drugs, let alone him working for Chuck, all because he wasn’t getting his way with me.
If he would have just given us some time, things could have been okay. We could have tried. He could have moved on with his life and maybe found someone who made him happy. He had the rest of his life to try, and he didn’t do it, and that was something I didn’t know if I could ever forgive him for.
“No,” I answer shortly.
“What about your book club?”
“We haven’t started meetings back up yet. I don’t feel strong enough, I guess, for that right now.”
“Why not? Social interaction could be really good for you. Now more than ever.”
“I meant more physically. I tire out easily.”
She tilts her head as if examining me closer now. Her dark eyes are thin on me, and her lips are pursed together. “You won’t be able to hide behind that excuse forever. You’re mostly recovered.”
My mouth drops open at her incredulous and insensitive statement. “Mostly recovered?” I spat. “I was stabbed in the back. Physically and emotionally. I had to have my spleen removed because of it. All to save James’s life after witnessing him shoot my best friend in his back and fatally puncturing his heart, and you think I’m mostly recovered? Fuck you!”
I charge off of her stupid sofa that sucks me into it every time I come here and bolt out of the room, slamming the door shut behind me. James is waiting for me in the waiting room, and his head pops up from where he was resting it in his hands when he sees me hauling ass out of there.
“Are you finished?” he asks quickly, standing up now.
“Oh, I’m finished, alright. The nerve that woman has. Well, you know what? She can kiss my ass. I am so done here.”
I kept moving straight through the doors and outside. This was probably the fastest I’ve moved since the accident, and I’m not going to lie—it felt good.
“Cecilia, what happened?” I hear James call out behind me. His steps grow closer until I feel him at my back, and he tugs on my hand, halting me in the middle of the sidewalk. I turn around to face him, all the rage leaving my body when I take in his tired eyes, dull and purple underneath.
I let out a breath, trying to calm myself down so I didn’t stress him out any more than I already had. “It was nothing. I’m sorry. I’m just a little agitated today.”
He curses under his breath, tearing his gaze past me. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Cover up your feelings to spare mine. I’m a big boy. If something is bothering you, then you need to get it out, and you need to go back in there and finish talking to her.”
“I don’t want to go back in there. I don’t want to go there ever again.” I didn’t need a therapist. I was quite capable of sorting through my problems on my own. I’ve done it my whole life. Of course, I think people can greatly benefit from having one, and I appreciate what they do, but it’s just never been for me—especially that specific one. I only did it as a favor to James. He was scared that I wouldn’t handle things well and begged me to talk to someone regularly. I could see how it was eating at him, so I put my opinion aside, and that’s how I ended up here. But there is only so much I can take.
“You are directly in the middle of emotional chaos, Cecilia. You need help to cope with it all. I want to help you, but I have no idea how so you need this. You need to do this.”
“I am not in the chaos anymore,” I shout at him. “I am getting out of it, and you are trying to keep me there by sending me to this place. You want to help me? Just freaking be there and listen to me. That is all I need. You asked me to let you care for me, and then you faltered under the pressure. You barely talk to me anymore. You can’t even look at me longer than thirty seconds, and God forbid you touch me.”
“Jesus, not this again,” he says, sounding fed up. Well, guess what? I was, too. “You were stabbed, Cecilia. You were fading away in my arms, and it felt like I was dying right there with you. I feel like I can’t be anything but careful around you. I almost lost you, and I’m trying not to do it again. I’m trying to handle this the right way,” he shouts.
I let out a hard breath, my body heating with anger and keeping me warm as the winter weather rolls in. We argue for everyone to hear right on the sidewalk. I didn’t care, though. We’ve been walking on eggshells around each other since I came home from the hospital. Things were bound to come to a blow at some point. It needed to.
I understood where he was coming from. Truly, I did. He was scared. He almost lost me, and now he doesn’t know how to handle that or me after coming so close to death. But it’s the fact that he won’t listen when I tell him I’m okay. He doesn’t trust himself to be all I need when I can. He’s not pushing me away, but he’s keeping himself at a distance like I was glass, and I’d break if he made one wrong move around me. I hated it more than anything because if there was one thing I could always count on James for, it was to never hold back. Now, it seems like that’s all he did.
“You’re going to lose me,” I murmur now, my anger fizzling out into pure sadness. He looks back at me, his gaze hard on me like he couldn’t understand what I just said. So, I try to make it more clear for him. “You will lose me if things continue this way. If you keep doubting my ability to handle myself and the amount of strength you have to see me through it, you will lose me. Because that is not the man I fell in love with. I need your touch, and I need your disinhibition. I can’t deal with you restraining yourself from me because it’s never who we were.”
He shakes his head, looking down at the ground now. “You were dying in my arms, and you’re asking me not to restrain myself around you?” He looks up at me again, a new softness to his eyes that forms a knot in my throat at the raw sight of it. “I feel like I can’t even breathe around you. I am constantly aware of every move, every sound, every breath you take. Of all of your surroundings, all so I can make sure you are safe. I don’t have time to be anything but restrained.”
Tears fill my eyes, but I blink them away. I wouldn’t cry. I’d be strong. He would see that I was strong. “Then I think you’re the one that needs to go in there,” I tell him, looking over to the office behind us where I had just run from.
“All I need is for you to be okay. Nothing else matters,” he replies sternly.
I shake my head, becoming frustrated with him. “You know what? I’m going to take a cab back to my apartment. We need some space. You’re clearly not going to listen to me, and I won’t hang around being ignored and treated like I should have a fragile sticker plastered across my chest.”
He steps toward me, attempting to grab my hand, but I take a step back, his hand catching air instead. His eyes crease in surprise, and the shock in his features feels like an arrow to my heart. “No. What are you even…Get in the car, Cecilia. I’m taking you home.”
“No. I need to be alone tonight.”
“Like hell,” he rasps out, attempting to close the distance between us again, but I put a handout, letting his chest collide with it.
“I said no. I am going home. Alone.”
“You can’t…” he struggles to find his words like he couldn’t think straight. “You can’t,” he repeats like it’s all he knows to say. My throat burns with unshed tears as I take another step back and go to stand on the curb, waving my hand out for one of the cabs passing by to stop. Thankfully, one stops the moment I do, and I step off the curb, keeping my gaze on James as I open the door.
He doesn’t say anything. He just watches me, like a statue whose face was carved of the hardest stone, perpetuating a man whose heart has just been broken. I'd probably let him take me home if I didn’t get in the cab right this second. I’d let myself get lost in the shards of himself that he picks and chooses to give to me. It would be wholly unsatisfying, but it would be a taste. It was a cycle that needed to be broken if we were going to move on from this.
I tried smiling at him, letting him know this was okay—that I was okay. He is who I was waiting for. This wasn’t over if he didn’t want it to be. He just needed to move, say something—anything that didn’t make me feel like a shell of a person he was scared to hold.
But he doesn’t move. He stays there, his cold stare never leaving me as I sit inside the cab and shut the door, separating us for the first time in what feels like forever.
The second the car pulls away from the curb, my body shakes with sobs that fling from me like a beast trying to escape a prison. I was fully aware of the uncomfortable cab driver up front, shooting me awkward glances in the rearview mirror, but I didn’t care. This was more painful than being stabbed. I mean…not really, but it was close.
I give the driver a generous tip for subjecting him to my emotions before I leave the cab. I look up at my apartment building, which I haven’t been to in what feels like years. I walk slowly inside, taking my time to climb the stairs, memories of all the times Lance and I walked these halls together floating through my head like a damn photo album I couldn’t keep closed.
I walk into my apartment and mindlessly go to the fridge, which holds two different pictures of Lance and me under magnets. One was our graduation, where he had one arm around me, the other raised John Bender style, and another from one of my birthdays, where I made us wear adult onesies to a high-end restaurant. I laugh, painful tears building in my eyes as I remember the good person he had been most of my life. I decided it was how I was going to remember him. I didn’t think I’d make it any other way.
I stare at the pictures, the green fifty-dollar bill I never took down just beside them. I try to feel some kind of peace. Some acceptance. But I can’t. This sucked…so bad. I wanted to go home, but this wasn’t it anymore.
A small knock hits my door, and I see Tobias slowly walking inside.
“James sent you, didn’t he?” His mouth flattens and presses together, answering my question. I roll my eyes. “I have never met someone as frustrating as he is. He’s all over me yet so distant all at once.”
“I’m not even going to try to understand what you mean by that. You guys need to deal with your shit,” he says, walking toward me.
“I know that. He won’t deal with it,” I gripe. I open my fridge and pull out a soda can, taking three long swigs. Sugar was always helpful in any situation.
“Cut the guy a break. He’s never had to deal with anything like this before.”
“Are you kidding me? He has one of the most stressful and dangerous lives. This should be a piece of cake for him.”
Tobias suddenly looks angry, and I stand straighter, confused by his change in demeanor. “Do you ever quit thinking about yourself at all?” he fumes. “James has never once been threatened by anyone. Never had a risk but himself until you. The minute he met you and actually started to care, he opened himself up to feelings he had never felt before. To threats he’s never had before. He has faced fears he never had in his life. He almost lost you after just getting you, and you’re angry that he isn’t coping the same way you are?”
“But he’s worried about me when he shouldn’t be. I told him I was fine, but he won’t let me in.”
“You’re not fine. You’re in here staring at a picture of you and your attempted murderer, for crying out loud.”
“Don’t call him that,” I snap.
“That’s what he is. Lance tried to kill you. And me. And James. The man you thought you knew turned out to be one of those assholes who couldn’t take rejection from a woman, so his next choice of actions was stalking and murder.”
“Stop it,” I yell now.
“On top of that, James had to kill your best friend, and you don’t think he feels like he’s walking on eggshells around you? That he’s not scared that you’ll wake up one day and hate him for what he’s done?”
“It doesn’t change the fact that he won’t even try with me. I am trying with him, and it feels like he isn’t doing anything at all to help himself.”
Tobias exhales, grabbing the bridge of his nose. “When the fuck did I become a fucking love doctor,” he mutters.
“Let’s just drop it then,” I suggest because I was also over this conversation and how he made me feel like I was in the wrong. I was starting to think I actually might be.
“Just give him some slack, okay? That’s all I’m saying.”
“Fine,” I mumble, taking another sip of my soda.
“You’re both so fucking stubborn,” he mutters quietly.
“Shut up.”
“You shut up. I wish both of you would just shut up and leave me alone,” he shoots back.
“What are you even still doing here?”
“I’m checking on you because you need it. Now shut up and help me find the TV remote.”
“Find it yourself,” I grumble, moving to the living room and sitting on the couch as he finds the remote on the window sill. He snatches it and drops next to me, making the sofa slide back several inches. “You freaking oaf!”
“Get a sturdier couch,” he grouses.
“Or just quit being a big oaf,” I suggest. He scoffs, shakes his head, and turns on the TV, flipping through the guide menu.
“Ooo, Antiques Roadshow,” we both chime simultaneously the second it crosses the TV. We both glare at each other, his nostrils flaring as he turns to look back at the TV. But then he clicks it, turning it on, and we snuggle into our separate spots on the couch and watch it together.
“Pizza?” he suggests without turning to look at me.
I grab my cell phone out of my pocket, tossing it to him. “You order.”
“Cheese and bacon?”
“Duh,” I mutter, to which he just nods and opens the phone to call the pizza shop.
I slump back, anxiety starting to crash into me like violent, unyielding waves. Realizations dawning on me.
I’d been through this before. The loss of someone I loved. It wasn’t new to me, and I was, unfortunately, a bit of an expert on how to deal with grief.
Was this situation slightly different? Hell freaking yes. It was all kinds of fucked up. But was I handling it? Yes.
I always did.
I think I knew there was some unrelentless force inside me that always handled things like this. It’s just what I know. But the biggest thing for me was knowing I’d have James this time—the man I loved and trusted. I knew I’d handle it because I had him, and when I had him, everything would always be okay in the end.
So why did I feel like an asshole suddenly? Maybe it’s because even though I had several experiences dealing with this kind of stuff, James didn’t, and I gave him no grace in how he chose to cope with it.
Damn it.
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.