Chapter Sixty-Three #2
“No one would say shit about a businessman wearing a suit and cufflinks and a Rolex, right?” I said, understanding the argument.
“Except that no one who is actually wealthy would wear a Rolex,” she said, shaking her head. “That is what moderately wealthy people wear to appear richer. When the truly rich people are wearing—“
“Patek Phillipe,” I supplied for her.
“Yes,” she said, a smile spreading across her lips. “You know your watches.”
“I’ve seen a few.”
I’d packed one for the off chance that I needed to dress up to go out with her somewhere. She would want to be seen with someone who exuded the kind of quiet, confident luxury that she herself did.
“I am not a watch person,” she admitted. “Aside from my smart one.”
“Which is more about being accessible every single moment of the day than actually telling you the time,” I qualified.
“Ah… I guess,” she admitted, able to see the parts of her that didn’t, objectively, paint her in the best light. “But we can’t complain too much about my watch when it was the only way I could get a message out to Cam.”
“That’s true,” I agreed, wincing a bit at how she went from light and comfortable to tense and dark at just the mention of that place and her time there.
“You ready to talk about that yet?” I asked, moving forward, ignoring the alarm bells going off in my mind as I put down my mug and sat on the bed beside her.
I was almost painfully aware of the way the bed depressed at my weight, making hers shift until she was brushing up against me.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, shaking her head as her fingers danced over each other in her lap.
“I’m assuming you didn’t talk to Cam about it.”
“Why would you assume that? The man knows when to buy me tampons and chocolate,” she said, smirking.
“Yeah, but that’s job-related, in a way, isn’t it? I’m going to assume that Cam doesn’t know about Buy One, Get One deals at Payless either, does he?”
“He… doesn’t,” she admitted, her brows drawing down a bit.
“Does anyone?”
“Aside from you? No.”
“Hey,” I said, reaching over to put my hand on top of hers that wouldn’t stop fidgeting, making her back go ramrod straight at the contact.
I went ahead and pretended to know how I swear to fuck I felt some sort of electrical shock at the touch.
It wasn’t the fucking time for that. “I can’t spill your secrets,” I reminded her.
“It’s in the contract and shit,” I added, ducking my head to catch her gaze, then giving her a smirk.
“That doesn’t mean you have to be my shrink,” she said.
“I want to listen if you want to talk. I don’t think it’s good to bottle up that shit. In fact, I know that,” I told her, folding forward to reach into my toiletry bag to find the little medicine bottle with my free hand, then showing the label to her.
“What’s this?” she asked, frowning at the label.
“My meds. For my anxiety and depression,” I told her, watching as her head whipped over to me.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Some of my healing was putting this house together, and getting a job that gave my life purpose again, but another part was the meds and therapy. So I know a thing or two about what bottling shit up does to you,” I told her, tossing the meds back into the bag.
“From the service, right?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I agreed, but didn’t elaborate. This wasn’t my time. I didn’t need the shoulder.
She did.
“There was one woman at the hospital who had PTSD from the service. She didn’t handle the thunderstorm we had one night very well.”
“Yeah, those can be rough for a lot of people who saw that sort of active duty. Was she your roommate?”
“No. But I had a great roommate. I don’t think I would have made it out of that place with my sanity intact if it weren’t for her. Am I allowed to talk about her?” she asked, frowning at me.
“That’s up to you. You didn’t sign some non-disclosure. But you don’t have to give details if you don’t want to.”
“She was so sweet. A lifer. That’s what she called herself sometimes.
She’d been in and out of psych wards all her life.
On the downslide… that was when she started getting some…
bad thoughts,” she said, and I liked that she was trying not to give too many details.
But it sounded like she had a bipolar roommate to me.
“She thought that I’d really…” she said, waving down at her arm.
“You didn’t tell her otherwise?”
“You think she would have believed me? The scar was pretty damning.”
“Did you tell the doctors?”
“No,” she admitted. “I figured that saying I didn’t do it, when they were sure I did, was only going to make me look crazy, and that they would extend my stay.”
“That is, unfortunately, probably the case.”
“I just played it off as best I could. Put on my best not suicidal face. Because, well, I wasn’t. And I’ve never been. Not that I’m judging,” she rushed to add, looking over guilty.
“I know you’re not,” I agreed, my hand giving hers a reassuring squeeze. “You must have felt really fucking powerless in that place.”
To that, her eyes immediately went glassy, making her look straight ahead to try to hide it.
“You could say that,” she agreed, voice thick. “There were times that the whole experience was just… dehumanizing,” she added.
There was nothing private when you were locked up against your will. Strip searches and forced medication and people asking invasive questions and expecting answers.
Mental healthcare had come a long way from icepick lobotomies and freezing cold baths, but it still had a long way to go to get to a more humanizing standard of care.
“I really struggle with feeling like I have no control,” she admitted. “And I didn’t have any there. I couldn’t pick what time I went somewhere or if I could leave at all. It was just… horrible. And the crazy part is, I didn’t need it before, but I’m pretty sure I am going to need therapy now.”
“There’s no shame in that. It’s important to work through that shit, not tamp it down.
And I get that it’s hard,” I added. “Especially for someone like you who feels like they have it all together, to ask for help. But once we’re sure it’s safe to, you should talk to someone about it.
And, by then, we will hopefully know who it was, and have their asses locked up, so all that shit on your record will look a lot different. ”
“That would be nice,” she admitted. “Cam got me creams for my arm. I’m dubious that they will work.”
“So, get a laser treatment. Or a tattoo.”
“Cam suggested a tattoo. Visible ones aren’t really my style.”
“Visible ones, huh?” I asked, smirking, and she heard the amusement in my voice, making her glance at me. “I feel like that means there are ones that aren’t visible.”
“There’s one,” she admitted. “We can call that teenage idiocy.”
“Nothing wrong with teenage idiocy. Mine once made me take mushrooms with my friends and trip fucking balls in the woods. The trees came alive and told me stories.”
To that, a laugh bubbled up and burst out of her.
“Sorry,” she said, still chuckling. “I’m sure that was terrifying, but it’s kind of funny. What kind of stories did they tell you?”
“They shit-talked the other tree species. Apparently, the Weeping Willows were the whiny, emos. And the Oaks thought they were better than everyone else. They also complained about the woodpeckers. Sawyer said he sobered up first and found me hugging a tree and assuring it that I would be a human scarecrow for it, so the birds wouldn’t peck at his bark anymore. ”
“Does Sawyer have this on video, perchance?” she asked.
“Thankfully, my teenaged shenanigans took place before the rampant use of recording shit. No one knows that story but me, Sawyer, and now you.”
“We really were lucky that way,” she agreed, nodding. “There’s not a lot of evidence of my overly plucked eyebrow phase. Or when I used to wear beige lipstick with bold brown liner. It was… a look. One I am glad no one remembers.”
“I had a extremely long and wide-legged pants phase,” I admitted.
“Six inches deep in the water on rainy days?” she asked, remembering that phase of male fashion well, clearly. “And chains from your belt to your empty wallet?”
“Hey, it wasn’t empty. There was an old condom in there that I snagged from a friend’s older brother. And, yes, in case you were wondering, by the time I found someone who wanted to go to bed with me, the damn thing had expired.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“They expire,” I said, nodding, deliberately pretending to misunderstand her.
“I meant that it would take you that long to find a willing girl.”
“I was a gangly kid with a pizza face,” I admitted. “It took me years to develop into the disarmingly good-looking man I am today,” I told her, watching as she gave me a big smile. “And by then, I managed to develop some personality. So now I’m the best of both worlds.”
“I’ve met many a men who clearly grew up attractive and their personalities are as deep as a puddle,” she said, shrugging. “I think awkward phases make us well-rounded people. So… what passes for food in this town?” she asked, smirking at me, a silent dare for me to knock her socks off.
And, well, Navesink Bank might not have been NYC with hundreds of restaurants offering up crazy fare, but what we did, we did well.
“Are you in the mood for Italian?” I asked.
“Always,” she answered immediately.
“Then I have a place with great food, nice wine, fantastic atmosphere, and one hell of a story…”
Because I was pretty sure she hadn’t eaten at a restaurant owned by the mob before…