Chapter 9 The Olive Branch
THE OLIVE brANCH
DAMON
The three ibuprofens I’ve taken pre-emptively to survive two hours seated next to a walking fucking caricature are not working. Does the woman ever shut up? If she’s not throwing unwanted opinions my way, she’s humming unbelievably annoying show tunes under her breath.
I rub my temples, my eyes strained as I attempt to focus on this week’s assignment: a landscape. At least I'm not required to drown my trauma in another bowl of bruised fucking fruit. After last week’s session, the sight of an apple is now nauseating.
Nauseating…like me apparently.
“You should add some stars.”
I ignore her, biting my tongue as I focus on the short strokes of my brush.
“Seriously, dude. Stars. It’ll brighten it up.
It looks so dark and sad right now. You need stars.
Like, look at all those trees and mountains you have there.
” She points her neon yellow nail at my canvas.
“Clearly, this is somewhere in the countryside, right? And if you are indeed out in the country, then there would be stars. So not only would adding stars make it less depressing, it would be way more accurate.”
I snap my head toward Sage-the-Critic. “Say stars one more time.”
She flashes me a wide, taunting grin. “Stars.”
The grip on my paintbrush tightens, and her gaze darts directly to my white knuckles.
“Oh, shit.” She throws her head back and chuckles. “What are you going to do, Damon? Stab me with the pointy end?” She glances around the studio and lowers her voice. “Too many witnesses, bud. You’d never get away with it.”
I shut my eyes, defeated. “Do you ever stop talking?”
“Of course.” She pauses, and I foolishly open my eyes. “When I sleep.”
Jesus Christ. This is what hell must feel like. This must be a preview of what’s to come. This is what I can expect after I die. An eternity with Sage. Great. Can’t wait.
Before I can tell her for the umpteenth time to shut it, her gaze darts to the front door, and she hops off her stool, leaving me in peace and quiet for the first time in nearly two hours.
I glance at my finished canvas, the scenery staring back, almost like I’m looking in the mirror. I’ve painted a mountain landscape in the dead of winter. The trees are jagged, covered in snow. It’s dark, desolate, a perfect hiding spot for the guilty, for those on the run from karma.
As I study the painting, a sense of longing washes over me. It's a longing for something I can't quite name, a yearning for a connection that seems just out of reach. And then it hits me like a goddamn train.
The helicopter. Emery. The fireplace. The Christmas tree. The ornament. The way she looked at me. The ring I bought. The ring she tried on. The joy I felt. It was before. Before I knew. Before him. Before us.
Before. Before. Before.
A loud bark jerks me out of the pained thoughts, and I nearly fall off my stool as a set of furry paws pounce against my thigh.
“Oops! Sorry!” Sage crouches down beside the slobbering Golden Retriever. “Hey, we don’t do that, Sherlock, okay? We don’t do that.”
I blink. “Your dog’s name is Sherlock?”
She grins, scratching the dog’s scruff. “Yes. Sherlock Bones. Bones, for short. Sherlock when he’s being a bad boy.” She pouts at her pet. “Are you being a bad boy, huh? Huh?”
I sigh. “Are dogs even allowed in here?”
She rolls her eyes. “He’s a service dog, you turd. He’s allowed everywhere.”
“Aren’t service dogs supposed to be well-behaved?”
In a snap, Sage rises to her feet and crosses her arms. “Bones is incredibly well-behaved. He just got a little excited.” She snorts. “Not sure why, given you’re as dull as an eraser head.”
I glower at her. “Your insults could use some work.”
Bones settles on the floor by Sage’s stool, relaxing into a calm position. “If I said what I really thought of you, Damon, I’m afraid you’d shrivel up and die.”
I perk a brow. “Go on. Color me intrigued.”
She perches on her stool, knees angled in my direction, and I put down my paintbrush. This session is over. I can tell.
“Are you sure?” She tilts her head. “I’m going to hurt you, Damon.”
“Take your best shot, Sage. I’m confident I’ll make it out alive.”
I brace myself for whatever verbal onslaught Sage is about to unleash, but nothing could have prepared me for what she says next.
“You’re depressed, Damon.”
I open my mouth to protest, to tell her she’s wrong, but she doesn’t let me.
“And you don’t even realize it,” she continues. “You pretend to be okay, to have it all together, but deep down you’re drowning in your own pain.”
I swallow hard, the lump in my throat making it difficult to speak. To breathe.
“You think no one understands you,” she says, her gaze steady as she meets mine. “But the truth is, you haven’t given anyone the chance to understand. You push people away, Damon. Probably even those who care about you.”
Her observation stabs me in the gut, cutting through the walls I’ve spent years building around myself.
“And you haven’t dealt with your grief,” Sage soldiers on, gentle but insistent. “Not properly, anyway. You’ve buried it deep inside, hoping it’ll go away on its own. But it won’t, Damon. It never does.”
The memories come flooding back. My parents. Alison. I lost them. Never got the chance to say goodbye. Never got the chance to tell them how much they meant to me.
“How was that?” she asks. “Better?”
“I—”
Before I can even finish my sentence, the world around me begins to spin. The walls of the studio feel like they’re closing in, suffocating me, squeezing all the oxygen from my lungs. My breath comes in short, shallow gasps, and I clutch at my chest, my heart hammering in unsteady beats.
Jesus, I’m having a heart attack. I’m dying. This is it. I’m finally dying.
“Damon?” Sage’s voice cuts through the haze of my panic, but I barely hear it. Dying. I’m fucking dying. “Damon, are you okay?”
No! I’m not okay, Sage! I want to scream but I can’t. I want to run but I can’t. There’s no running. No breathing. No living. Jesus Christ. No. I’m not okay. I’m not okay. I’m not. I’m—
Panic wraps around my throat like a viper, squeezing tighter and tighter until I can’t breathe at all.
“Oh shit, okay.” I can hear Sage’s frantic voice, but it feels like it’s coming from a million miles away, distorted and distant. “You’re okay.”
Bones jumps to his feet, his paws pressing against my legs as he tries to comfort me. But it’s no use. There’s no helping me. I’m dying. I’m—
“I need to get out of here,” I mumble. “I need to get out.”
I struggle to my feet, my vision blurred and swimming as I stumble clumsily toward the exit. Sage is beside me in an instant, her short arms wrapping around my waist as she leads us out of the studio.
“Just breathe, Damon,” she says. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”
But I don’t feel safe. I’m drowning. Suffocating.
My thoughts. My fears. My actions. They’re killing me.
Dying. I’m fucking dying. Oh God. Despair courses through my veins with such ferocity that I think I may already be dead.
I’m consumed, no longer a person, a human.
I’m not alive. I’m not anything. A ghost. Like her. I’m dead just like her.
“Lie down, Damon,” Sage says, her hands gentle on my back as she lowers me to the ground. Into a grave. Dead. Dead. Dead. “That’s good. Just lay down and breathe.”
I protest weakly, confused and disoriented. I see the ceiling now. Heaven. Right. Of course. I’m not going up. Just down. Down. Down. Down. Where I belong.
There’s a weight on my chest. It’s warm.
Soft. And it’s breathing. I blink, tipping my chin, barely able to make sense of what the hell is happening to me.
Bones is perched across my torso. His warmth seeps into my skin, grounding me in the present.
Making sure I don’t float away. I don’t become one with the wind. An anchor. An anvil. My last hope.
“Just breathe,” Sage repeats. “In and out. Slowly. You’re okay, Damon. Just breathe. Focus only on your breathing.”
I listen to her words. On the rhythm of my breaths. On my lungs. They work. They’re not broken. I’m not dead. I’m here. I’m okay. In and out. In and out. In and fucking out. Again and again and again.
Slowly, painfully, the panic begins to recede. But it hurts. It’s still so fucking painful.
“Good,” Sage says, her hand resting lightly on my chest. “Just like that. You’re doing great.”
I close my eyes, letting her voice wash over me. Soothe me. My hand finds Bones’s fur. He is real. This is real. I am real. With every breath, I float back down to reality, away from the evil thoughts that hold me hostage every day and every night.
After several minutes, I open my eyes, Bones’s wet snout forcing me cross-eyed.
“Well, I didn’t kill you with my words, but I gave you a panic attack, so that’s nice,” Sage chirps, kneeling beside me. “You feeling okay?”
I prop myself up on my elbows, a flush creeping up my neck, staining my cheeks a deep shade of red. A panic attack…? That was a fucking panic attack?
Sage snorts at my reaction. “It’s fine,” she says, surprisingly gentle. “Nothing I’m not used to.”
I try to stand up, to brush off the embarrassment and pretend like nothing happened, but Sage holds my shoulder down, her gaze stern.
“Give yourself a minute, big guy,” she says. “You don’t always need to run away.”
She strikes a nerve and anger bubbles up inside me, hot and fierce. How dare she presume to know what’s best for me? How dare she try to play therapist?
“You don’t know me,” I spit out. “Stop trying to act like you do. You may be all messed up, but I’m fine.”
Sage tilts her head. “Yeah, you look totally fine,” she says dryly, gesturing to the dirty carpet beneath me. “Lying on the floor in a hallway.”
The reality of what just happened hits me like a punch to the gut, and for a moment, I’m speechless. I hate it. I hate to admit it…but she’s right. Of course. I’m not fine. I wonder if I’ve ever been fine.
“I… I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Sage’s expression softens. “And that’s okay. You don’t have to have all the answers right now.”
I swallow hard, the lump in my throat making it difficult to speak. “I don’t want to be like this,” I admit in a shameful whisper. “I don’t want to feel like I’m falling apart.”
Sage reaches out, her hand resting lightly on my shoulder. “It’s okay to fall apart, Damon. But you need to put yourself together afterward.” She swallows, chewing on her bottom lip. “You said last week you have a support system? You should talk to them. Use them.”
Bones slides off my torso, and I bury my head into my hands. “I can’t. I can’t burden her anymore. She… She’s been through so much already. She’s also healing. I can’t—I can’t bring her down with me. I don’t know… I don’t know how to fix this. Fix me.”
“I get that. I used to avoid unloading on my partner ‘cause I was scared it would be too much for them. Like cancer and parents dying, and the trauma of it all isn’t really sexy, you know?”
Silent agreement settles between us as Sage rises to her feet, holding out her hand. "Maybe you just need a friend, Damon," she says, helping me rise from the grave I’ve fallen into. She glances at Bones. "Or a friend and a half."
It’s not hard for her to sense my skepticism, but Sage just rolls her eyes. A friend? I…I’m not sure I’ve ever really had a friend. Other than Quin, but that…he can’t help me with this. Neither of them can.
With a shrug, she adds, "We play fetch in Manning Park every day from 1 to 2 p.m. Join us whenever you want, okay?"
Her offer catches me off guard, but something about the sincerity in her voice makes me want to try.
And so I nod.
I fucking nod.