Chapter 20 Now
Now
I wish I could say that my sessions with Dimple are sewing me back up, stitching my torn pieces together into a beautiful, sturdy quilt. Instead, it feels like old scraps of trauma are being dredged up and assembled into an ugly, unwieldy thing.
It’s just weird how much stuff comes up when I think too hard about it. It sounds fucked-up when I say it out loud, but we were okay, right?
I hardly remember that time. I was too young. But I think we’ve always had very different definitions of “okay.”
Claire. I consider sending her more messages about it, about what it’s like reliving all this. But when she can’t really remember it in the way I can, when I’ve seen before how upset it makes her talking about it, I don’t know what good it will do.
Instead, I send her inane memes and TikToks I think she’ll like in our chat.
It takes all my willpower to actively avoid Self-HelpTok as I hop between skits.
Ex-boyfriends aside, I don’t tend to hyper-fixate, but there’s something addictive about the promise of better mental health packaged into neat thirty-second clips, presented by pretty people who don’t acknowledge they have a beauty filter on their videos, but you know they have a filter on and aren’t admitting it, which makes you feel a bit superior as you scroll with Kettle chip crumbs down your front, and you realize that maybe everyone is a little bit messed up and maybe you’re not that special.
Okay, so I’ve watched some videos.
James is throwing himself into work more.
It’s a distraction, I guess. And when he’s present, he tiptoes around me, cautious.
He pretends he isn’t, but that false easiness has crept into his smiles and kisses.
His eyes track me when he thinks I’m not looking.
I’ve noticed he doesn’t touch our joint account statements anymore, leaves me to open them when they’re pushed through the letterbox.
I’ve noticed the dribs and drabs he’s started depositing.
It’s nowhere near enough, and won’t be for a long time.
When I ask him about it, he simply flushes, promises he’ll do what he can to get us back where we need to be, and changes the subject.
His guilt is palpable in the supercharged softness he’s treating me with, and I wouldn’t mind it, save for the litany of traps now peppering our conversations.
His performed softness is a veil draped over my eyes, not allowing me to see his difficult feelings.
To see which step might be deadly, which word might drop me into a trap that could sink the both of us.
We’re curled up on the fluffy white rug in front of the sofa.
It’s date night. We’ve finished watching a nondescript film I’m already forgetting, and the TV now displays a faux fireplace, embers turning to ash on a gentle loop.
There are glasses of red wine on the coffee tables either side of the sofa.
Soft, low, sensual music hums out of the speakers around the room.
“Talk to me.” James. His fingers trailing my leg. A cocking of his head to one side, lines framing his eyes as they smile at me. He’s always had reassuring eyes. I hate that there’s a glimmer of wariness in them. “You’ve not said much about how you’re feeling.”
I want to tell him that he hasn’t said much, either, but am scared of spoiling the mood.
I’m not sure we’re good at talking beyond what’s comfortable, what’s easy.
I’ve tried to get him to open up, too, but he’s always fine; he’s always glad to know more of you, to know you better, despite everything.
And I don’t want to say too much. Don’t want him to bolt to his parents’ place again out of fear.
Instead, I want things to feel like they used to. Want to feel him, close.
“Can we not talk?”
It’s meant to come out sexy, but it comes out shy, small.
James seems to understand me all the same, takes a hand from my lap, places the palm to his mouth, and kisses it.
His kisses still send shocks sparking down my veins, setting me alight with crackling electricity.
That hasn’t changed, at least. But this shallow pit that’s appeared in my stomach of late.
This wanting…I want to understand why James still wants me; I want to know what to do about Will; I want to understand why my childhood fucked me up so much more than everyone else’s fucked them; I want to know where the blackouts come from; I want to know if James will be my next victim; I want to feel confident that he’s definitely not; I want my mother to leave me alone; I want my sister to come back home; I want James to fuck me like an animal; I want to have a baby
I want
I want
I want
And I’m afraid that all my wanting, my bottomless pit of need, will pull James into its orbit and swallow him whole. He will be crushed under the weight of it.
“I miss you,” he says, lips planting an offering on my neck.
I let him kiss me, and the hunger and the want almost yell their excitement, needy black fingers reaching out from the waking pit within.
I kiss him back and he can feel my hunger in my eager mouth, in the hands that reach into his hair and twist and pull.
And I can feel his hunger, too. It’s in the heat and the urgency of his hands on me, the pressure of his body against mine.
Perhaps it’s because it’s been a while since we’ve last done this, but something about this time feels more primal, more urgent, than it usually does.
When we’re done, we’re both left sweating and panting on the carpet.
James pulls me into him, my head resting on his slick chest, our legs loosely tangled.
“I can’t keep lying like this,” I say, smiling. “I’m too hot.”
James sighs, laugh barely disguised.
I slip my knee out from between his and peel my head off of him. My eyes stare up at the ceiling. I try not to think.
“Uh-oh…where are you going?” James asks.
“What?”
“In your head. Where are you going?”
He shouldn’t be able to read me like this. If I start letting him see behind the mask, see the real me, I’ll lose him forever. Him, and the family we’ve planned.
“Nowhere. I mean, it’s fine. I’m fine.”
He sighs again, and it is heavier than before. “Are you thinking about Will?”
I shake my head. At least it’s honest. “No. Well, not in particular. I suppose I’m thinking about everything. Kind of.”
He laughs. “That doesn’t help make things any clearer, Nat.
” He runs his fingers through the fibers of the shaggy rug.
“I’m worried about it, too. But he seems to mean what he says…
about not saying anything, I mean. He’s been quiet since anyway.
As long as you and I talk to each other, communicate, I think we’ll be okay. ”
I think about pushing him in this moment, pointing out the irony when it’s clear we’re both holding back from being entirely honest, but I’m pretty sure this would spring one of those hidden traps that would leave both James and me wounded.
Besides, he only wants me to tell him I’ll be an open book, but then keep my darkest thoughts to myself.
I’ve been one of his favorite Nice Things, and if I can convincingly continue to pretend to be that for him, he’ll be happy.
I look at the video of fire flickering before us, watch the flames slowly consuming the wood.
“Yeah, I agree. We’ll keep talking and we’ll be okay,” I say, trying not to linger on how well James lies.
Trying not to dwell on what else he may be lying about.
A flash of Molly enters my mind, and then the yoga teacher who always wants to chat a little too long when James picks me up from class. Nice, normal women.
I do my best to suppress the thought. It’s not easy.
James is not George, not by a long shot, but I’ve allowed him to own so much of my life: my job, my home, my heart.
And with my determination for a fresh start shedding friends from my life before James and I were even romantically involved, he’s now the center of my world.
The power is his to abuse if he wants to.
“I know we haven’t been able to make it work yet,” James says, “but maybe we could have your sister come visit. Might do you good.”
I shake my head. “She’s busy with auditions and she can’t afford to take time off. And it’s not like we can afford for me to go over right now.” A thought. “But it has been a while since I’ve hung out with my friends,” I say.
“Friends” is a loose term. It’s still the case that very few of my friendships, if any, feel real in the way that my friendship with Emily was, but I haven’t seen her since the Big Fallout. She wasn’t even at my wedding. Not that many people I knew were.
He studies me a moment longer, cool eyes scraping my skin. His mouth opens, closes, then opens again. I think, a little unkindly, that he resembles a goldfish.
“Maybe you do need to go out, blow off some steam,” he eventually says.
I do. I need to get out of the house, broaden my world beyond James.
He’s kind, generous, and loves me. My rational mind knows he’s safe, safer than anyone else.
Even my family. Especially my family. But I can’t shake the irrational feeling of needing a safety net.
Like knowing there’s almost no chance of dying on a flight, but spending the whole journey with visions of plummeting planes and smoking wreckage anyway.
I might have lost touch with my uni friends, with almost everyone who might remind me of the horrors of my past, but I need to nurture the friendships I have left.
A wine-soaked night with a couple of friends will be just what I need. Maybe a girl just needs to let her hair down to stop herself from falling apart. It feels like a good idea. But then again, so many of my worst ones do.