Chapter 20 #2
“Just trying to make you smile.” He shrugs.
“Evan!” Shelby calls, waving for him. He looks over his shoulder to her and then back at me.
“I don’t want to hold you up.” I’m doing my best to excuse myself from this conversation and return to pretending he and his underwear, or lack of them, don’t exist.
“You should stay.”
An invitation to stare at him? Not a good idea. As I shake my head, telling him no, he beckons me forward, drawing me in. Lacking self-control, my feet step in his direction. He clears a space for me on a small bench beneath a tree, and I sit.
“Help yourself to anything in there.” He points to a red cooler.
“Thanks.” I press my hands between my knees.
Jittery and unmoving for a moment, he rakes his hand through his hair before glancing around. His awkwardness reminds me of the night I showered at his place. It’s like he has something to say but can’t. Finally, he gives in.
“I’ve been trying to catch you this week, but you haven’t been around. We need to talk about the other night. After this? Okay?”
I nod, even though it’s unclear what we need to talk about. Whatever it is has made him nervous, which in turn makes me nervous. I squirm in my seat.
Evan runs off and joins the group, which has formed a circle. He and another man step inside. Shelby gives a welcome speech and turns on some drum music with singers chanting in another language. The sound pulses through a set of small speakers on a nearby picnic table.
Evan and the man move in a choreographed dance.
First, they step side to side, moving to the sound of the wild drumbeats.
In larger sweeping movements, they slink around each other in fluid and complex steps, using kicks, spins, and jumps, but they never make contact.
One man acts as water and the other as oil.
Every step taken forces the other to react, bending into impossible forms. The beauty of every articulated maneuver mesmerizes me.
My breathing hikes and blood pressure rises.
I fan my face with my hand while the other claws at my side.
I’m heating up when I should be cooling down under the shade of a tree.
As I recall his words, anxiety zips through me at the possibility of Evan reciprocating my feelings.
Did he say we needed to talk about the other night? A relationship kind of chat?
My arms tremble. The harder I suck air, the tighter my windpipe clenches.
Recognizing the signs of a panic attack, I stand. I raise my chin and chest, forcing in air through my nose to even out my breathing. In this case, it’s Evan who’s shoving me overboard, making me freak out. I turn away from him and his class and take another ragged breath.
I have to leave. Now.
At first, I step away slowly, but when the distance between us grows and the music from his class fades, my breathing evens, returning to normal. The sooner I return to the safety of my home, the better.
Locked inside my apartment, I press my back into the grooves of the door and sink to the floor, catching my breath. With my butt planted and legs extended, sweat pours off my chilled skin.
You’re better off alone.
I need something to erase Evan, like that one second, that one event that erased my mind. It’s with complete clarity I decide Aggie was right from the beginning. I’m afraid of anything real. Almost falling into a panic attack proves it.
I thought I could handle this. I thought I was ready. A ridiculous notion I had at one point suggested I should let Evan in and tell him about my past. Ha! When there was no chance of us being together, this crush was easy, but now it’s a threat.
Being with him means I would have to tell him everything, and that scares the crap out of me.
Not letting anyone in has worked. Starting over has worked.
Not telling has worked. I’ve been able to be me .
. . or find out who I am without being looked at with pity.
I don’t want to be that woman to him. The one who still has nightmares, panic attacks, depression, and on occasion can’t leave her apartment.
That’s someone I need to hide so I can move toward the new me—the woman who graduated at the top of her class, the woman who finishes marathons, the confident commercial real estate broker, the woman who can close any deal, the one who can stand in front of a group and command their attention, and the one who can sell anything to anyone.
Where I am now isn’t shaped by my before. It’s shaped by my after. And my after is about control, and I need to maintain control in everything. If I let Evan in, I will lose my carefully balanced power.
Except right now, I’m a chicken. That’s where my anxious mind trails.
I can’t help it. Yes, Evan might want to talk about something inconsequential.
That’s a rational thought, but the anxious part of me knows if that’s all it was, he wouldn’t have announced we need to talk.
Instead, he put a label on it and made it a thing we needed to do—a real thing.
Either way, I’m too nervous to find out. Panic is setting in again with overthinking and jumbled thoughts. I plant my hands on the floor, steadying myself. My breathing tightens. Muscles contract. I’m skittish and agitated. The lack of air is overwhelming.
I shake my head in a rush to clear my mind and wipe the slate clean. Lifting my chin and breathing through my nose, I desperately try to open the passageways to my lungs. If I don’t, I might pass out.
Trying not to panic, I count to ten.
Sweat drips from my hairline. I force air through my nose, let it fill my lungs, and push it out of my mouth. I call on my former therapist’s voice to enter my mind.
His voice calm and steady, murmurs softly in my mind, “You can get through this. Concentrate on your breathing. In slow. Out slow. You can get through anything.”