Theo’s Epilogue #8
“I know.” The corner of his mouth twitched under his mask.
“I’m not asking Audrey tomorrow, I just want it on hand for when I do.
I’ll know when the time’s right.” He reached up and pulled off the mask so she could see all of him and read how serious he was.
“And I wanted it now in case you and I have another falling out, or in case you get too busy with litigation or something and stop showing up for these sessions. You don’t have a good track record of consistency.
Look at how many of my lacrosse games you missed when you told me you’d be there.
” He tilted his head at her and gave her a pointed look.
“I was aware, you know. I looked for you in the stands, every time. And you were at court, or at a briefing, every time. I always asked Dad.”
Eleanor winced deeply. She hung her head and sighed.
“I know you did. You’re right. I deserve that.
I’ll keep taking my licks.” She squeezed his hand back.
“But I’m not going to do that anymore, the whole ‘misplaced priorities’ thing.
I’m here now, and I’m going to keep coming.
And besides, I want to get to know my future daughter-in-law.
If she doesn’t have a mother, she will soon enough, because that’s a role I want to fill. And I want to do it well.”
“I’m going to hold you to that. Audrey is the most important thing in my life.” He quirked an eyebrow at her. “Last chance.”
“Oh, I know. I know you’re not fucking around, Theo.” She raised an eyebrow right back, the twin to his own. “You are my son, after all. And I love you.”
He rolled his lips together. “I love you too, Mom.”
It was true.
It was still there.
It had never left. It had only been buried.
The door opened, and it was time.
And though they had an understanding, it didn’t mean that any of this was going to be easy.
Once he had the ring, Theo thought about it every day.
He thought about it when Audrey was curled into his chest, clutching at him and whimpering in her sleep. She had a tendency to cling to him as though she were terrified he might leave her. He never would. It was an impossibility.
He held her as tightly as he could.
He would have opened up his chest again and kept her safe inside his own heart if it were possible.
He thought about it when he made pancakes for her on Sundays, watching the bubbles in the batter rise and pop with the sound of bacon and eggs sizzling next to him while greats like Billie Holiday and Etta James played in the background and Audrey fiddled with his fancy espresso machine, making them entirely too much and too many kinds of coffee in her delight with a new toy.
He thought about it when he watched her study, her nose wrinkled in concentration, some of her chaotic, loose waves making a daring escape from her hair tie and sweeping along the sides of her face.
He thought about it when he tucked those rebel strands of hair behind her perfectly-sized ears.
He thought about it while he heated and curved and bent the glass for his art, sweat dripping down his back and flames reflected in his eyes.
He thought about it while they made love.
Being inside her was unlike anything he could have ever fathomed, and every time they came together, every time she let him take her, every time he tried to meld his body and his soul with hers, he found that the well inside him where his love had sprung was unfathomably deep, and it only went deeper each time.
Inasmuch as he could, he thought about it then, although it was less a coherent thought and more an instinctual knowing. A truth.
They were made for each other.
Every day, it only became more evident.
Every day, his desire for her, his love for her, only grew.
He never thought he could love someone so much.
He was never so happy to be wrong.
Theo almost proposed right after he got the ring.
He carried it around with him everywhere, and he thought about it so much, it was practically a reflex to reach for his pocket. But the first time he automatically sought it out during Audrey’s graduation dinner, he stopped himself.
And panicked.
Something inside him, some wild instinct, panicked at the perfection of it all: not because it was too much and he wanted to run, but because it was so precious, he was terrified to lose it.
Terrified that if he didn’t ask her that question, if he didn’t ask her to stay with him forever, if he didn’t ask her to codify what they had into law, something would happen and he’d miss his chance.
He’d miss his chance if he didn’t do it now.
“That’s a trauma response.” Amelia sat across from him during their next session, her legs crossed under her on the couch and her chic, flowing pants billowing elegantly over the sides like silk.
They were a slightly darker shade of lavender than her hair and her shirt, and he marveled at how well she managed her monochrome color palette.
That was actually really difficult to do if you didn’t have high color acuity.
“The need to rush like that, I mean. It’s coming from anxiety. ”
“What do I do about it?”
“You’re intellectual, but also creative and visual.
Let’s try this approach: you can visualize removing it from yourself and looking at it impartially.
That’s one way.” She set her pad in her lap and mimed plucking something off of her back, holding it in her hands and handling it almost as if she were trying to corral a massive ball of unwound yarn.
“This is what mine feels like when I hold it. It lives on my upper back, like I’m wearing a little creature in a backpack.
It sits between my shoulder blades and tenses up when triggered.
If you were to peel yours away from yourself and take a look at it, what does it look like for you? ”
His brows knit together. “I’m not sure it looks like anything. But it feels…itchy.” He scratched at the scar on his neck. “And it lives in my stomach.” The more he thought about it, the more he felt vaguely nauseous.
“That’s good. That’s a start. Now imagine it.
Tell me with your artist words. How would you draw a representation of your anxiety?
” She tilted her head and tapped her pen against her notebook.
“Actually, you’re the rare client who won’t shy away when I ask them to really do that. Get out your sketchbook.”
His left eye twitched at the thought, but he sighed and dug into his satchel anyway. After uncapping his pen and flipping to a blank page, he readied himself and waited.
“Talk me through it, Theo. Tell me how you felt when that happened. Let’s find it in your body and figure out what it looks like. If you identify it, you can be more aware of it.”
He scowled at her but complied. He was paying for this, after all. This was supposedly some of the best therapy money could buy. Dr. Amelia Harper was world-renowned and she’d written actual textbooks used to train other therapists. Surely she knew what she was doing.
“Fine.”
“Let your mind go blank.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, and he followed suit. They sat there in meditative silence, relaxing in the quiet for a few minutes before Amelia spoke again. “Focus only on the paper, and what you feel in your body when you think about your anxiety.”
When Theo opened his eyes, his hand moved the pen smoothly across the page. He let his gaze go slightly unfocused like he often did when he was first visualizing a sketch, straddling the liminal mental boundary between his creative vision and its physical representation.
“Where does it live?”
“It lives in my stomach, like that’s its lair,” he murmured, sketching a human figure roughly his size and shape.
He thought back to the graduation dinner and fished around in his memory for the latent seed of panic he’d felt.
“It expands when something brushes against it, draws itself out like a plume of smoke. But it’s more than that; it has more form than just smoke.
It sticks. It’s thick and viscous, like tar.
It crawls up my back, twists itself around the sides of my ribs, over my shoulders, wraps around my neck.
” His hand was fully automatic now, his eyes completely unfocused.
He didn’t see the pad of paper before him at all, only the image in his mind.
“Does it talk to you?”
“Yes,” he breathed. “It whispers things to me.”
“Like what?”
“That I’m not good enough. That I’ve failed. That everyone can see that I’ve failed, or that I’m a hack. That my art is actually shit. That I don’t deserve any good things I might have. That my life is a waste and I don’t deserve to live it. That I’m trash. That I’m a garbage person.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
“No. Yes. Sometimes.” He frowned as he drew until a thought wormed its way through the static—and he grunted.
“Audrey doesn’t think so, but she also really loves garbage.
Says she finds treasure buried there all the time that was just tossed when it shouldn’t have been—when it was still perfectly good, or even pristine.
Scavenges a lot of it while dumpster diving.
” The corner of his mouth swept upward and his entire face warmed, softened, relaxed.
“It’s one of my favorite things about her, actually.
Her ability to see through to the true heart of something and find the value in it when others don’t. ”
“That’s an interesting observation.”
He hummed. He might have wanted to comment on Amelia’s amused tone, but what he was doing right now was far too engrossing. He couldn’t quite pull his attention away. Instead, he kept sketching.
“What else does your anxiety say?”
“That something bad will happen to me, or that I’ll die soon, or even worse: something bad will happen to people I love. Something bad will happen to Audrey. I’d rather die again myself than let anything bad happen to her.”