Chapter Twenty #2
Barrett wanted to help her. She didn’t need it to stay alive, and Iris would be fine without her. The knee-jerk reaction was to need it, but it wasn’t really that. It was something she wanted, something she decided, nourished, chose.
“Want,” she told Orion. “I want to help her.”
They nodded. “And, if Ruby happened to be going through the same thing, do you think you’d want to help her the same way?”
“Of course.” It didn’t require thought. Ruby was a part of her, her family. Helping her was something that came easily.
“So, we know that you want to help the people you care about, your friends. Does it feel like an expectation they have of you?”
“Well… no? Not like my family expects it. More like…” She searched the room for an answer it didn’t hold.
How much easier life would be if all the answers you needed simply sat in your therapist’s office just waiting for you to pick them up, pull them off a shelf and solve everything.
“With Ruby, it doesn’t feel like she expects it from me, more that I expect it of myself because she’s my best friend and it would be weird to just abandon her in her moment of need. ”
“Is that feeling tolerable?”
“Yeah.” It was oddly tolerable, something she never really needed to think about.
“Do you think Ruby feels the same way? That she knows she can rely on you to show up?”
“Of course. Just as she’d show up for me.”
“And would you be upset with her if she couldn’t?”
“No. Not at all. She has her own life and things to do, and I know she’d help when she could, if she could.”
Orion nodded, making a quick note on their pad. “Do you worry Ruby would be angry with you if you couldn’t fix something for her?”
Barrett’s lungs ached. They’d done that a lot when she first started seeing Orion.
She didn’t miss that it was a rarer experience these days.
“No. She’d get it. We’d figure it out together, with—” With all the other people who knew and loved Ruby.
And working as a team was fine. Ruby didn’t need Barrett to be her panacea.
Something in Orion’s eyes suggested they knew the exact revelation Barrett was having. “Does it feel different with Iris?”
“Yes?” She couldn’t really explain how or why, but it was different.
“How does it feel different?”
All Barrett could focus on was the throbbing in the center of her chest. She pressed her fist against it. “Pressure. Here.”
They both knew where that came from, how familiar it was to a younger version of her.
“What is your mind telling you about it?” Orion examined her gently. “Whatever you’re experiencing, it’s okay.”
She’d heard that more than enough times too.
But, when this stuff popped up again, it was harder to believe it.
So many complicated emotions—anger, not at Iris but at the people who had made her this way; sadness that they had; something lost and young, a part of her that never got to be a kid and missed it.
And that terrible, aching, eternal wish for a mother she’d never had.
The need to go home to a home that never existed.
“That I’m going to let her down eventually.
” Barrett looked at her knees, unable to meet Orion’s gaze.
“That she missed out on something fundamental that makes these moments more tolerable, and that she’s going to need me to fill that space, but I never had it either and I don’t know how to be it for her. I can’t.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“A family that fucking loves you, probably.”
“Barrett.” Their voice was so painfully soft, the one Barrett had come to understand meant they were about to say something cutting and deep but that it came from a good, accurate place. “For all the things Iris might want you to be to her, she doesn’t need you to be her parent.”
Barrett wanted to rip her skin off just to get away from the notion.
They were correct, of course. That was exactly what the fear was.
It was the role she had to fill when she was being formed, and she’d fought like hell to find a different one for herself.
This whole thing hadn’t come up as much with Ruby because…
Why? Why was it coming up with Iris but not with Ruby?
“What are you thinking?” Orion asked as Barrett scowled.
“Why does it feel like this with her? Ruby had her shit, too, even when we were first becoming friends, but I wasn’t this worried.”
“You were a little worried.”
“Yep. Not like this, though. This feels like… I don’t know, like Iris has this ability to destroy me in a way Ruby doesn’t. Which is actually ridiculous because Ruby knows way more about me.”
“Is it because you work together?”
“No.”
There was a loaded pause, before Orion asked, “Is it because your feelings for Iris are different than your feelings have ever been for Ruby?”
“What? I—”
It was a crush. It wasn’t anything big. Just a silly little physical thing.
She’d been physically attracted to people before and it never led to this.
Though, she didn’t exactly stay in touch with the people she’d been attracted to.
Barely interacted with them at all, actually.
They definitely weren’t integrated into her life the way Iris was.
“You’re saying this entire, ridiculous spiral is because I think she’s hot?” Barrett asked, outraged.
“Do you think she’s hot?”
“Is that relevant?”
“It might be. Does it feel relevant to you?”
“You’re the one who asked!” She threw her hands into the air and let them fall back against the couch.
She thought Iris was hot. Fine. No big deal. She’d known that since basically the minute they met. How could that possibly suddenly be relevant?
Because she was… getting to know Iris? Like you might a partner?
No. They were hanging out like friends. It’s not like Friday night had been a date. She’d helped Iris, they’d gone grocery shopping together. It was not romantic.
Orion lightly cleared their throat. “When we find someone attractive and we start spending more time with them, getting to know them, one of two things can happen. The first is that, in getting to know them, we realize how unsuited we are and the physical crush goes away.”
“And the second?” Barrett asked through gritted teeth.
“Feelings start to get complicated. If getting to know someone shows us how much we like who they are as a person, too, it’s hard to stop deeper feelings from developing.”
“But it’s possible?”
“As we’ve discussed, your feelings aren’t the problem. They’re going to exist regardless. The best thing you can do is feel them and work through them. And the thing you’re responsible for is how you respond to them, not the feeling itself.”
Barrett sank further down the couch.
She didn’t do feelings. It was part of her whole thing. A promise she’d made herself. Emotional attachments had ruined her in the past. She had no use for them.
Sure, she was emotionally attached to Ruby, and Oscar, and… other friends. But… Iris? Like that? It wasn’t possible.
Orion fucking smiled. “How are you feeling about that?”