13. Daphne Panic Attacks
thirteen
Daphne: Panic Attacks
The red clock ticked, filtering through the sonic waste of human chatter and feet moving forward in a straight line.
I eyed them as they passed, ignoring the strange looks as they inched closer to the point of no return.
My knees folded at the crease, tingling at the possibility of leaving without him.
I hunched over, trying to breathe.
You will not have a panic attack, I mumbled to myself, just as the words dragged down my sternum. Everything burned, making my stomach churn.
I filled my cheeks with air, closing my eyes to fight the spiral.
You will not have a panic attack.
“Are you okay?” someone asked, stepping over me but not waiting for an answer. I stumbled back until the sting of the rope corralling us pressed into my spine.
I did not need this. I was a damn good midwife, and Maine didn’t close any doors for me. If I wanted to go to Canada, I would find my way there when I was ready, when there was more time to process.
You’re in control, I told myself. You get to decide. This is a choice, and I choose…
My chest constricted when two sharp bolts of lightning struck dead center.
I choose…
I keeled over, the weight of everything bearing down… down… down.
“Nope. Not like this.” A blanket of winter fell from above and hauled me upright.
Thay.
I turned, crawling into him until my legs locked tight around his hips when he lifted me into the air in a weighted hug that made my heart work.
I buried my face in his nape, pressing my nose into his scent.
“Daphne,” he whispered into my ear, trailing his bare hands up my spine in a way I’d never felt before, and heat immediately swept into my belly.
“Please take me home,” I mouthed into his neck, but he only inched forward, claiming my place in line.
“I taught you how to swim. How to use chopsticks. How to ride a bike. And now,” his fingers splayed under my shirt, moving in slow, attentive circles against my lower back, “I am going to teach you how to fly.”
But I did not want to fly. I wanted to crawl back into his bed, wrap my legs around his naked hips, and fall for fucking ever.
“Which, ironically, begins with you standing on your own two feet.”
His hand released me when we approached The Badge, who had been eyeing me for the last half hour.
“Daph?” he let go, but I didn’t. I only locked my thighs tighter.
“What is this?” The security guard snapped before falling silent. I never knew how he conjured death in a single glance, but no one moved.
“By the way, I showed you how to ride a bike,” I corrected, begging him to listen to my body and turn around.
“No, babe.” He smiled against my ear. “You taught me not to give up, which is better.” Thay peeled my face back to search my eyes. “Because that is what you do. You climb out of the Underworld and become a goddamn midwife!”
“I am kind of amazing,” I teased, anchoring myself to his steely pupils.
“More than amazing, Daph. You’re perfect.” He ran his fingers through my hair and set me down on the ground. “Which is why you will not let this moment keep you captive. We got out of the room, Daph.”
“No, you got us out of the room.” A rogue tear slipped down my cheek, falling onto my lip.
“Daphne,” he swiped his thumb to clear it, leaving traces of tobacco on my tongue. “It was your window.”
It was my heart.
“Listen, I’ll hold a space for her, but you need to move aside.”
“No,” Thay said, still looking at me. “She’s ready.”
Thay turned me around and, with a single heartbeat, lifted my hand toward the security officer. I watched, in slow motion, as my ID and boarding pass fell into his palm.
“All you have to do is breathe and take a step. Once you get by the gropey motherfuckers, put your headphones in and call me. I’ll stay with you until you’re on the plane. And we’ll do this side by side, just like always.”
Like always. I breathed, filling my lungs with borrowed air, when my body tumbled over a line he could not follow. How could places like this even exist? I gawked at my feet.
“Oh, and Daphne?” He smiled when I turned. “I can’t wait to fucking kiss you.”
Asshole.
“Maybe I’ll change my mind.”
Thay smirked, making the freckles above his eyes pop.
“No, you won’t.”
“I already have.”
Thay stretched, his forearms flexing as he rested them at the back of his head. God, he looked like sin in black, and the way his clothes worshiped him told me I was a liar.
“We’ll see.” His brows perked, and I knew he was distracting me.
“Go, Daph! Go!” Nathem cheered from somewhere behind him, throwing his hands in the air in two solid pumps.
“Shut the fuck up!” Wolfe growled, smirking at me from a side bench. They looked tired, as if they had lived a hundred lifetimes in the span of mere hours. I tried to force a smile, but the only emotion I had left was pale horror.
“Come on.” A woman hooked her arm through mine and ushered me toward a cart of bins, where I basically had to remove everything but my panties, no bra, because if I were going to die today, it would not be in an underwire, and stepped through the machines that proved it.
I watched the few items I’d shoved into my pockets crawl out the other side.
True to his prompt, I did as I was told.
Inhale.
Step.
Exhale.
Step.
Inhale.
Fuck!
I turned to see Thay fixed in place, leaning against a pillar of white. He gave a gentle nod and mouthed, Keep going.
Inhale.
Step!
Exhale.
I glanced at him one last time, trying desperately to remember everything I already knew by heart and…
Step.
In tandem with my panic, I put my earbuds in and hit his number.
“Hot damn, you look good from behind,” he flirted, but there were chasms in his tone, falling over me like a black waterfall.
Inhale.
Step.
“Why are you being all flirty with me?” Inhale. Step. “It is evil, you know.”
“Yeah, but you prefer villains.”
“I do not!” I exclaimed.
“The hell you don’t. You threw a shoe at the club TV when the Beast turned into the prince.”
I gagged at the memory, stepping onto a moving walkway and pretending not to notice the way it made me feel like a vampire moving in slow motion.
“Nobody wants that blonde thing with perfect arches when they could have a growly beast who unalives anyone who touches you and gives you a library.”
“You want a library, Daph?”
“I’ve always wanted to get laid in one.” I laughed, feeling both slightly better and a thousand times worse. “Maybe you can ask Wolfe for me. He’s next to you, right?”
I waited for his usual scoff to fill the silence, but he said nothing.
“Thay?”
“I’m here. Are you almost at the gate?” he asked, his voice sterile and far away.
I looked up, searching for the number 24, and paused.
“Daphne?”
“Why did you get weird?” I asked, remembering the way his fingers splayed against my spine.
“I just… walk.” He swallowed, and I took another step.
“You’re just what?”
More silence.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “Not in the mood to entertain mental images of you and Wolfe railing in a library.”
Since when?
“Oh, come on, Daph, we fucked against that bookcase in the Common Room,” Wolfe chimed in from behind. “It’s practically the same thing!”
There was a thud.
“Ouch. You fucker.”
And another.
“Hey, Daph,” Nathem’s accent filled my earbuds.
“What the hell is going on? Are they fighting?”
“Give me back my fucking phone,” Thay growled. “Are you at the gate?”
I peered up, rubbing the center of my chest where everything was drowning.
“Yes.”
“Are they boarding?” he asked in irritation.
“Yes.”
“Thank fuck. Now, get on the plane.” I blinked. “Please.”
I closed my eyes, leaning into the scent of coffee and perfumed sweat.
I had never been in an airport before or experienced what it felt like to defy gravity, but mostly it reminded me of chaos.
No matter whether you were heading somewhere exotic or had spent the last sixteen hours stranded in Colorado because of snow, there was always a point in the middle of travel where home became the only thing that was real.
“I’m fine, Daph. Just tired. And this is…” he breathed.
“Shitty?” I offered.
“Yeah. That.”
“Look, Thay.” I stepped forward and handed my boarding pass to the attendant, who seemed unimpressed by my ratty NIN T-shirt and sleep shorts.
“First class has boarded,” she announced, pointing to the makeshift thruway propped up by stilts. I glanced out the window and nodded. My only time in the front row, and I was already failing. “You need to go,” she said, making a face.
I was used to people thinking I was less than.
Hell, when you’ve eaten out of a literal garbage can in the middle of Seattle after rain turns everything into slop, you learn how to move past it.
Still, I wondered if there would ever come a moment when I stopped wanting to be the bigger person and just throat-punched the snotty little bitch, making me feel small.
“Get her name,” Thay whispered. “So later I can shove your boarding pass up her ass!”
I laughed, stepping forward.
“Anyway, what I was trying to say,” I entered the narrow passageway that would lift me thousands of miles into the sky and paused.
Shit.
“Deep breaths. It’s cramped, but it does the job.”
“You’re right here.” The flight attendant smiled and pointed to a seat near the door. It was plush, friendly, and pissy, like the girls who shop in Bellevue and spend $250 on a tube of lipstick. I bit my lip, unsure how to fit.
“Sit down, Daphne.”
“Maybe I should trade with a person in the back,” I sighed, sinking into the cushions and eyeing the man staring out the window beside me.
“Who’s next to you?” Thay asked.
"Six foot. Fishing beanie. Eight out of ten,” I teased, attempting to blot out the panic surging through my core.
“Eight?” My travel friend’s pearly whites cut into the conversation. “Come on, I’m at least a nine.”
“Never mind. Let’s go with six.”
Thay laughed again, but white teeth didn’t. Good.
“What I was trying to say, or rather ask, is if you have a library card.”
“And why the fuck would I have one of those?”
“Because you need it to get into the stacks, and Wolfe’s off the table, so I guess it’s up to you to put me on one.”
My travel buddy choked, splattering sparkling water across the cabin wall.
“Fuck you,” Thay growled, and I could feel him stroke his mouth, the way he always did whenever he wanted something he couldn’t have.
“You’ll have to hang up.” A warm smile gestured in front of me as the safety demonstration began. No one cared if their seat was a flotation device or how opting for legroom meant playing superhero, because neither would save you from falling from the sky.
My heart skipped, sending every bit of my life into my throat in waves.
“I sent you the song. Wait until the plane takes off, then take the two tiny pills I put in your pocket and fall asleep, Daph. You did it.”
“We did it,” my voice cracked. “And what do you mean by pills? What are they?”
“They are presents from Nathem,” he laughed.
“Well, in that case, I am taking half,” I groaned, recalling the last time Nathem gave me one of his little presents. I took one and poof, suddenly it was Tuesday.
“Fair enough! Talk to you when you’re in Maine.” There was a pause. “Love you,” he said first.
“Like a handcage to the face?” I teased, masking the horrified realization that I was about to move away from him on purpose.
“No, like I’m getting a fucking library card!”
“Sure, you are,” I called his bluff. “I love you, too.”
And then the phone went silent, leaving me without him.
“Come on,” Thayor nudged, holding onto the back of the bicycle seat. “When I let go, pedal fast. And do not be a wuss about it.”
“I am not a wuss,” I scowled, knotting my eleven-year-old fist to punch him in the arm.
“No, you are not. So don’t be one.” His eyes shaped the world around him. “You have to go fast enough to keep your balance.”
I nodded, staring at the abandoned alley before me. It was long and narrow, reminding me of forgotten places.
“Just do not let go until I’m ready, okay?” I said, glancing back over my shoulder.
For two kids who had never experienced Christmas, we were over the moon when we found a discarded bike by a dumpster and spent the entire afternoon trying to ride it.
“Have I ever?” he leaned forward to brush a kiss on my cheek. Even at twelve, he knew how to make me listen.
“No,” I placed my hands on the bars and nodded. “Never.”
My thumb moved instinctively over the song that Thay had sent me and pushed play. When his voice hit my central nervous system, I closed my eyes, needing him to hold on just a little longer.