25. Amanda
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
AMANDA
Iget off the bus at Kedzie and take my cardigan off. This June humidity is oppressive, even in the late afternoon. I shove it into my bag, then head east on Chicago Avenue toward the park.
At home, Eric is walking on eggshells. Every time our eyes meet, in passing or over dinner, there’s so much fear behind his gaze that I can’t just look at it from the outside looking in.
After we hashed everything out, I’d felt like I understood what happened and why…
Then, I woke up overwhelmed by fear and hurt.
Because with Eric, I can never separate the behavioral theories I know are at play from… me.
The whole key thing doesn’t help either of us.
Every time I try, key in hand and door in front of me.
My breath hitches until I hyperventilate, give up, and just knock.
His brow wrinkles in frustration every time.
Eric doesn’t dare ask, so he talks about buying a bed and checking out apartments.
He’s desperate for breadcrumbs of where my head is at.
The truth is that I don’t know where my head is at. Part of me wants to look into larger apartments with him—our place. Part of me just doesn’t want to be anywhere he’d take his shirt off again.
Turning left on Sacramento, lavender blooms in the community garden.
There is a young kid, maybe six years old, crying on his mother’s lap over a wounded knee.
She settles him with a kiss and a bandage.
My own wound feels ripped open, no kiss or Band-Aid in sight.
The glaze of pleasure and guilt in his expression.
When I close my eyes, I see him like it was yesterday and not almost three years ago.
Eric spirals and loses himself, I remind myself.
He leaves wreckage, and I was the wreckage last time.
Except Eric also wrecked himself. At least now, with Diego telling me how it all went down when I left, I know that macho display at brunch was just a toned-down echo of weekend fights for months after I left.
Fifteen minutes later, I am buzzing into Eric’s therapist’s office.
Val’s name is on the wall, next to two other LCSWs.
She’s the only “Dr.” in the practice, but they’re all great.
It’s good that Val recommended people she trusts for Eric, I tell myself while my thumbs draw patterns on the condensation of the carbonated water I just bought.
I settle on the yellow couch that faces the window.
Beside me, a bookcase looks down on me with Val-approved titles: high-stakes therapy research, thick-bound clinical manuals, and the occasional self-help book with a title like The Body Keeps the Score.
You don’t just have to be a good therapist. Your bookshelf has to prove it.
I’m skimming through The Silent Guides when the door opens.
Eric’s presence overtakes the room. He’s wearing a dark blue button-up that downplays his tan.
Thick chocolate waves brush his shoulders.
On top, it’s so long that it keeps falling over his eyes.
He’s been too distracted to get a haircut—with my showing up at his apartment just over two months ago.
It doesn’t feel like two months. I feel more at home now than I have in many other apartments I’ve lived in.
Eric’s face lights up in a bright, sincere smile when he sees me, and then the awkwardness sinks in when he takes a seat next to me on the couch.
I just want us to be normal. But what’s normal between us?
The folding laundry Fridays and hiking Saturdays?
Circling around each other’s feelings like landmines sounds more like us.
Eric exhales. “Thank you for being here.”
It hasn’t been working, though. Not since we decided to raise the baby together. I should pull back, reset boundaries. That would be the healthy thing to do.
“Do you want me to intervene in the session or just be an observer?”
Eric chuckles. “You’ll never be just an observer for me.”
My chest swells with warmth. And that’s the problem; every boundary has gone to hell. I hold the book tightly in my hands. I’m hanging onto self-preservation by a thread.
The door to the session room opens. Val steps out with a lanky redheaded man, mid-forties, who thanks her before heading out.
Val’s in her impeccable professional attire, with her cat-eye glasses and gravity-defiant hair knot in the back of her head.
They exchange a few logistical words as she walks him toward the door.
Val turns like she’s been expecting us. “Amanda, Eric.” She tilts her head in greeting.
My shoulders straighten with the stiffness of her tone. She looks at Eric. “Are you sure you want her here?”
Eric pauses for a second, then nods.
“Wait a minute,” I interject. “Val’s your therapist?”
Val smiles—her clinical one. “We’re not really calling it therapy… It’s more like…”
“We’re talking so I can unpack things,” Eric says.
Val arches a brow. “We’re learning and practicing tools to interrupt learned patterns of behavior,” she says, word for word, what’s on her university profile. Then she smirks, a rare crack in her formality. “It’s hard work.”
She gestures us into the session room. I’ve been here before.
Drinking wine and eating sushi while going over studies and abstracts with her.
It’s set up like a tasteful living room.
Low chairs, soft lighting, a large peace lily in the corner.
She takes her usual seat in the armchair angled toward the purple couch, where Eric and I sit.
“We’ve mostly been talking about early history,” she begins, folding her hands over a notebook she rarely writes in.
“Parents, childhood dynamics, the first templates for intimacy and conflict. It’s where a lot of Eric’s shadows come from.
And when those shadows aren’t named, they tend to distort things, magnifying insecurity into self-hatred.
Turn mistakes into proof of worthlessness. ”
Eric nods, jaw clenched. He glances at me, then looks away.
“But with you here,” Val continues, “it might help to move into what happened that night. If you’re up for it.”
Eric looks at me, like he’s waiting for permission. He doesn’t move until I nod. Then he clears his throat. “Yeah.”
He waits a beat too long. Then—
“I know it was fear. I—” He pauses, struggling to find the right words.
“Amanda said, ‘Be with me,’ and then we kissed. I have never been with anybody like that. I didn’t know how to deal, knowing I’d lose her if things didn’t work.
” He swallows. “Amanda would go to Italy anyway, and I didn’t think I’d be enough to keep her interested. ”
I blink. Eric lets out a humorless laugh, but he says nothing.
“It doesn’t take a genius, Mandy,” Val adds.
“I was so focused on figuring out how to go to Italy with her.” His voice isn’t unkind—if anything, it’s protective. He looks at Val. “I thought it was the only way to keep her with me. I was so focused on how—” He trembles.
I’m in awe of Val’s work. Eric’s not like this. He isn’t this vulnerable talker who rolls out his feelings for someone to tell him what to do with them.
“—on how bored she’d end up if all I could do for her was talk about books I was reading. So I begged my useless father to help me. What a fucking joke.”
Val nods slowly. “What did you hope that would accomplish?”
“I felt manic trying to find a way to be with her.” Eric eyes me briefly. “I know you didn’t mean it like that. I know now.” He exhales. “But I couldn’t stop thinking differently that day. I was physically incapable.”
Val leans back. “Why do you think you didn’t reach out to anyone who’d helped you reframe that urgency?”
Eric nods. “There was only one way my head could see not to fuck things up with her. If I couldn’t figure it out. There’s no way I was worth her time. I went to the wrong person.”
She nods. “But why go to him? Why not Amanda’s family or even Diego?”
He shakes his head. “I went to the wrong person.”
“Why go to the wrong person?” Val leads.
I know I should touch him—his hand, his back, anything. But I’m frozen. I’ve never seen him this exposed, not even last Saturday.
Eric continues, unaware of the storm brewing inside me. “I think—” His hands dig into his hair, curling into fists around the strands. I resist the urge to smooth his fingers until he lets go. “I think I wanted someone to confirm I wouldn’t be worth it. Confirm I wasn’t enough for her.”
“Eric,” Val interrupts him. He lifts his eyes to her, avoiding mine.
“You love Amanda.” His breath catches, like he hadn’t expected Val to reveal that.
Something they must have talked about. But I know what Val is doing.
This is collusion exposure. Only, she isn’t targeting Eric.
I’m the one she’s trying to get to confront things now.
“Why would you try to confirm your bias, your self-doubt that you’re not enough for her? ”
There’s a dark smirk that crosses his features.
“That’s what’s pathetic about the whole thing.
” Now, his eyes meet me head-on. “I needed you to placate those fears of mine. I needed you to call or text or anything. You know me. It couldn’t be a shock that I’d drown in insecurity. And when you didn’t—” He swallows.
His eyes don’t leave mine. He’s wrecked. And still—How dare he? How dare he turn it around on me? So, what, I don’t text him for twelve hours? I’m supposed to keep him from fucking someone else? I’m responsible for his dick staying dry?
Val nods, her eyes are on me. And she knows me. She knows I’m fucking fuming and about to lose it. “So, you were mad at Amanda?”
“No,” Eric says. “How could I be? She couldn’t have possibly known I was in crisis.”
Val doesn’t let go, though, and that’s why she’s the best. “You think she should have.”
Eric swallows, then nods.
“You feared she’d abandon you. You went to your father to confirm it, but—”
“I wanted Amanda to check in on me.” He licks his lips. “I held onto this idea that… she’d sense it.”