33. Eric #2
I shake him off my shoulders and turn away, facing the flank we just climbed.
I speak to the gravel at my feet. “I’m afraid she’ll—I worry she’ll hate it.
” I walk away from the ledge, toward the wall, and flatten both hands against it.
I tighten my fingers around the jug of the sandstone.
“I-I’ve been having issues.” I exhale and lick my lips. “You know, since she moved.”
I brace for Diego’s crass dig about my performance. About how I deserve it because I hurt his friend.
Instead, gravel shifts behind me until he’s leaning, back to the wall, shoulder next to me, but far enough we don’t touch. “Does she know?”
I nod.
He bumps his shoulder against my wrist, then retreats. “And she’s still here, isn’t she?” When I meet his gaze, his eyes crinkle at the corners. “I bet you it’ll be fine with her.”
I shake my head and look at the plants on the ground, a small ladybug is crawling upward. That’s Diego. Romantic at heart. “That’s just a beautiful thought.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t have the fancy degree. I know both of you.” He places his hand on my stretched elbow. “So trust me on this.” He squeezes then lets go. “Oh,” he says. “I almost forgot. She’s eating pork now.”
“Good.” I nod. “Hey, Diego.”
“Yeah?”
Pulling a folded note from my pocket. “Give her this?”
He takes it and nods, smiling.
Twenty-seven weeks. He’s the size of a cauliflower.
Pick one of those apartments.
There is camaraderie during group sessions now.
When Samir talks about waking in the middle of the night and having to convince himself the whirring above him is a ceiling fan, not helicopter blades, I am proud of him.
When Dania admits she still replays every decision she made that someone else paid for, I feel the weight of her guilt just as much as I do mine.
Speaking up and spilling my truth still feels wrong, but I do it anyway. Amanda has been carrying our child alone for four weeks, and I want to get back to them. And I’m eager. I want to go back to them. There hasn’t been a breakthrough yet—just persistence. So I keep sharing. Again and Again.
I wait out the two-before-you and say, “There’s a reason Amanda and I haven’t been together.
” I pick at the edge of my watchband, tugging it out and inside the loops again.
“I already went into how I slept with someone. And I know I won’t do that again.
” I tap my fingertips against my knees. “But I keep getting stuck on two things.” I glance up at the group leader, then at Samir.
“I’m stuck on what that makes me. Because anyone who’d cheat on her doesn’t deserve her.
And I can’t look past how I’m someone who cheated on her. ”
Dania’s curls bounce as she nods beside me, pursed lips in acknowledgment, not agreement.
“And I carry that choice with me in ways you couldn’t imagine…
like my body knows I should’ve stopped that night, and now it won’t let me forget it.
” I drag my damp palms up and down my jeans.
“I don’t know how to look beyond this thing I did…
to see myself as the man who’s doing the work day in and day out to be with her and that kid. ”
No one blinks. And that’s the thing about being here. No one makes it easy, but no one makes it worse. Out there are people and obstacles that make it worse.
“And here, I can keep them separate, right? I can hold the bad things I’d done, the ways in which I’m lacking—” I stretch my arms out, cupping invisible marbles as if I can truly juggle it all as long as I’m here.
“—and contain them. But outside…” I shake my head and pretend to drop all the balls to the ground.
“What does it look like to have steady hands? So nothing falls, and breaks, smashing into everything else I’m trying to protect? ”
My voice drops.
“I was afraid I would be gone too long. Now… What if I go back before I’m ready? And I…” I swallow and drop my elbows on my knees, head hanging between them. “What if I lose them anyway? Not because I cheat, but because I can’t hold myself together when it matters?”
“Eric,” the group leader, a therapist in his mid-twenties who generally stays quiet but for gently reminding us of the rules.
“There’s no better assurance than commitment to your path.
And commitment here”—he waves his hands around the complex, pointing at the compound past the floor-to-ceiling windows—“is just talk. You prove it by doing it outside, day by day. Every day. Nothing is more life altering than persistence in the little things.”
I swallow and look back down at the carpet between my shoes. Then, there’s just wait time for whoever needs to pick up a turn. That’s it—no resolution or breakthrough. Only a question that lingers behind my sternum, kicking at my ribs. How do I know I’ll stay better outside?
It’s belay time. Kayla is struggling more than usual today, so the group therapist tells her to stay for more reps… and I am her partner today, so I do what I’m told.
I stand anchored at the base of the wall, rope locked around my hand as she climbs.
She moves slowly, making sure to put pressure before settling her full weight, testing.
I give slack when she needs it, and take it back when she wobbles.
It allows her to keep moving at her pace while having a safety system.
Belaying here is controlled dependence, a real-life trial run of both trust and ability to hold yourself alone.
It’s a strange way to force intimacy. She looks down once, her eyes catching mine and glinting with playfulness.
We rappel down, and she sits on the ground. I reach to unclip the rope, but she tugs at it once and pats the space next to her. I sit a foot or two away from here, rope coiled between my fingers. She shifts to face me sideways, her eyes trail down from my eyes to my waist, and then back up.
“What you said yesterday took courage.” Her brown hair shifts with the wind, and I can’t avoid the intrusive thought that the shade’s too light, too honey-like.
I shrug. “Everything everyone says in there takes courage. That’s why we’re here.”
She turns fully, stretching her leg so her knee and thigh take up every inch I’d left between us. “You ever think about what you’d do first when you get out?”
I shift away so we’re not touching. I shake my head.
She smiles, but it’s a measuring one. “You really don’t think about it?”
“It’s all I think about,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t fantasize, though. I do the work to get out of here.
She narrows her eyes at the corner, gaze fixed on mine. “I think about it all the time. What I’ll want. What I’ll need.” She licks her lips. “I want to be touched without fear. I haven’t been touched since…”
Kayla doesn’t need to finish. She went into it during a group session. My stomach twists violently.
Quieter, she adds, “Maybe I don’t need to wait until I’m out?”