Therapy Sessions
Qiang’s POV
It takes eighteen measly steps to get from my door to Marcus’s door.
I say measly when it’s really not. It was only like six steps between my door and Qi’s in the house we grew up in.
This house isn’t a beast like Tristan’s, or even Marcus’s, which is not quite as beastly but still big enough to be intimidating.
However, it’s still at least double, if not triple, the size of what I’m used to.
I don’t want to think about how many steps it would take to get from one end of the hall to the other in either of those houses. The eighteen steps in this house are already more than enough. And no, I’m not that ridiculously obsessed.
As amazingly gorgeous, witty, and sweet as Marcus is, I’ve spent more time being mean to him than being nice.
The fact that he’s not only still my friend but also one of my biggest supporters is a miracle in itself.
I cannot even begin to get into the whole labyrinth of feelings, thoughts, and excuses I’m still working through when it comes to thinking of him in any way that would give me the right to obsess over him.
Knowing the number of steps between our doors is simply because of that morning when I felt like I needed to apologize to him after that horrendous, embarrassing fight.
I’m not great at apologizing for anything.
It’s not like I’m the type of person who needs a lot of experience with something like that.
So I may have paced this hallway for a good forty-five minutes, counting steps, from the time I brought the plate full of crepes upstairs to the time I actually knocked on his door.
That’s why I know it’s eighteen steps from my door to his, twelve steps from my bathroom to his bedroom, and six steps from my studio to his door.
While it seems like nothing, it’s a chasm to me; a great divide because I know I need to go over there and knock on his door, and I’m struggling against my pride to do it.
Normally, it’s no issue. It’s usually a ‘hey, do you want to join us for dinner?’ or a ‘hey, want to watch a movie?’ Nothing major, except that one time I had to apologize, and now.
My pride says I can go on my own without a support person. Needing support people is a relatively new thing for me, but so is allowing myself to feel anything at all beyond the apathetic haze I’ve kept myself blanketed in for years.
And Marcus has definitely become one of my emotional support people, along with Qi, Tristan, and Natasha. The thing is, once I started therapy and Marcus stepped back a little bit, we started gravitating around each other more easily.
The change really started about three weeks into therapy when I started to just randomly break down over the most nonsensical reasons.
Once it was seeing the way Tristan loves my brother and getting so overwhelmingly emotional over that, in the best way, of course, but I ended up in tears.
And not quiet tears, but face in hand, ugly sobs, makeup everywhere, tears.
While Qi and Tristan kind of floundered trying to figure out what happened, it was Marcus wrapping his arms around me from behind and just letting me cry it out that eventually calmed me down.
It wasn’t the last time it happened, either, but it bridged a huge gap between us because it showed me how safe a space he really is.
That’s not to say he doesn’t still get flirty sometimes.
I think it’s too naturally a part of his personality for him to not be that way to some extent.
But I’ve also watched him realize he’s taking it too far and bite his lip to stop.
And there are still moments when that flare of heat hits his eyes as we go back and forth, but he keeps that to himself, too.
I know he’s doing that for me, and I’m not always entirely sure that I want him to hold back.
But I know it’s necessary, and really, everything about Marcus and my feelings about him just fucking spins me in circles.
And both helpfully and unhelpfully, knowing he cares enough to set his feelings aside to be there for me has gone and busted a wall down somewhere in my chest because that alarm that used to sound in the back of my head every time we got too close isn’t there anymore.
It’s like my system has finally concluded that he’s safe.
Not that that changes anything. And it might be too late to change it anyway.
Rumors are flying about him and Imani, and most of the time when I see him on campus, Imani is with him.
A lot of that is at practices since she’s a cheerleader and he’s a football player, but they also have classes, and I see them studying together in the library quite frequently. He also sometimes meets her for dinner.
Marcus hasn’t explicitly said he’s dating Imani, and I haven’t asked.
It’s not like I’m in a place where I should be thinking about this stuff anyway.
I pushed him away with my whole chest, in the meanest way possible.
Yeah, I apologized for being mean, but it doesn’t change the fact that I told him to stop.
Now that he has, we’re easier friends, but there’s a visceral ache in my chest that’s existed since then that seems to only grow stronger with time.
Arguably, there could be nothing going on between him and Imani at all.
Not that I should care, but as much as I remind myself of that, I really can’t help but care in the darkest, most private recesses of my mind.
In all fairness, rumors are flying around about him and me, too, and we’re just friends and roommates.
Thing is, I’ve always loved to dance. Not like Qi does, but frat house and club dancefloors are some of my favorite vibes, and Marcus is a good dancer.
Since we’ve gotten more comfortable around each other, we’ve hit the dancefloor at more than one mixer over the last few weeks, and people have started to notice how close we are.
And it only adds fuel to the rumors that I’ve started showing up more often to meet him, Qi, and Tristan after practice because I’ve gotten into the habit of riding to campus with one of them in the morning.
I really don’t like driving if I can avoid it, and with three other people in the house with licenses, getting away with being a passenger princess has been remarkably easy.
So he could be dating her, or they could just be friends.
I don’t know, and I’m not really ready to know, especially since it’s been easier to be around him now than it was before, when my head was such a mess.
And it really is still a mess, but I’ve been dealing, and the ‘breathing easier’ that Tristan had talked about when he pushed me to take this step has started to outweigh the really ‘ugly reliving and facing everything’ that existed at the beginning.
But all of that, or none of that aside, I’m still pacing this stupid hallway because I’m torn between my anxiety and my pride.
I’ve only been in therapy for five weeks, and I’m still unpacking a lot of shit in my head, which is why I’m here.
I know I can drive myself to my appointment, but the anxiety side of me is whimpering and asking if it is really out of line to ask for a little help.
I know Qi felt terrible when he realized he couldn’t drive me today, and the only way I could cheer him up was by promising to ask Marcus to come with me in his stead, but I still have to swallow some serious pride because I hate how weak this makes me look.
Not weak, vulnerable. Grant–my therapist–would be so proud of the internal negative word correction.
Ugh. I’m annoying myself now. Either ask or deal with it on my own. I’ve already worked myself up into a knot, though, so it’s probably a really bad idea to go on my own.
My knuckles barely even brush against the door before it flies open, scaring the living daylights right out of me. The most embarrassing noise I’ve ever made in my life explodes out of my mouth, and my hand flies to my chest to make sure my heart doesn’t beat right out of my skin.
Marcus is standing there with amusement plastered all over his stupidly handsome face, and I’m already ready to call this whole thing off.
He chuckles and shakes his head at me. “I’ve heard you shuffling outside my door for ten minutes now. I was wondering when you’d finally knock.”
I huff. My pride is so viscerally shattered, I swear I can see remnants of it on the floor, maybe some splattered on the walls, ‘cause lord knows I fucking jumped high enough for it.
“If you knew I was out here, then why didn’t you just open the door?” I practically whine. And I say practically because it was accusatory enough to be a whine, but I don’t actually whine, so it doesn’t count as one.
Marcus just stands there with his smug, amused face and shrugs. “Didn’t want to interrupt whatever internal battle you were having.”
I roll my eyes. I don’t know how the hell he irritates me and turns me on at the same time. It pisses me the fuck off sometimes. It’s like he’s playing with me, but then when it counts, he’s really serious and so damn caring. I never know which version of him I’m gonna get.
“For fuck’s sake. You do know you’re irrationally irritating.”
Marcus’s smile spreads across his face with a crack of pure joy that makes my heart beat in my chest for a whole new reason. Someone as irritatingly flirty as Marcus is has no business being this good-looking. It’s just too damn much to contend with.
“Oh no, I’m very rationally irritating. You just think it’s irrational because you refuse to admit that you like it,” he says with a wink.
His comment pulls me up short because somehow I’ve gone from nervous and needy to bristly, irritated, and irrationally turned on. I don’t know how the hell he does that, but he needs to fucking quit it.
“You know what, never mind,” I huff out, and take a step back, my brain screaming to retreat to safety.