Chapter 37
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
TESS
I looked up at the sound of the knock on my bedroom door. In typical we’re-too-close-for-formalities fashion, Teyana walked in before I invited her and found me sitting on my bed, my back against the headboard.
“Came to check on you. Feeling better after your shower?”
I waffled with my response, trying to find a happy medium between not too morose and honest. Eventually, I settled on, “I don’t know.”
The fact that I’d finished my shower almost half an hour ago and was still wrapped in my towel probably told her as much as she needed to know.
She chuckled. “Sounds about right. Can I get you anything? Tea? Vodka? The ice cream carton?”
“Nah, I’m good.” It suddenly occurred to me that I was on the wrong side of the support system. I was the one who was supposed to be inquiring about her. I hadn’t even asked when I’d arrived home earlier in the evening after my week away, excusing myself to my bedroom as soon as I’d walked in.
“Do you need anything?” I asked, an attempt to step into my usual role. “How are you feeling?”
“I feel fine. The new meds the specialist has me on are already helping, I think.”
“Really? So no nausea? No pain? Any fainting spells?”
“Tess, stop. I’m fine. Let me take care of you for once.”
Normally, I would have protested, but I didn’t have the strength. Funny how exhausting heartbreak was. “Okay. Take care of me.”
“What do you need, baby? Can I get you something to wear?”
“That would be a nice start.” I watched while she got my white terrycloth robe out of my closet, then after she handed it to me, I awkwardly maneuvered from wearing the towel to wearing the robe without showing too many lady bits.
Like a saint, she took my towel from the floor where I’d dropped it and put it in my hamper across the room. “What else do you need?”
That was a loaded question because what I needed, I couldn’t have.
And not having him was physically painful. I imagined this was what it felt like to be a recovering addict, jonesing for another hit of Scott. I’d made it six days sober, ignoring his phone calls and texts, and it didn’t feel like he was any more out of my system now than he’d been when I’d walked out his door Monday night.
“Will you come cuddle with me?” Even to my own ears, I sounded pathetic.
But Teyana didn’t flinch in the slightest. “You bet.”
Less than a handful of seconds later, she was sitting on the bed at my side, her arms wrapped around me, and while I’d gone home to my mother seeking this sort of comfort, this was the first time since breaking up with Scott that I’d felt closer to fine.
She held me like that for a while, letting me weep without trying to make things better with hollow platitudes, which I very much appreciated. In fact, she didn’t talk at all. She just rocked me, and despite my state of despair, I made myself file away the moment for future reference when I wanted to find the perfect way to be a good friend.
I could have stayed like that all night. Definitely could have fallen asleep in that position. But after a while, I really needed a tissue, and particularly after this act of kindness, it didn’t seem polite to drip snot all over her shoulder, so I forced myself to sit up.
Tey reached over and grabbed a Kleenex from the box on my nightstand before I could even ask and handed it to me.
“Thank you.” I dabbed at my eyes and then my nose, then took a deep breath, trying to gain some semblance of humanity.
“Feel better now?”
I did. A little. But it felt like a betrayal to my heartache to admit. So instead, I asked, “Does it ever get better?”
It occurred to me after I’d asked that she legitimately might not have a good frame of reference to be able to give a satisfying answer. I’d known Teyana since college, and in all that time, she’d never had a serious relationship. Flings, yes. Many, many flings. But never anything that she had to recover from when it ended.
“I suppose that wasn’t a fair question,” I said when several silent seconds had passed.
“No, it’s fair. I hope it does. I hope it gets better. But I can’t say that I know for sure.” She sounded as sad as I felt.
God, she was a good friend. Completely on my side. Feeling my feelings with me.
“There’s something to look forward to, though,” she said in afterthought. “Scott’s not going to be engaged to Kendra forever. If you are still feeling this way about him when they finally break up—and believe me, I know it feels like it’s an eternity away, but time will pass. I do know that for certain—that means there is an ending. Eventually. You’ll have him back, and that’s something to look forward to. Isn’t it?”
“I guess.” It really did feel an eternity away. And while part of me knew I’d never stop loving Scott, another part of me hoped I would because I couldn’t imagine surviving like this for more than a few weeks, let alone a year or more.
But even if I did survive that long, I wasn’t sure that everything would be better.
“It’s more than the engagement, Tey. I wish it were just that, because like you said, there’s an end in sight. Well, not necessarily in sight, but there’s an end. Just, that’s not really the problem, not really.”
She gave me her I-have-no-idea-what-you’re-talking-about-please-explain look.
“I mean, yes, him being engaged is a major problem. It doesn’t help that he’s engaged to Kendra, of all people, but it’s the reason why he’s engaged to her.”
“Because of the DRF.”
“Because of his father.” I’d been thinking about this a lot over the last week, trying to figure out whether this was a real problem or one I’d made up, and while I didn’t know if I could fully articulate it, I was pretty sure I’d come to an answer. “Think about it. What it would be like being with him, when his father—who has made it clear he doesn’t like me—has that much power over him? What kind of a life could we ever have together? And okay, I’m not saying we’re going to be together forever, but if that’s not at least a possibility, then there’s no reason to be waiting for him at all, so I have to consider what that would be like. Because Scott’s proven who will win whenever an altercation comes up. He’s proven whose opinion matters most, and it’s not mine. It’s not even his own. So who would I be dating? Scott or the person Scott’s father wants him to be? Is that something I could live with? It probably doesn’t make any sense.”
“Oh, no. It makes perfect sense. And while I can’t say whether or not it’s something you can live with, I can tell you that I couldn’t. I...can’t.”
It was my turn to be confused. “You can’t live with me in that kind of relationship?”
“I can’t live in that kind of relationship. I know that from experience.”
I shifted so I could better stare at her profile without craning my neck. “Teyana, are you holding out on me? Do you have some similar past relationship story that you haven’t shared?”
“Not past. But yeah. Real similar.” She bit her lip and looked up at me, her eyes filled with guilt.
“Hold up. What? You’re currently dating someone that I don’t know about? For how long?” Unless it was someone she’d started dating in the last six days, I was going to be pretty hurt about her withholding.
“Off and on about…” She paused, and I couldn’t decide if she was counting or getting the nerve to say. “Three years.”
Definitely getting the nerve to say.
“Oh my God, what? You’ve had an off-and-on relationship for, uh, basically the whole time you’ve had POTS?—”
“A little after my diagnosis, actually.”
“And you’re only just now telling me?” She certainly knew how to distract me from my misery. “Do I know him?”
“You do. Know her.”
I sat stunned for a beat. Then another. “Okay, uh, what? You’re into women too? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. You know I’ve always been supportive of whomever Kendra was dating, and she’s always gone back and forth, and oh my fucking God.” I knew it without her confirmation. A woman that we both knew, a woman she’d known for at least three years, a woman she would have had a hard time admitting to being with. “You’re in an on-again, off-again relationship with Kendra ?!”
“I know, I know. I should have told you.” She repositioned herself so she was facing me.
“Why the fuck didn’t you?”
“We were afraid of how you’d react. Or that it would complicate your working relationship. Or I don’t know. Our reasons changed all the time, and every time I was about to tell you, we’d end up breaking up, and then there was nothing to tell.”
I was speechless. Not because I didn’t have anything to say, but because I had so much to say and had no idea where to start, and on top of that I had no idea what to feel, and I had a shitload of feelings going on, not the least of which was feeling utterly betrayed.
As always, Teyana seemed to sense my primary emotion. “Tess, I swear, keeping it secret wasn’t about you. Not really.”
“You literally just said it was.” But my mind was racing too fast to stay focused on that detail. “She abandoned you when you got sick, Tey.”
“No, she didn’t. It just seemed like it to you.”
“But you hate her!”
“I don’t.”
“You act like you hate her! You encourage me all the time to hate on her.”
“Because I love her!”
That didn’t make any kind of sense.
Except.
When I gave myself a beat, it did. It made perfect sense. Especially when I remembered that she’d just hinted to being in a relationship where a parent’s opinion mattered too much and what Kendra had said when she’d disappeared the last time, that she was trying to decide between two lovers.
Oh fuck.
And now my heart hurt for Teyana as much as it hurt for Scott because I understood the situation perfectly. “She chose Scott. Over you. Because of her parents?” Her religiously active parents who’d never known about her affairs with women. “Because they’d freak out if she came out with a woman.”
“A black woman with a debilitating disease, no less.”
“Oh, Tey. I’m sorry.”
She waved away my concern, though her eyes were as watery as mine. “You’d think I’d be used to it by now. Every time I’d think we were making progress or that she’d finally say fuck all to her parents and just be with me, they’d come sweeping in with some new...thing. An event they wanted her to host. Or a charity they wanted her to find sponsorship for, and she’d end up saying it wasn’t the right time. So we’d break up. Then I’d miss her, and I’d go running back. Or she would. Wash, rinse, repeat.”
I shook my head, not able to bear the discrimination and manipulation on behalf of my friend. “You’re too good for her. She’s selfish and self-centered.”
“She’s really not. If you knew all the things she’s done for me behind your back?—”
I cut her off, not wanting to hear her defend someone who’d hurt her so deeply. “She’s a coward, at least. Not able to stand up to her parents? She’s a grown woman.”
“Scott’s a coward,” she countered.
“He is,” I admitted. “And I love him anyway. And you love her anyway.”
“Yep.”
It was a lot.
A lot to absorb, a lot to take in. A lot to feel. I was still extremely hurt about being kept in the dark. And mad about, well, a lot of shit. But mostly I was just sad. Sad for all of us. For me and Tey, definitely, but also for Scott and Kendra and the stupid bind their parents had around them.
I reached out and covered her hand with mine. “What are we going to do, Tey?”
“I don’t know.” She squeezed my hand. Then she let go so she could grab the whole box of tissues this time, placing it between us before taking one to wipe her eyes. “I’ve said I was done with her before—a million times—and when she showed up fucking engaged…” She let out a breath. “That was one hundred percent the end. No more. Finished. And then you told me Scott wasn’t going to go through with it, and stupid me. But I got radio silence from her. Until this week. She called, and there I was at her doorstep. This whole time you were away, I spent with her.”
“You did?”
She nodded. “She told me she wasn’t really going to marry him, said she was sorry for even considering it, but that she had to pretend for the DRF, and after that...after that, she promised we could be together. She’ll tell her parents and everything.”
My chest felt like it was being crushed by an elephant. It was familiar. And being on the outside, I could hear what bullshit it was. “And?”
“And I thought of you,” she said. “I thought about how you aren’t putting up with it. And I realized I’m not that strong.”
“That’s not true.”
She ignored me. “But I want to be. I need to be. For my own sake.”
Ugh. I wanted to be supportive. But I also wanted her to be happy. And I wanted to be happy. And I wanted to be with Scott. Which was why I wasn’t capable of telling her not to be with Kendra. Not yet, anyway. Maybe never.
“Maybe we could double date them. They’ll be engaged, and we can pretend we’re together, and then we just always hang out as a foursome.” I wasn’t serious. But it felt good to pretend I was.
“Bet we’d get to go to some damn good parties that way.”
“And the opera.”
“Box seats. We could stare longingly across the theater at each other.”
We laughed. That oh-my-God-it-hurts-so-I-have-to-laugh kind of laugh.
“What are we going to do?” she asked when we weren’t able to find any more of the humor in our situation.
The obvious answer was live in my pajamas, eat lots of ice cream, and play sad Taylor Swift songs on repeat. When it had just been me who was miserable, that had felt like a perfectly fitting agenda.
Now that it was both of us, I was more motivated to find the road out of despair. I cared more about her emotional well-being than my own, it seemed. Or it was easier to see someone else’s pathway than it was to see mine. Or a combination of the two.
“I think,” I said, still searching for the answer. “I think we have to choose ourselves. I mean, we could keep being depressed about it. About not being the one that was chosen. Because it fucking sucks that Kendra is choosing her parents’ opinion over you, and it sucks knowing that Scott chooses to let his parents control his life rather than be with me. I am plenty ready to be glum about that for a long time. But eventually, that’s going to get old, and neither of us wants to let them break us.”
“No, we don’t,” she agreed.
“So I think we have to stop waiting for someone else to choose us, and we have to choose ourselves. We have to choose to love ourselves the most, even if they don’t. We have to choose to want the best for us because relying on someone else to do that for us hasn’t gotten us shit.”
I really didn’t know how much of my speech was for Teyana anymore because now I was really talking to me. I was tired of feeling sorry for myself. I was tired of blaming my issues on my father and my ethnicity and the men I dated and the woman I worked for. There were factors against me, yes, but they didn’t have to define the things I could control. I could change who I dated. I could change my work situation. I could choose to make myself the priority in my own life.
Maybe this was a better way for me to approach my life than the Sebastian expect-it-to-get-it method. At least for right now. Because I wasn’t quite sure the things I’d been wanting to get were the best things for me to have. I needed to make better choices for myself before deciding what to go after.
“I’ve relied on you, and that hasn’t gotten me shit,” Tey said. “But everyone else—you’re right. Like, I have an illness, but if I chose to put myself first and took care of my health preventatively, I bet I’d have fewer POTSie days.”
“And I don’t have to work for Kendra.”
“Don’t think you have to quit because of me. I know you love what Conscience Connect stands for.” She’d spent so much time cajoling me about being loyal to Kendra, it was almost weird to hear her be supportive.
“Thank you. I appreciate that.” Though it didn’t really help me decide what I should do. “I need some more time to think. I’m going to ask K for a leave of absence so I can get all my ducks in a row. I have more vacation time stocked up, and my mother gave me some money when I visited, so that should buy me some time to make a decision that isn’t based in heartache.”
“I like that idea.” She considered for a few seconds. “And I’m going to stick to a healthy sleep schedule and actually do the exercises that my doctor prescribed.”
I followed her gaze to my bedside clock. It was already eleven. When I looked back at her face, she was wincing. “I guess that means I need to head to bed now.”
A good friend would encourage her, I thought.
But a good friend also knew the benefits of a mopey girls’ night.
“We’ll choose ourselves tomorrow,” I said. “Tonight, we choose ice cream.”