29 - Brie
I Am The Problem
~
Brie
I stood outside in the cold, trying to steady myself.
My chest felt heavy, my throat tight. I tried to stifle the tears, but they just kept coming.
It was nothing like the panic attacks I had when I left the city.
This was a dull ache in my heart. I knew I would have to decide before I even came here, and now that it was time to finally make that inevitable choice, I felt torn.
I didn’t mean to get attached to them. I didn’t mean for them to become so attached to me. It all just happened, and I still didn’t know what it meant.
“Are you okay?” Tobias asked.
He stood next to me. His arm moved awkwardly at first, almost around my shoulder, and then back to his side.
“No. You gave me this,” I said, holding up the Christmas ornament. “And it makes me think you want me to stay.”
Tobias held my hand, his fingers locked between mine, and led me down the path. We walked slowly, our clasped hands swinging. I hadn’t realized just how cold it was until we were walking. It almost made it impossible to cry.
“Well, I’m glad you got the message. I do want you to stay. I think we all do,” Tobias said.
I stopped walking and turned to look at him. “And that scares me. I’m terrified. The last time I knew what I wanted was when I started nursing school. I poured my entire being into becoming the best pediatric nurse I could be, and then…”
The words were pouring out of me, and so were the tears. There was nothing I could do. I felt totally out of control of everything I was feeling.
I stood breathless while Tobias waited patiently. His eyes were soft and kind, urging me to go on. To talk to him, make him understand.
“It just took one crisis. One thing I was fully prepared for was death. It happens all the time in hospitals. People come in sick and they either get better or die, but when it happened on my watch, I felt helpless. There was nothing I could have done. No amount of nursing can make a patient’s body accept an organ.
But I couldn’t take it. I ran.” I was babbling, but there was no stopping it once the dam walls had broken.
Letting my thoughts come out just as I thought them, no filter, and Tobias just stood there.
He was actively listening to everything I said, even though I wasn’t sure it made sense.
The more I spoke, the less sure I was that there was even a point to the things I was telling him. But it felt better than silence.
“I came here to get away from the life I had spent years dreaming about. Not just dreaming about it. I made it my entire personality, then gave it all up to come here. I didn’t know what I’d find.
I didn’t plan on staying. Then I fell in love, hopelessly in love with not just one man, but three.
I get meeting the cutest little girl in the world and just loving her, but who falls in love with three men? ”
It was a rhetorical question, but I waited. Staring up at Tobias, wanting him to carefully put every aspect of my life in a neat, labeled box.
“You do,” he smiled, reading me easily. “You are the only woman I’ve ever met who could get three grouchy men who live out in the woods to get away from people to fall so hopelessly in love with you.”
His smile was contagious. I couldn’t help but smile back. Everything was still a mess, but he was standing right there up to his neck in it with me.
“How do I know this is real?” I asked. “I mean, is this even the right thing to do? I told you it was what I wanted: to be free and just do what makes me happy. But is this it?”
Tobias weighed his thoughts. He made the same face Lexi made when she was thinking.
It made me wonder. In the few seconds that felt like hours, I waited for him to say something.
I played out different scenarios in my head.
Maybe he’d say he told me so. He had wanted a simple relationship; it would have been easier to explain, easier to live with, but I wanted more.
Maybe he realized that I was a mess and threatened to ruin his life. Maybe…
I hadn’t finished the thought when Tobias spoke up. “Does it even matter?”
“What?”
“I don’t know what this is either. I don’t know if it will last or what it will look like in the next few months. Hell, in the next few days,” he laughed. “But I know it makes me happy, happier than I’ve been in years. So whatever it costs me in the end, it will be worth it.”
He didn’t have it all figured out, but somehow he was sure. Sure enough to make me sure too.
“It’s complicated, far from traditional. But you’ve somehow reminded me how happy I could be. Lexi is blossoming, and it isn’t just about her education. The guys are happy too, even grouchy old Gideon has started singing in the shower,” Tobias said with a wry chuckle.
I already knew where he was going with this.
In his roundabout way, he was telling me that he needed me.
Not just him… they needed me and wanted me to stay.
The life I had made complicated in my head was starting to look simpler.
I didn’t have to make my life at the cabin make sense in the city if I stayed.
I didn’t have to untangle myself from the non-traditional relationship I had fallen into. I could just stay and be happy.
“Please stay,” he said.
He clasped both my hands in his and just stood there with wide, glassy eyes. I knew where I belonged.
I leaned into him and pressed my lips to his, the stubble on his chin scratching my face.
“Yes. I’ll stay,” I said.
I dabbed at my eyes and left my doubts out in the snow.
When we walked back inside, the cabin was warm and full of laughter. Gunner was reading aloud from the riddle book.
“What do you call a bear with no teeth?” he asked.
“A gummy bear!” Lexi shrieked, doubling over with laughter. “Do you get it, Gideon? A gummy bear!”
They all laughed, wheezing and holding their stomachs. Gideon’s cheeks were even streaked with tears.
I hung my ornament on the tree and caught Gideon’s eye. He nodded knowingly and smiled at me.
I was right where I belonged.
“Okay, now onto the next and arguably the most important new cabin Christmas tradition,” I announced. “We have to clean up and start making Christmas dinner.”
Tobias turned on a Christmas carol playlist, and we all got to work. Gideon cleaned up the kitchen, belting out Silent Night with Lexi accompanying on an overturned bowl she was using as a drum.
Gunner picked up the shreds of wrapping paper strewn around the living room, and Tobias pulled food from the freezer and the pantry, checking them off my ingredient list, and I organized them into meals on the kitchen island. There was no question about it.
I was home.