Chapter 29
Margot
I thumb through my phone with a hollow sense of detachment, feeling numb and utterly drained.
The porch swing creaks as I give it another slow push, sinking further into the heaviness that has settled in the wake of my panic attack.
The sharp, frantic edge that started it all has long since worn off, replaced by a gray fog that sits on me through the day and an anxious churn that takes over at night.
It just feels... empty.
I glance down at the small potted plant on the side table, a little pothos in a hand-painted clay pot.
Dot had gifted him to me a month back, and I'd been so diligent about him that I'd coaxed out several proud new leaves.
But now he's drooping, looking every bit as wilted as I feel after over a week of neglect. I'd named him Gilbert.
"I'm sorry, Gilbert," I whisper, running a finger over one sad leaf and feeling like crying all over again. I’m letting everyone down.
Isabelle keeps offering to come over and Celeste keeps offering increasingly criminal solutions to the comment section. I love them for it, but I haven't wanted to let anyone see me like this except the porch swing and Gilbert. And Sabrina of course.
I even told Mom on the phone that everything's fine, in the bright voice she's never once thought to question, and I've burned two sick days at Solstice. Sick days. Me. I’ve worked through head colds, a sprained ankle, and one memorable bout of food poisoning during a three-hundred-person wedding.
It probably isn't a badge of honor, being this exhaustively incapable of rest, but it's my default, and not working feels deeply strange.
Carol granted the leave right away, telling me to take the full week off if I needed it, and followed up with a concerned message saying she and Elaine are there for me if I need anything.
Everyone being so kind about it somehow only makes it worse.
Another notification pings against the wood of the side table.
The hockey alerts I added as a form of digital self-flagellation inform me that game seven is only days away.
Cillian and the Renegades have been trading blows with New York all series, three wins apiece now, and it's all narrowed down to one final, brutal match. Whoever takes game seven takes the Cup.
Wanting to be there is an ache I carry around all day, but it wouldn't be fair after the distance I've forced between us. Maybe he's really better off without me, without the constant threat of my anxiety darkening his world.
The porch door slides open behind me. I turn to see Sabrina stepping through with two steaming mugs.
"Hey," she says. "I had a feeling I'd find you out here."
She plops down beside me, hands me a cup of tea, and snuggles up under the blanket I brought out, tucking her cold feet under my leg, the way she has since she was nine.
“Thanks for the tea,” I murmur, grateful for the warmth against my palms.
"Of course." She studies me over the rim of her own cup, her expression uncharacteristically somber. "Have you two been talking?"
"A little. I texted him after the win last night.
Just a 'congratulations' and that I'm starting to feel better.
It's a total lie, but I can't have him worrying right now.
" I trace the rim of the mug, my throat tight.
"He's better off without a front-row seat to my latest meltdown, and playing the distant cheerleader is the only unselfish thing I can do for him. "
"Well, for the record, he texted me too." She sips her tea.
I glance over, my heart doing a little skip. “He texted you?”
She nods. “Asking whether you're sleeping, whether the cheerful texts are real. He’s worried sick, but he didn’t want me to tell you he’d checked in. I think he’s trying to respect your exile, even if he hates it.”
I let out a soft, jagged sigh. “Silly of him to trust one sister not to tell the other.”
She half-grins over at me. “He really should know better since he has so many.”
We sit in a companionable silence for a long while, swinging slowly and watching the sun fade into a bruised purple. Eventually, Sabrina nudges my shoulder.
“Did you call Dr. Bowen?” she asks gently.
“Yep.” I nod. “I’m heading back in next week. So we’ll do the work, adjust the meds if needed since I’m on such a low dose, and maybe I can get my head back above water. But part of me feels like the damage with Cillian is already permanent.”
“It’s not. So stop punishing yourself and let him help you.”
"I don't know how to explain it," I admit, tracing the rim of my mug.
"It's so embarrassing, Sab. Falling apart at all is bad enough, but falling apart now, during the biggest two weeks of his entire life?
He should be thinking about nothing except hockey, and instead he's checking on me through my sister.
Stepping back felt like the one unselfish thing I had left.
Let him focus. Keep the mess where he can't see it. "
"And the real reason?" Sabrina asks, quiet, because she has always known when there's another floor beneath the one I'm showing her.
I stare down into my tea for a long moment.
"He fell in love with a version of me that was functional," I say finally, my voice barely a whisper.
"He's never seen this part of me. And I keep thinking, what if he does?
What if he looks at me mid-spiral and the spark just...
dies?" My throat goes tight. "Maybe the only way to keep him is to never let him see the mess. I know how it sounds, but I can’t get the thought out of my head. "
“You can't predict the future, Margot.” Sabrina sighs. "I can't claim to know what's coming, and Cillian can't either, but for the record, he looks at you like you're the sun and the moon. He even claims to love the way you color-code your pens!"
I laugh softly, the sound feeling foreign after such a long stretch of misery.
"I know that," I say. "He's a wonderful person. It's more that... what if he reacts like Jason did? After the cheating, Jason said it was my fault because being around me was 'too heavy.' And to be fair, I was still learning to manage the anxiety then, so?—"
"Stop. It was never your fault." Sabrina's voice is sharp, cutting through the memory.
"He's an absolute ass for ever suggesting it.
You know what 'heavy' actually was? You working full-time, finishing a degree, and hitting therapy while still making sure he was taken care of.
And he cheated anyway. No version of you, best day or worst, deserves that.
Struggling isn't a reason to betray someone. It's a reason to show up for them."
I nod because I know she's right, intellectually at least. I'd say the same thing to a friend and mean it. It's the believing-it-about-myself part that's never taken.
“Ugh, why did this have to happen now.” I stare into the shadows, sipping the lukewarm tea. "Like I couldn't have had some breakdown in a past relationship about them leaving? The idea of one of them leaving me never fucking sent me into a spiral."
"Because you didn't care about them nearly as much," Sabrina says simply, and I turn to look at her. "You liked those guys, sure, but with Cillian you're actually all in. So the stakes are higher, and it freaked you out."
"You're right," I say with a long, weary sigh. Being apart from him feels like part of my soul has been torn out, which only makes the idea of him ever leaving me that much more terrifying.
I can't keep the tears back anymore, a few finally tracking down my cheeks despite every effort to stay composed, and I reach up to brush them away.
A crushing sense of desolation has taken hold.
Barely a month ago I was happier than I ever dared to dream, and now the old poison has seeped back in, as if it were always lying in wait for the moment I finally let my guard down.
“You know, I'm here for you too.” Sabrina reaches out to squeeze my hand, her expression going uncharacteristically soft. "I know I can be flighty, and I lose my keys all the time, and lord knows I should be making my own lunches by now, but I'm always in your corner. No matter what."
"I know you are." I sniffle and manage a weak, watery smile. "You're the best sister I could ask for."
"Ride or dies, always." She squeezes my fingers.
"Ugh, sorry I'm such a mess." I swipe at my nose with the back of my hand, letting out a shaky, jagged breath. "How did you end up so chill? I never understood how we grew up in the same house and I'm a bundle of anxious nerves while you're so relaxed all the time."
She smiles, a slow look that's both tender and a little sad. "I had you."
"What?"
"I thought it was obvious." She gives a slow shake of her head.
"It's because I had you. I always knew that if I was scared, or had a heartbreak, or if I just messed up, you were there.
You picked me up from parties, read me stories when I couldn't sleep, you sat with me through the bad grades.
You stood between me and Mom and Dad's whole guilt machine so I could be free of it.
You caught every blow before it ever reached me. "
I can feel the tears starting again, but this time they're different. "That's just being a big sister, Sab."
"No, it isn't," she says, misty-eyed herself now. "But that's why I don't have that anxiety. I grew up inside a world you made feel safe, and you grew up with nobody making one for you. I'm so sorry you didn't have a Margot of your own, because you really deserved one."
I let out a wet, half-choking laugh and pull her into a fierce hug. "I'm really happy with the sister I got, for the record. I love you so much, Sab."
"I love you too," she whispers back against my shoulder.