Ember
Ican’t tell you what today is, or how long it’s been since Sully left.
Time doesn’t move in here like it does out there.
I sleep at the wrong hours and lie awake at others.
I watch the light move across the ceiling and then watch it go again.
Cassidy sets food down beside me. I eat enough of it to make her stop hovering, and when she’s gone, I leave the rest.
I haven’t left the apartment in who knows how long.
I’ve been working from home, I mean, that’s what I’ve been telling Cassidy.
But honestly, I just seem to stare at a blank screen.
I know that every time Cassidy suggests a walk, going to the office, grabbing dinner downstairs, going to run club, or just an elevator ride down to the lobby, some cold flat feeling washes over and paralyzes me.
Out there is where it happens. Out there, are men and noise and hands you don’t see coming.
In here it’s quiet, in here I can’t hurt anyone, and nothing can hurt me.
Cassidy’s been holding it together on her own for a long time, and I know that’s not fair.
I know she’s carrying the whole business plus me, and I can’t make myself care enough to fix it.
The samples we were so excited about sit in boxes I can’t look at.
Sam’s apartment, the Maine house, all of it belongs to a version of me I can’t reach anymore.
So, when I come out of my room and find all of them sitting in my living room, I know immediately that I’m in trouble. Cassidy, Jo, Collette, and a woman I don’t know, with kind eyes and a notebook on her knee, sitting in the armchair like she’s been invited, because apparently, she has.
“What is this?” I snap.
“Sit down, Em,” Cassidy says gently. “Please.”
I don’t sit down because I’m confused and a little defensive. I choose to stand in the doorway in yesterday’s clothes, with my arms wrapped around myself, and I feel something close to fear.
“This is Dr. Hay,” Cassidy says. “She specializes in trauma. She does home visits, and before you get angry with us, I don’t care, you can be as angry as you want, because we love you too much to keep watching this,” she explains with tears in her eyes.
“I’m fine.” I laugh.
Nobody laughs.
“You’re not fine, babe,” Collette says quietly.
“You haven’t left this apartment,” Jo says.
She’s the one who says the hard things, Jo.
“You haven’t been to work. You’re not eating.
Cassidy hears you crying through the wall, and then you tell her you slept fine.
” She holds my eyes. “We’re not doing this because we’re angry.
We’re doing it because we’re scared. You’re disappearing, Ember.
We can all see it, and we can’t just stand by and let it happen. ”
My throat closes. “I don’t want to talk to a stranger,” I whisper.
“I know,” the woman, Dr. Hay, says. Her voice is even and warm, and it doesn’t push.
“That’s a completely normal thing to feel.
You don’t have to talk to me today at all, if you don’t want to.
But your friends love you very much, and they asked me to come, and I’m already here.
So maybe you can sit down and just chat. ”
I look at Cassidy. She’s crying. Tears are running down her face while she watches me, my best friend, who has held me on the floor of this apartment more times than I can count, who has cleaned up after my nightmares, lied to my mother for me, and carried our whole life on her back while I fell apart.
And something in me, some tiny, exhausted thing, gives up.
“Em.” Cassidy comes over and carefully takes my hand.
“I can’t help you fix this. I’ve tried. I would do anything, you know I would, but this is bigger than me.
It’s bigger than all of us. You got hurt badly.
And you’ve been trying to white-knuckle your way through it alone, and it’s not working.
That’s not weakness, that’s just too big a thing to carry by yourself.
” Her voice cracks. “Please let someone help you. Please, I can’t lose you to this. ”
And there it is.
Lose me.
Because that’s what’s happening, isn’t it?
I’ve been so busy going quiet, going still, making myself small enough that I can’t break anything, that I didn’t notice I was also disappearing.
That every day I sit in this apartment and let the gray close over my head so much so that there’s a little less of me left.
Sully left his home so I could heal. And I haven’t healed, I’ve just gone under.
I think about him, one floor up, checking in with Cassidy because he’s not allowed to check in with me, giving up everything so I could get better, and me repaying it by lying in the dark rotting.
He doesn’t deserve this, and neither does Cassidy.
“Okay.” I hear myself say.
Cassidy goes very still. “Okay?”
“Okay. I’ll sit. I’ll … I’ll try. I don’t know how to do this, but I’ll try.”
Collette makes a small sound and presses her hand to her mouth.
Jo lets out a breath she’s clearly been holding.
And Cassidy pulls me into her arms so hard it knocks the air out of me, and I let her.
Over her shoulder, Dr. Hay gives me a small nod, like this is enough, like showing up is the whole first step.
“That’s all we have to do today,” she says gently. “Just sit, and we’ll start there.”
So, I sit, and for the first time in I-don’t-know-how-long, surrounded by the women who refused to let me vanish, I sit down, and I start, in the smallest possible way, to come back.
Coming back doesn't happen all at once. Nobody tells you that, you think there'll be a moment, a switch, a morning you wake up, and you're you again. It isn't like that. It's slow, and it's ugly, and it's a hundred tiny unglamorous things done over and over until they stop being impossible.
Dr. Hay comes twice a week at first. We don't do anything dramatic.
We just talk, and sometimes we don't even do that.
Sometimes we just sit, and she teaches me stupid little tricks for when the panic comes, like breathe in for four, hold, out for eight, or name five things I can see.
I feel like an idiot doing them. I do them anyway, and they work more than I want to admit.
I start eating properly again. Actual meals, not just enough to get Cassidy off my back. The first time I finish a whole plate she pretends not to notice, which is how I know she notices.
The nightmares don't stop, but they change.
They come less often, and when they come, I wake up in my bed, and I know where I am.
I breathe in for four and out for eight, and I don't scream, and there's no one in the room for me to hurt. He's only one floor up, and I know Cassidy disappears sometimes in the evenings, for an hour here, an hour there. I feel bad that I still don’t have the balls to see him, but I do watch his games, although I don’t wear his jersey.
Cassidy told me one night that he has been suffering with nightmares, too, but after finding out I took a chance with therapy, he’s done the same, talking to the team’s psychologist. I’m glad.
The first time I leave the apartment, Cassidy comes with me, and we don't go far.
Just down in the elevator to the lobby, her arm through mine and my heart going like a drum the whole way down.
I stand in the lobby of my own building, and I don't die.
The doorman says good morning like I'm a normal person and not someone clawing her way back from the bottom of the ocean.
We go straight back up after ten minutes.
It's pathetic, but Cassidy squeezes my hand in the elevator and doesn't say a word about how big it was, which is exactly why it's safe to do it with her.
Next, it's the restaurant downstairs. We get a table, just the two of us, and I sit with my back to the wall so I can see the whole room, which Dr. Hay says is fine, do whatever you need to feel safe.
When the waiter comes, I order a meal, and after a beat, a glass of wine to go with it.
I watch it come, I watch him set it down, and I make myself pick it up and drink it, because I refuse to let that man in Vegas take things from me anymore.
Then it's the office.
I go in for an hour, then half a day, then a full one.
I open the boxes we shoved in the corner, and I go through the samples and the mood boards and slowly, slowly, the part of me that loves this work flickers back to life.
Sam's apartment. The Maine house. Cassidy finds me one afternoon surrounded by fabric, actually working, and she squeals with excitement.
Then run club. I don't run, I walk, and Jo walks with me and doesn't make it a thing. The cold air hurts my lungs, but it feels good to be outside again, almost.
The season continues for the boys. They are deep into the back half now, every game mattering more than the last, and the whole city starts whispering about how far this team might go.
It plays on the TV most nights, and I can watch it without being dragged back to a dark club and a hand at my elbow.
And slowly, one impossible small thing at a time, I start to feel like a person again. Not the person I was before. I don't think she exists anymore. But someone new, someone who breathes in for four and out for eight, someone who is, against all odds, still here.
My brain won't shut up. It's early evening, dinner is cleared away, Cassidy has gone out, and I'm restless, so instead of sitting on the couch and letting it build, I put on leggings, grab my water bottle, and go down to the gym.
There are a few people down there, a guy on the treadmill with his headphones in, a woman stretching in the corner, the hum of the machines and the low music through the speakers.
I get on a bike near the window and start pedaling, letting my head empty out.
And then the door opens, and Sully walks in.
We both stop dead.
For a second, neither of us says anything, and I feel it hit me all at once, how long it's been.
Two whole months since I've laid eyes on him, since he stood in our kitchen and told Cassidy he was leaving, since I stood in that hallway and heard him say it.
Two months of knowing he was one floor above my head and never once going up there.
He looks good, he's got his gym bag over his shoulder and his hair's damp like he's already been swimming, and there's a look on his face I can't read at all.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hi.” My voice squeaks out. “Sorry, I didn't … I didn't know you'd be down here.”
“Neither did I. I mean …” He shifts the bag. “I usually come later.”
And that's it, that's all either of us has. We just look at each other across the gym while the guy on the treadmill thumps away behind us.
My legs start moving as I sit on that bike, and my heart is thumping as he stands there looking at me.
“You look well,” he says, and then winces slightly like he's second-guessed what he said. “I mean it. You look … you seem good, Em.”
“I'm getting there.” I make myself hold his eyes. “Slowly.”
“I’m glad.”
He drops his bag in the corner and jumps on the other bike. I keep pedaling, and neither of us leaves. That's something, I suppose.
“How's the Maine house going?” he asks.
“Good. Winter is making it hard to get out there, so we are working on getting all the fabrics and things sorted and we will probably start working in the spring.”
“Fish has been talking about your ideas, he’s loving them,” he says.
“Thanks. Glad he’s happy.”
The treadmill guy has stopped, and there is nothing but silence behind me. The woman in the corner rolls up her mat and leaves, and that's when I notice it. I'm alone in a quiet gym with a man, waiting for the flinch, the cold to flood my veins.
But it doesn't come.
My heart's going a thousand miles an hour, and it’s not from fear, it’s from the actual workout.
“You've been playing well,” I say before I can stop myself.
He goes very still. “You've been watching.”
“Yeah.” I shrug like it's nothing, like my face isn't going hot. “Course I have.”
I think he's going to say something, but he doesn’t. He just nods, slow. “Thanks, fingers crossed this year is our year.” He focuses on his machine. And that's how it goes for the next half hour, the two of us at opposite ends of a room, throwing the occasional line across it.
When I'm done, I get off the bike, wipe it down, and grab my bottle. I make myself walk past him on the way out because the coward's route would be the other door.
“Night, Sully.”
He smiles. “Night, Em.”
And then, when I'm nearly at the door, he calls out.
“Hey.”
I turn.
“I'm really proud of you,” he says. “That's all.”
My throat closes so fast I can't get a word out, so I just nod and get out of there before he sees my face. I make it into the elevator before the tears come.
I miss him.