Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
HATTIE
“I don’t think it’s that you don’t trust Beck,” Gwen says at our next session—one of our last face-to-face sessions. I’m going home in three days. “I think it’s that you aren’t used to trusting. Period.”
I perk up. Probably for the first time since I talked to Beck on Friday. And, boy, am I putting my therapy into practice.
Beck and I have talked and texted since then, but things are strained.
Beck is angry with me. Beck loves me. Two things can be true.
I have to accept that the way I left hurt him. I’ve damaged our relationship, even though I didn’t mean to.
And he’s right.
I didn’t even try to talk to him. Not before I left. Not for weeks after.
“You mean… because of my parents?” I ask Gwen.
She smiles that even, unflappable non-smile. “What do you think? Do you trust your parents?”
I roll my eyes. “We both know the answer to that.”
“Explain it to me anyway.”
“Well… it’s hard to trust someone when they aren’t okay with you… just being you.”
Gwen nods. “And what about your sister?”
I sigh. “With her… it’s more complicated. I can share things with her that I can’t with my parents. And she usually comes to my defense with them or with Grandma Eloise, but…”
“But what, Hattie?”
“She still has a tendency to keep important things from me. Things she thinks would upset me or that I couldn’t handle.” I shrug. “It feels like being managed. I don't like it. I mean, how am I supposed to really trust her when it’s not a two-way street?”
“I think that’s a fair question. And I think it’s something worth exploring with your sister moving forward.” Gwen crosses her legs and sits back in her chair. She couldn’t look more like a therapist if she took lessons. “Now, what about Beck? Is he okay—as you said—with you just being you?”
I practically shoot out of her couch. “Absolutely!”
From the moment we met, Beck took me just as I am. Never once tried to change me. In fact, now that I think about it, he fully rejected anyone else trying.
“He’s only ever accepted everything about me.”
For a moment, a genuine smile softens Gwen’s eyes. “That’s quite a gift, isn’t it?” she asks. “Being with someone like that.”
A knot balls up in my throat. I nod.
She nods too, and her expression sobers. “So, leaving the way you did, it was like rejecting that gift, wasn’t it?”
It’s like my heart becomes a pin cushion. One of those tomato ones with straight pins and sewing needles jabbed into its flesh.
“Oh, fuck, yeah—” I gasp out with the pain of it. I can’t sit still. “I did. But I told him I fucked up. I told him I was sorry. What else can I do?”
“Remember to breathe,” Gwen prompts gently. “Name what you are feeling right now, Hattie.”
I’m stimming hard core, rocking in my seat. I want to bust out of my skin.
“Like… like if I don’t fix this now, I’ll—just—”
“If isn’t a feeling. Name the feeling.”
I shut my eyes and think of the color-coded emotion charts Gwen gave me. The fire-engine red column.
“Panic!” I nearly shout. And before she can prompt me, I say, “It’s a fucking difficult emotion.”
Gwen nods again. I might even see a spark of pride in her eyes. “What do we do with difficult emotions?”
I inhale a shaky breath. Because this question gives me distance. Not much. But a little distance to observe the panic. To remember that it’s an emotion that will pass, not an emergency I have to escape.
I keep rocking, but I press my feet more firmly to the floor, gaining evidence of where I am. I’m in Gwen’s office at Summit House. Sitting on her couch where I’ve sat practically every other day since I got here last month.
“Observe them,” I finally answer. And as I observe the panic, the color fades from fire-engine red to the burnt orange of alarm.
“What if Beck can’t forgive me? What if it’s over between us?”
“How does that make you feel?” Gwen asks the question like she already knows the answer, and dammit, so do I.
I burst into tears. “H-heartbroken.”
She nods as I sob. “Grief,” she whispers gently.
I go through three and a half tissues observing this grief, realizing it's been there all along. Even the day after Margaret’s wedding when I decided not to tell Beck where I was going. I did it to avoid losing him.
To avoid feeling this bone-deep grief.
And it sucks that this decision may actually lead to me losing him anyway.
“He’s right. I didn’t trust that he’d still love me if he knew where I was going. If he suddenly saw me as someone who needed special help. As someone… incapable.”
I know from our group sessions that I’m not the only one who’s dealt with feelings of inadequacy. Of inferiority. Of feeling like I don’t belong.
And it’s funny, but when you’re in a room full of people who feel the way you have always felt, suddenly—I don’t know—those feelings of inferiority and of not belonging sort of… lose their edge.
Because there are a lot of people like me. And we may be different from the normies, but we aren’t less than.
And on a whole lot of days, we are more than.
More sensitive. More creative. More original.
And a lot funnier.
But that’s beside the point.
Gwen leans forward in her chair, resting her elbows on her knees.
“Hattie… I want you to consider something for a moment. You’ve spent a lot of time worrying about what Beck thinks—and I’m not saying what he thinks doesn’t matter.
How the people close to us feel and how they see us definitely matters.
But what I want you to focus on right now is what you think. ”
I blink my wet lashes. “What do you mean?”
“You were worried about Beck not seeing you the same way—not loving you—if you were someone who, as you said, needed special help.”
I sniffle. “And?”
She pauses for a moment, and I get the sense that she’s about to hit me with a truth bomb.
“Do you love yourself less because you need special help?”
And just like that—
KABOOM!
I shatter into about a million pieces.
Tears. Snot. Mangled tissues. My lungs heave like I’m running an 800-meter dash. I’m sweating and crying at the same time.
Oh God, what the hell is happening to me?
“Yes. There we go,” Gwen whispers gently as I wring myself out on her couch.
“I-I—" I hiccup. “Are—are you s-saying… I let myself down… f-first?” The question comes out as a howl because I don’t even need her to answer.
I see it. Holy fucking God.
I see it.
When Gwen speaks, her voice is so soft, even my sobs downshift. “I’m saying that the relationship you have with yourself comes first.” She pauses, I think, waiting for her words to sink in.
I take a few shaky breaths and sit up straighter. “Go on,” I say, my voice thick with tears.
“I’m saying that it’s only with self-acceptance that we can really embrace the gift of acceptance from others.”
I’ve heard things like this before. Who hasn’t? You have to love yourself first.
But I haven’t had it hit me over the head like a cartoon anvil before.
I started it. The whole This-Part-of-Me-Is-Not-Lovable thing.
“I started it,” I say aloud.
Not Beck.
And, yeah, maybe I inherited that belief. Maybe I absorbed it by osmosis. Maybe I didn’t have a choice.
But I was the one who didn’t love me for me first.
HO-LY SHIT.
Another wave of tears assaults me, but it’s not a violent storm. It’s like the tide coming in, washing away the footprints, the sandcastles, the cracked plastic cups.
It leaves me feeling heavy and knocked down, but with one clear wish.
To wrap myself in a hug. To embrace the part of me I’ve rejected. To forgive the part of me that abandoned myself.
To be whole.
Gwen is a study in patience while I sniffle, blow my nose, and blot my face.
I heave a shaky sigh when the swell passes.
“Wow,” I rasp.
I told Beck I was practicing acceptance. I didn’t know the half of it.
“Yeah,” Gwen says with a knowing nod. She gives me another moment before asking, “And how do you feel right now?”
I huff the ghost of a laugh. “Besides wrung out?”
She grins. “Besides wrung out.”
I draw in a long inhale through my stuffy nose. “Relieved… Calm, I think.”
“And how do you feel about where things stand with Beck?”
The question makes my heart ache, but it’s not the stab of panic. It’s the bruise of longing. I miss him so much.
He said he missed me too, and I believe him.
I believe him. So that must mean we aren’t over.
Right?
“I feel…” I search my mental feelings chart, thinking how closely it resembles the Aurifil thread catalog.
My spicy brain pounces on an idea to print out the Italian threadmaker’s catalogue and replace the color names with emotions. I grin at the thought of that project.
I mentally skim over to the blues—but not the deepest hues. Not depression or despair. Something lighter, but still blue. Like their Lake Como blues.
“A little sorrowful.” Mixed with it is a bit of purple. Their Dusty Blue Violet. “There’s regret there too.”
But that’s not all.
There’s something warm there too. The amber of Beck’s eyes.
The color of hope.
That night, when I call Beck—six o’clock my time, eight o-clock his—he answers on the second ring.
“H—”
“My therapist says I’m not used to being able to trust others, and even though you gave me your full acceptance, which is really the best gift, by not trusting you, I shoved it back in your face—” I blurt out the words in a rush.
“Because how could you accept me when I couldn’t accept myself?
My whole self. The part of me that needs extra help. ”
And here’s the part where my voice breaks because that part of me is still wounded, and Beck’s love is only the second love she wants.
“I can’t change what I did, Beck. But I’m sorry. I know what it means, and I’m working on it. I’m—”
“Hattie—honey—” He interrupts my word vomit. And—thank you, Baby Jesus—I don’t hear the anger that was in his voice two days ago. “H-hold on… I’m—shit—I’m in the middle of something. Can I call you back? Like in an hour?”
I feel like a punctured balloon. An embarrassed, punctured balloon.
“Yeah,” I squeak. “Please call me back.” I hardly have a right to beg, but I beg anyway.
“I will. I promise.” he vows. “As soon as I can.”
He says goodbye, and when the call ends, I’m wishing I’d told him I love him.
Because all of me does.
I set down my phone and pace around my room. Which is hard to do because it’s smaller than my room at home, but no less cluttered with my clothes and bags from Viv Couture.
I grab the newest one. The one I brought back yesterday with the two yards of saguaro chambray.
I’m making Beck a long-sleeved button down using one of Vivian’s original patterns. It has cuffs. I’ve never done cuffs, but I imagine they’ve got to be fairly similar to collars. A lot of turning out and pressing, corner clipping, and button-holing.
And this is the project that saves me from my restlessness.
I’ve got the paper pieces cut out thirty minutes later when Beck calls back. I trip over a pair of shoes and nearly face plant attempting to reach my phone.
“H-hello?” I probably sound crazed. I am a little crazed.
“Hattie? You okay?” Beck sounds tired.
“Yeah. I’m fine. I was just hurrying to get to my phone and I—” I debate telling him about the tripping and the shoes but then just go for it. “I almost ate dirt trying to answer.”
I hear the rasp of his chuckle. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” He heaves a sigh. “I was talking to Pop and my uncle.”
I instantly scowl. “The one who wants to sell you out?”
“The very same.” He sounds hollowed out.
Ugh.
A new wave of regret swamps me. Because as I was hiding from him, I was also missing out on his life. Leaving him to face his problems alone when I could’ve been there for him.
When I could have been his girlfriend doing comforting girlfriend things.
“Beck, I’m so sorry. For so many things. For letting you down.” I’m talking fast, trying to get everything out. Trying to make him understand. “I love you. So much. I’ve missed you so much. Please. Tell me how you are. Are you okay?”
I hear him blow out a choppy breath. Something between a laugh and a groan. “Um… God… Well… hearing those words from you definitely helps.”
He sounds so tired. Raw. Worn out. I want to reach through the phone and wrap him up in a hug.
“What’s going on? With you? With the farm?”
Another groan. “I… might sell.”
My breath is snatched away.
“What?”
He can’t be serious.
Beck can’t sell his farm. He loves his farm.
“But you’re a farmer—” I blurt. “You can’t be a farmer without a farm!”
His chuckle actually sounds sad. “Yeah, that’s true. But if I sell, Pop will have security, and it’ll leave me with some options.”
I snort. “Are any of them options you want?”
I can hear the sad smile in his voice. “You always cut right through the bullshit, don’t you, Hattie?”
I don’t miss a beat. “Except when it’s my own bullshit. Then I just avoid. Play dead. Run away… I’m trying to be better about that.”
“I sure as hell hope you’re done running. From me.”
“Yes. I promise. I swear on my Singer,” I vow. “I won’t ever run away from you again… But say more words about the farm. When I left, you said you’d never sell… What changed?”
He groans, and he sounds so tired, my heart literally hurts for him. “It’s complicated.”
My spine stiffens. “I’m a business major. I can handle it.”
He sniffs. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’ve been over everything I can think of about a dozen times.
All the options I have, and none of them are great.
And if I can’t buy Paul out, then the best option is to sell the whole thing to Steadman Farms. Then Pop gets to keep his home, he has plenty of money for the rest of his days, and I at least have a job working for them. ”
He’s shared this outcome with me before, and he hated the idea back then. I hate it now.
I wrinkle my nose. “But then it’s not yours.”
“Then it’s not mine,” he says, and I can hear what it costs him.
“Fuckballs,” I mutter.
His chuckle is more like a wheeze. “God, I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” I gush in a hurry. “I still miss you.”
He goes silent for a moment. I do too because I’m still thinking about the impossible outcome of Beck losing his farm. He can’t lose his farm. There has to be another—
“When are you coming home?” The question startles me because for the first time since I picked up the phone, I hear hunger in his voice.
“Friday.”
“What time? I want to be the one to pick you up from the airport.”
My heart does a little jumping jack. “You do?!”
“Hell, yes, I do.”
I bite my bottom lip. “You’re not still angry with me?”
Beck makes a kind of strangled growl. “Hattie… I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t still pissed… hurt… whatever. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see you.” His voice is rough with emotion. “I’d sell a kidney to see you.”
The heart in my chest pounds like I’ve been running. Suddenly, Friday is too fucking far away.
“Let me check with the airline. Maybe I can fly home Thursday instead.”