29. Teddy
TEDDY
SEPTEMBER
“Sit.”
Indie points to the chair she had dragged from the corner of her hotel room, and I obey instantly, my ass dropping to the seat with a thunk. I keep my eyes on her, and a brief hint of amusement passes across her face before she flattens her expression.
My fingers dig into my knees.
She looks fucking gorgeous, especially seeing her up close after a month. She’s always been stunning, but there’s something different about her. Less tension in her shoulders, a brightness to her face, and her skin is sun-kissed with freckles dotted across her nose.
She looks… happy, and that makes me happy.
But fuck, I’m close enough to smell her, surrounded by her scent in this hotel room, and it’s the most wonderful torture. I almost dropped to my damn knees in shock when she nodded to follow her, and I almost crawled after her, feeling unworthy.
She chose to speak to me, and after a month of watching her from afar, treating her from afar, and leaving behind the drawings because that was the only way I could communicate within her boundaries, it felt like salvation.
I know it’s just one small step, though, and it’s what she’s owed.
Answers.
The last two weeks have been… some of the hardest I’ve ever gone through in my life. Dr. Meyer has been ramping up our therapy sessions, really digging in deep and making me take a good look at myself in the mirror—metaphorically speaking.
Unfortunately, with the time difference, I’ve been running on very little sleep, combined with how emotionally drained I usually feel after our sessions, and the reckoning of realizing how deeply these issues go has completely emptied my tank. I push through as much as I can.
Indie is worth it.
And I’m worth it too.
That took a while to admit. To let myself believe that just because I treated Indie terribly, I can change and fix things. I don’t have to be defined by past cruelty and mistakes. That I can atone and make things better in my life.
But I have to want to change, not for anyone else, but for me. Indie deserves to be with a whole person, not just someone leaning their mental health on her. She’s a caretaker at work; she doesn’t need to be one at home, too.
Indie walks over to her suitcase and pulls out clothes. She walks—a little unsteady—into the bathroom, and I hear the shower running.
I spend the entire fifteen minutes she’s in the shower trying and failing not to picture her in there, naked and wet.
When she emerges from the bathroom, I still don’t look up. I hear her pull on her clothes, then walk toward me, stopping right in front of me, and I keep my gaze on her feet, her pink-painted toes that look so pretty against her tan skin.
I raise my eyes to hers. Her hair is wet, turning the thin white tank top she’s wearing translucent. She’s wearing small blue sleep shorts.
She looks good enough to eat.
“Now, here’s what’s going to happen,” Indie says, tilting her head and narrowing her eyes. “I am going to ask questions, and you are going to answer them. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I nod.
“Full honesty, Teddy. I don’t care if you think the answer is going to hurt my feelings.”
Squeezing my eyes shut briefly, I open them and meet her eyes, nodding firmly.
“You will not speak unless I ask you something directly. I’ve heard enough for a lifetime, you explaining away your grieving mother, your delicate ex-girlfriend, and your toxic family. I don’t want to hear any more fucking excuses, Teddy. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Indie,” I say, keeping my eyes on hers evenly. “Whatever you want.”
Through the ache of the reminder of how shitty I’ve treated her this past year, I still feel in awe of her strength and courage. I’ve been terrified of change and discomfort my entire life. Indie molded herself into the woman—the doctor—she is today, through change and discomfort.
Dr. Meyer said that Indie and I were an interesting case because we both experienced abuse, but in two different ways, and we dealt with it in two very different ways. Indie was neglected, while I was smothered.
Both are awful.
“Indie had the courage to leave her situation,” I told her, burying my face in my hands.
“God, she was just sixteen, too. Supporting herself. Putting herself through college. I was fucking stupid at sixteen, more concerned with video games, hanging out with my friends, and asking Stacy Chapman to the homecoming dance. I can’t even imagine… ”
Dr. Meyer nodded.
“Survival will usually push people to do what’s necessary. Indie probably measured what was more terrifying for her—leaving and facing the unknown, or staying in a situation that was very toxic with alcoholic parents.”
“And me?” I asked quietly.
“You were bathed in comfort and told that love looks like this,” Dr. Meyer said.
“Despite your Nana trying to show you a different version, a healthier version. It’s interesting because it can really look almost the same.
Your mother’s care can be packaged and presented to look like a doting, loving mother. ”
My mouth twisted in disgust.
It’s like finally getting the right prescription on a pair of glasses. I see everything clearly now. All the careful words my mother used to anchor me to her. Thinly veiled threats of self-harm and abandonment that my mind couldn’t recognize, but my nervous system did.
“But that type of abuse, it’s like a low dose of poison dripping through your system—slowly corrupting you.
And because everything looks pretty on the outside, because you’ve been told this is healthy and normal, you almost start gaslighting yourself—is this really unhealthy?
Am I wrong? No, they’re wrong. They’re the outsider. They’re not us.”
It was an odd feeling—validating and horrifying. I’m not crazy. I’m not wrong for how I felt. But I discovered it too late, and I lost the one person who mattered.
“Families with a bond like that will band together and attack the one who points out the issue.”
Indie saw it. Indie tried to get me to see, and I refused. Worse, I defended it. I defended my mother. I defended my family. I chose them, and I chose wrong.
“The moment I say leave, you leave.”
I nod.
“Speak,” she hisses.
I gulp, heat pooling in my stomach despite myself.
“The moment you want me gone,” I rasp. “I’m gone.”
She stares at me for a long moment before nodding. She’s never been so clipped with me before, even in our small disagreements. She always speaks evenly, firmly if she has to, but Indie believes we can always talk through problems. That’s the doctor in her.
Goddamn. I fucking missed her so much. Every bit of her. Her voice. Her scent. Her presence.
“Refresh my memory, Teddy,” Indie says, scrunching up her face and tilting her head like she can’t remember. “What was it that you said to me? That night. You remember, don’t you?”
I wince as my stomach rolls violently. “I—” my voice breaks clean in half.
“Speak up,” she barks.
I sit up straighter.
And my dick gets harder too.
“You said you would defend me against your family, and I said—”
The words choke me, like they’re refusing to come out, and I push through it. I said them so fucking easily that night.
“I said, ‘And it’s easy to say, but you don’t exactly have a family to test that theory.’”
Indie’s mouth trembles. “So you do remember them.”
“They’re seared into my brain, Indie,” I tell her honestly, swallowing hard. “They’re seared into my soul. I’ll never forget or forgive myself for them. They are my greatest regret.”
Her eyes shimmer. “So, why?”
“Because I felt like a cornered dog. You were calling me out on my bullshit, on things I didn’t want to face.
So I snapped.” I grimace, hating how it sounds like an excuse, and shake my head.
“You were right, Indie. I wanted to come here with you. I wanted to move to New Jersey with you, but… I was scared.”
Her lip curls in irritation, and she tightens the arms across her chest.
“And I would have understood that if you raised concerns about leaving Chicago to me,” she says, her voice hard. “I would have understood cold feet; I would have talked about it with you. We could have found a compromise—that’s all I wanted—I could have rejected Bluewater—”
“I didn’t want that!” I exclaim instantly, shaking my head. “That was your dream—”
“YOU WERE MY DREAM!” she explodes, fists now clenched at her side.
The vein in her forehead from the force of her shouting, the heartbreak in her eyes, the tension in her temples, and the tears pooling in them feel like a million knives stabbing me over and over.
“Baby…” I whisper, my body moving faster than my brain as I reach out to comfort her, because she’s standing in front of me, in pain, and it’s tearing me apart.
“You were my dream, Teddy!” she continues, running her hands through her damp hair and pressing her palms—hard—against her temples.
Her words are delivered through gritted teeth, full of hurt.
“God, you were my dream man. You cared for me, you understood—you—y-you fucking got me, in a way no one else ever did before, or even tried to. I felt like the luckiest woman in the world because I was with you. I…”
She trails off, her chest heaving with the force of her breaths.
“I wanted to marry you. I had it all planned in my head—how it would look, how it would feel. I wanted forever with you,” she finishes, her voice a broken murmur.
Tears pour steadily down my cheeks, salt in my mouth from them, and I force myself to keep my eyes on Indie.
I wish I could reach inside her chest and take it back—the pain I put there—and carry it myself. Because I deserve it, not her.
She’s never done anything but love me, and I… wasn’t strong enough to love her the same. I wasn’t strong enough to choose her, defend her when it mattered.