33. Teddy
TEDDY
JANUARY
Istand in the foyer and look around the house with pride. The painters finished yesterday, painting the kitchen walls and cabinets robin’s-egg blue.
It’s one of Indie’s favorite colors. She used to call it Cinderella blue.
I picked out the backsplash: these old vintage tiles with a floral design, mixed in with clean white ones. They remind me so much of something Nana would have, and when I texted Stephanie and Danielle pictures, they responded enthusiastically.
Stephanie
HOLY SHIT.
BUY THEM.
Danielle
INDIE WILL LOVE THEM.
I’M JEALOUS.
I smile, thinking of my sisters and how much our relationship has improved. They’ve been a major part of the design of this house.
While I know what Indie likes, color and design-wise, they've been more than helpful with styling the rooms, choosing furniture, and finding decor that feels like Indie.
She has a bunch of Nana’s furniture, and I feel like those pieces will perfectly fit in this house. I can even fix them up if needed.
But I did get a brand-new mattress and a bedframe back in November because the air mattress was killing my back.
I keep assuming that she’ll want this house, and I haven’t even told her about it yet.
I think she assumes I’m in an apartment somewhere in town, and I’m letting her keep that thought because I don’t want to show her this house until it’s done.
Not completely furnished, but with no major projects left.
And I think by next week, by the anniversary of Nana’s death, it will be.
That feels a little kismet.
The last two months since Thanksgiving have been wonderfully chaotic. Indie’s work has really ramped up, and she’s usually exhausted by the time she’s done—mentally and physically.
I’ve even been picking her up from work a few times when she asked, too tired to drive. Sometimes we go out to eat, or we go back to her apartment, where we order takeout and watch movies until she falls asleep. I’ll carry her to her bedroom and tuck her in before I leave.
When I first went to her apartment, when she showed me Nana’s photo album, my heart almost stopped when I saw all the framed drawings leaning against the wall.
She looked like she didn’t want to acknowledge them yet, and I didn’t push. But I walked down to my truck with a lightness in my steps I hadn’t felt in months. Those drawings, the fact that she called me, even if it was just to share those photos, meant everything.
It gave me hope.
She kept all of the drawings throughout Europe.
Every single one.
I had made peace with the fact that she might discard them. Tear them up. Leave them behind in hotel trash cans. Burn them if that helped her feel better. But seeing that she kept them, that she framed them, even while she was nursing the heart I broke, made me fall even more for her.
Indie is a balanced person. She’s good at compartmentalizing her emotions.
As a doctor, she’s able to separate her own feelings and see a situation from all angles.
That’s why she was so understanding of the enmeshment with my mother, why she could see why I hurt her even while still holding me accountable for it.
But she’s also Indie, a human.
She can be petty. She wants things done a certain way. She has a short temper that can flare up when she becomes overwhelmed or overstimulated. She can hold a grudge. She can be hesitant to forgive.
All of these things make up Indie.
And I accept her as she is, and I love every single atom in her body.
The way we’re finding our way back to each other, a slow, steady process, feels healing.
And for the first time in years, the holidays didn’t feel like walking through a minefield. There were no tense dinners, no carefully measured words, no waiting for my mother to find something wrong and ruin the entire day. It was just… peaceful.
On Christmas, Indie and I shared popcorn and sour candy while we watched old Christmas movies on her couch.
It was perfect.
We even FaceTimed my sisters, who sent their well wishes to Indie, thanked her for the souvenirs she sent them from the vacation, and asked how the job was.
It felt so nice to fall back into a routine with Indie.
I’ll come over on her days off, and she’ll cook, or I’ll cook, and we’ll sit on her couch watching movies like we used to.
We’ll go grocery shopping together. If she needs to get something from the storage unit, we’ll use my truck.
Indie can make the innocuous tasks and chores feel like a treat.
And it’s because we’re together.
Not romantically yet, but I think we’re on the verge of it. It’s funny. I think we’ve both liked this part so much that stepping back into a romantic sense feels like it might change it. Or even jinx it.
Dr. Meyer thinks I’m ready for a relationship again, if I feel ready, but always cautions patience.
When I asked back in November whether I was just fooling myself into thinking I was the man Indie needs, that I’m still too screwed up for her, or that I am too late, she just looked at me dryly.
“You’re a grown man with agency, Theo. Abused, yes. But not damaged forever. You are healing. You are in therapy, and doing the work,” she then looked at me, concerned. “Are you worried about that moment in Greece? Have feelings of humiliation from that night been bubbling up?”
“No,” I shake my head, not telling her that moment has fueled my masturbation fantasies ever since. “I just worry that I’m… gaslighting myself?”
Dr. Meyer nodded like that question was very fair and even looked a little proud for bringing me to speak it out loud—something I never would have done six months ago.
Something I’ve learned is that growth is slow at first, and then sometimes it just happens all at once like an avalanche.
“Was that situation maybe a little too charged? Yes, I think so. Was Indie operating from her own hurt? Name a human being who hasn’t, and I’ll call bullshit.
But she owned it. She apologized. I think that was important for you.
You would be well within your rights to be hurt or humiliated, but the question is, are you? ”
“No,” I answered without hesitation. “I felt… somehow more in control than I’ve felt in a long time.
I gave her something she needed. I barely did that at all during our relationship.
When my mother would tell me to do things, I felt the urge to disobey.
But I knew it was pointless. With Indie, she told me what to do, and I felt…
safe. Like I could say no at any time. I just didn’t want to say no. I wanted it…”
“And you feel comfortable enforcing protective boundaries now.”
I huffed a sharp laugh at that.
“I always enforced boundaries, I never realized that the only boundaries I consistently enforced in our relationship were the ones protecting my mother and Lily’s feelings at Indie’s expense.
Her feelings were collateral damage to me.
And the most fucked up thing is that Indie actually respected those boundaries,” I shrugged.
“She pushed sometimes—when I needed it, and then backed down when I pushed back harder. I just appeased her with promises I intended to keep, but didn’t.
But she still respected my boundaries after her own had been violated for so long. ”
“I’m glad you’ve realized that,” Dr. Meyer nodded.
“But don’t see this as you deserve to have your barriers trampled on as some tit for tat.
I will caution that if you ever feel humiliated or degraded, you communicate that to Indie—or anyone else.
You are allowed to feel your emotions, just as she is allowed to feel hers.
And when you guys speak about them, and meet each other where you’re at, that’s a healthy relationship. ”
The best thing about working with your hands, whether I’m working on the house or drawing, is that it gives you time to think.
My entire life has been guided by my mother. I was controlled in almost every aspect of my life. Almost, because if it wasn’t for Nana, I would still be living at home under my mother’s control.
Then I met Indie, who had the same kind of freeing, strong presence as my Nana. Then, when I lost Nana, I fell back into my mother’s control.
“Your Nana’s death was like a wound being opened up, exposed to any bacteria or disease. And any time you tried to let it heal, your mother would pick the scab open. What happens to wounds when they’re not allowed to heal?”
“They get infected?”
Dr. Meyer nodded. “Bingo.”
Indie was like an antibiotic to me, but I kept expecting her to cure an infection that I refused to clean. She gave me everything I needed to place boundaries and to heal from my mother.
I realized I was leaving a lot to Indie, making many assumptions, letting her schedule the entirety of the vacation and the Cape May move without contributing much beyond an opinion. Indie needed control in her life, the stability she wasn’t granted as a child, but she also needed support.
My support.
And I didn’t give that to her.
I also realize how cruel it was that I waved these promises in front of her, made her believe in a future, and then backed out at the last minute.
The vacation and the move to New Jersey.
Both things would give me control over my life—distance to gain perspective, freedom from my mother calling, and me running to help with whatever she needed. It would break the veil of the enmeshment, so my mother pulled out her final weapon.
I still can’t even figure out what my plan was when I told Indie I wasn’t coming to New Jersey. And the more I picture it, with the distance from my mother, the more ridiculous it seems—I seem.
Then I realized I was entitled, assuming that Indie would just wait for me.
Do long distance. Adjust to a brand new place on her own and have it all set up nicely for me to move at my speed… which I know now would never have happened.
I would never have come here if I were still under my mother’s thumb.
Indie would have adjusted. She always did. She would have made this place her home while I stayed stuck in Chicago, still pretending I wasn’t scared.
Then she probably would have met a handsome, successful doctor, or maybe a beautiful, successful lawyer. Someone up to her caliber, who would do anything for her because she’s fucking Indie and she’s incredible.
She would call me and rightfully break up with me because it’s hard to be in a relationship with someone nine hundred miles away when you’re carrying most of the weight. I’m honestly lucky she held out for as long as she did.
And I would have had no one to blame but myself.
Indie untethering herself from me and every single moment from then to now was necessary for me to actually grow.
And maybe for Indie to grow too.
Right person, wrong time, Luke said to me on a phone call last week.
And I think that about sums it up.
I needed to become the right person for Indie, and the man my Pop and Nana raised me to be. The one who would fiercely protect his Indie from anything and everything. A man who would set boundaries to protect her, but also to protect himself.
Relationships are give and take, equitable, and I had been a greedy bastard through our relationship.
No more. Never again.
My phone buzzes on the kitchen counter, and I assume that it’s the flooring guys, asking for my thoughts. They finished staining the old hardwood this morning, the guys coming out and almost salivating on the old, but strong oak flooring.
They stained it a dark color that contrasts really well with the blue wall color. I’m very pleased, and I think Indie will be too.
When I grab my phone, I’m pleasantly surprised to see Indie’s name and contact photo—that one of her laughing at that stupid Larry joke in front of the baby capybara.
A moment of joy that I was able to give to her.
It’s my favorite now.
Smiling, I place the phone to my ear, “Hey, Indie—”
“Actually, it’s Mimi,” a smoke-roughed voice comes through the line. “You sound cute. Are you the loverboy?”
“The… what?” I ask, confused.
“The loverboy that’s been making my little chickie giggle all the time,” she says, her Jersey accent strong.
“Uh, I hope so,” I say eagerly, feeling my chest puff out at that, before my blood runs cold. “Wait, why are you calling? Where’s Indie? Is she okay—”
“Oh, yeah, you’re the loverboy, alright,” she snarks, laughing. “Alright, here’s the bad news—Indie is sick. She started running a pretty high fever about halfway through her shift. Poor thing passed clean out around forty minutes ago—”
“Passed out?!” I shout, my boots clomping across the floors as I slap my pockets.
Wallet and keys–where’s my phone—I’m holding my phone—fuck Indie’s hurt.
Indie, Indie, Indie.
My mind is a fragmented mess of panic as I run outside to my truck, realizing I’m not even wearing my coat as the air bites at my skin. “Is she okay?”
“Yes, but the poor thing smacked her damn head on the ground,” she sighs. “Doc is stitching her up now—”
“Stitches?!”
“—and she’s going to be alright, but she’s running a fever, and we've got a lot of immunocompromised folk in this building. Which brings us to the good news—you need to come get her.”
“Tell her I’ll be there in five minutes,” I say, before hanging up.
GPS tells me fifteen minutes, but Indie is hurt and sick, and I’ll tear through hell itself in gasoline boots to get to her. I peel out of the driveway, slamming my foot on the accelerator as I head to Bluewater.
“Hang on, baby.”