Chapter 6 #2
“Yes you can,” I assure her, and pull her a little closer.
“Hold on to me all you want, and just follow my lead. Breathe in and out for the count of four. OK? We can do this.” Again, I take a slow, deep breath in through my nose.
One, two, three, four… I hold it and look at her.
She gives me a look filled with desperation, and finally breathes in, a little harder and faster than me.
“Good girl,” I praise her, watching her try to hold it.
She manages, and then breathes out for maybe two, two and a half.
We try again, with me setting the example and her following, doing a little better each time.
I hear some yelling, and then a loud crash and a slam.
It makes her jump and she cringes in my arms, clutching on to me tighter, but I murmur soothingly and get her to refocus on our breathing.
She’s safe with me. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is going to hurt her while I’m around.
I say this aloud to her in as comforting a voice as I am able.
When her breathing settles back down, she dissolves into tears in my arms. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she cries, and I let her cry it out on my shirt.
“It’s OK,” I whisper, slowly rubbing the middle of her back in a circle to try and ground her. I can’t help but enjoy holding her, though obviously I wish it was for a more pleasant reason.
Sadie pokes her head around the door, frowning, and then looking with sympathy and concern when she sees the state Em is in.
“Oh, honey,” she says gently, “don’t cry.
” She walks forward and squeezes her arm.
“He scared you, eh? He’s a nothing. Just a stupid little coked out dipshit. And he’s gone, I promise.”
“I’m so sorry, Sadie” Em sobs, and she clings to me tighter. “I shouldn’t have ditched you with him - ”
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Sadie says firmly and kindly.
“That guy was a dickless wonder. I sorted him. He won’t be coming back, ever.
Lifetime ban on this shithead,” she says, showing me a photo she took on her phone.
White male, tattoos definitely not done by us, wild and angry eyes, didn’t like his photo being taken.
Looks like the asshole he clearly is. I’m glad Sadie was able to handle him without needing to call the police. She can be scary when she needs to be.
“You got it,” I say. After seeing what he did to Emily, if I ever see this guy around, I will grab his hand and break every single finger one by one, leaving plenty of time in between each snap.
“He knocked a plant pot over as he flounced off,” Sadie quips with an eyeroll, “So I’ll go clean that up. Tim’s out there, too, and he said he’d give me a hand.” Tim’s her brother. Nice guy.
“N-no, I should,” Emily mumbles.
Sadie shakes her head and gives Em a kiss on the temple.
“Stay with Eli,” she advises her, “And don’t worry how long you need to take time out.
Even if you need to go home, we can cope for the rest of the day.
There’s, what, an hour left? And I’d rather you had the time you needed to feel better than anything else, and I know everyone would say the same.
” She looks up at me. You got this? She mouths.
I nod briefly.
I’ll cover Reception, she continues, and leaves us alone together in the kitchen.
Emily’s breathing more normally, and her color is looking a bit better, but she’s still very upset. Almost broken.
Dean’s meltdowns are different. Silent, obviously, and with more obvious triggers, like a slammed door (hence why we have slow close doors here, and why I was a little surprised that he banged on my door so hard).
He sweats, hyperventilates, shudders, and kind of bunches in on himself and goes someplace else in his mind, like an army vet seeing a warzone.
Comforting him is more about bringing him back to the here and now and out of the flashback.
Emily’s pain is palpable, and she’s still muttering “I’m sorry” over and over.
“Nothin' to be sorry for,” I assure her. I gently, very gently, guide her chin up. “What happened?”
She takes a deep breath. “That man,” she chokes out in a hoarse voice.
“He wouldn’t stop shouting.” She bites her lip and looks like she’s holding her breath again.
Just as I’m about to start a new external focus exercise with her again, she lets out the breath she was holding in a mirthless huff of laughter.
“I’m sorry, I know this is immature, but I just can’t stand being shouted at.
I can’t stand shouting at all anymore, even when it’s not. ..aimed at me.”
I find myself listening intently. Dean doesn’t really say much when he’s coming down from an episode because his hands shake too much for ages afterwards. So it’s really hard to hear Emily so upset, but I’m glad she’s confiding in me.
“It’s stupid,” she mutters.
“It’s not stupid,” I say gently but firmly. “He frightened you, and that’s not OK that he did that.” Once again, I’d love to get my hands on this fucker.
“Yeah, but this is a pretty extreme reaction from me. Overreaction, really,” she says, and her face crumples again. “Shit. Do you have any tissues?”
There’s kitchen roll behind me, and I give her a handful.
Way too much, really, but at least that makes her smile a little.
She blows her nose delicately and wipes under her eyes, smearing a little of her make-up.
“I’m so sorry about this,” she mumbles, not looking at me. “You must think I’m really weak.”
I lean down to catch her eye. “Not at all,” I tell her firmly. “I definitely don't think that.” She needs to hear this, and I’m happy to tell her the truth.
Pressing her lips together, she looks like she’s deciding if she wants to tell me something.
I wait, not wanting to influence her one way or the other. Maybe she’s like Dean, and needs to get everything out in the open before she can properly deal with it. Or maybe it’s none of my business.
I wish it was.
She looks me in the eye, and seems to see something there.
“It’s because of my ex,” she says in a rush, holding her forehead in her left hand.
“He...shouted at me a lot. And he also...didn’t shout at me, but was still mad at me all the time regardless.
All the time.” Her shoulders hunch, and she holds herself by the elbows, staring at the floor again as she starts to tell me more.
I can feel in my bones that this is gonna be bad.
“It started out with just little things,” she continues.
“Snapping at me for very little. Taking it out on me when he had a bad day at work, which was always, because he hated his job. Then he started disagreeing with everything I said. I couldn’t say or do anything right.
And then I became the butt of all his jokes.
” Her hands are trembling. “I became a nervous wreck because he was such a seething cauldron of rage, and it always seemed to be my fault. Like, if I’d tried harder, or worked harder, or not done whatever it was I had done to annoy him, it wouldn’t have happened.
But the truth was...I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
It took me a long time to realize that. Too long.
” She picks at her thumbnail like a nervous habit.
“To begin with, he was always sorry later. I forgave him every time, of course, because I was so relieved that the latest mood was over and done with, that I just didn’t fuss.
And besides, he had depression, and what kind of awful girlfriend would blame their partner for depressive outbursts?
They can’t help it, right?” She sighs sadly.
“So, yeah, I forgave him, and forgave him, and on and on, and then the apologies stopped. And the insults started. He’d tell me I was lazy, or fat, or boring, or a drag.
..and I believed him. He’d do it a lot when he was drinking.
He was a mean drunk, and he’d get through a bottle of vodka every weekend.
It’s why I don’t like drinking myself, even though he jeered at me for it. Too many bad memories.”
I’m so angry right now that I can’t speak. How the fuck dare he?! I steel my jaw, determined to let her finish. She needs to let this out.
“It got to the stage where I used to wish he’d hit me, so I could have some physical evidence that nobody could deny, just..
.I don’t know, proof that he wasn't the nice guy he pretended to be for everyone else except me. We’d have his friends over, and he’d be the life and soul, and then as soon as they left, he’d be back to normal, moody, and saying as many mean things to me as he could think of.
It’s so easy for people to judge me and say I should have been feistier and not taken any shit, but if he’d hit me, they’d have been sympathetic.
So I wished for that black eye, just so people would support me instead of thinking I was weak for taking it. Isn’t that sick?”
“No, it makes sense,” I reassure her softly.
Too softly. This is the voice that happens when I am burning with acid fury.
I can’t stand the thought of anyone demoralizing Emily, breaking her spirit that way.
She’s one of the best people I’ve ever met, no harm in her at all, and I cannot understand why anyone would want to hurt someone so sweet.
It’s as senseless and brutal as crushing a butterfly in your fist.
Her eyes soften in the desperate relief of being understood.
Suddenly, so much makes sense. The layers of shyness hiding the sunshine of her personality.
How agreeable she makes herself, even happy to keep our Spotify account as it is rather than assert her preferences.
Her panic attack now after being yelled at by some asshole.
I’m so sad for her right now, but I refuse to pity her.
Anyone who went through such shitty treatment from someone who was supposed to love them and still smiles for people. ..that’s a strong woman right there.
And I make myself a promise, here and now, that I will never allow her bastard ex anywhere near her ever again.
If he shows up, I’ll be there, and he won’t get the first word out before I throw his ass out and teach him some god damn manners.
I swear to god, he doesn’t even get to lay eyes on her if I can help it.
“Is that why you moved to Foxton?” I find myself asking.
She nods. “I wanted to get away. In a four and a half year relationship, I stayed three and a half years too long. Three and a half years,” she says tiredly, frustratedly, like she blames herself. “And I only left when I found out he - ” She halts and flicks her eyes to me. “Sorry, I’m waffling.”
“Sounds like you need to talk more than you need waffles.”
She laughs, and I feel all crawly and happy in my gut because I made her smile.
“He cheated on me,” she admits, “shockingly enough.” She shakes her head.
“Found out on my birthday. Apparently it wasn’t ‘actual cheating’, though, because he was just having cybersex with them, and never actually physically touched any of them.
Or so he said.” She giggles again at what I imagine is a starkly incredulous, disgusted look on my face.
Someone cheated on her? Why the fuck… “Oh, and get this: they were his ‘emotional support system’ because I was such an awful girlfriend who couldn’t give him ki-” Her eyes widen.
“Kids,” she falters, as though she’s just realized she revealed too much.
My heart stops at her words, certain I heard her incorrectly, not daring to hope that I didn’t.
There’s silence for a beat, and then she shrugs in defeat. “Well, I certainly blurted that little bit of TMI out, didn’t I,” she says, clearly embarrassed. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have - ”
“Did you just say you...that you…” I shake my head, impatient with myself. “You can’t have kids, either?”
Her eyes widen. “Um… When you say ’either’...?” She asks. I don’t even blink, don’t even move. I can’t. Because if what she said is true, then all bets are off and everything has changed.
Slowly, she nods.
“I can’t have them, and moreover, I don’t want them,” she says, quietly but clearly.
Something inside my chest explodes into fireworks.
“Hard same,” I say slowly, and I’m trying not to smile because that’s kind of poor taste, but I can’t believe my luck.
Holy. Fuck.
We’re in the exact same boat.
I lean back against the counter, in shock.
I never thought this could happen. I never thought I would find a woman who didn’t want children.
I’ve spent so long believing the terrible things Charmaine said when she left that I resigned myself to being alone forever.
I’ve heard friends talk about wanting children in the not too distant future, like it’s a certainty.
I’ve had a couple of women I’ve slept with give me looks of total pity and regret when they mentioned what would happen if the condom broke, and I told them why they didn’t have to worry about taking the morning after pill and that the condom was for common sense reasons rather than birth control.
After finding out that I was unable to father a child, they were never bothered that we’d have a one night only thing, because they immediately disqualified me as any kind of prospect, and I could see it, I could tell.
It all led me to believe one thing: I was a reject, I was defective, and any woman I had anything more than a meaningless fuck with would be making an enormous sacrifice and it was too much to ask. Just like Charmaine said.
And now the woman who has more of an effect on me than any other woman I have met before, the one I’ve been eating my heart out for, has just told me the one thing that frees me from my self-imposed isolation.
The one thing that means I take nothing from her by liking her, ruin nothing for her by pursuing her.
Maybe...just maybe...if she likes you back...
We look and look at each other, and something that feels like hope settles into my chest.