Chapter 14 #2
“How many of the letters are about how much you hated writing them?” Josh asks, flipping through the pages.
“More than half,” I answer honestly.
Josh chuckles. “Fair. I had you pegged as five to six letters, if I’m being honest.”
“One day I got a splinter in my thumb, and another day I burned my dinner.” I pause. “Oh, then there was the day I got a card in the mail from a gold star wife.”
Josh’s gaze whips to mine. “One of yours from the IED in Afghanistan?”
I nod. A gold star wife is the widow of a soldier killed in the line of duty.
I wasn’t lying when I told Ella that I keep in contact with the families of every soldier I’d lost that day.
What I’d left out is that I do that so it’s on my terms. I’m emotionally prepared for it.
I put on my mental armor, ready to go into battle.
When a spouse contacts me, and I’m not expecting it, I go into a spiral.
“What did she say?” Josh asks.
“She wants me to come to her wedding this summer. I knew she was getting remarried. I’m happy for her. Really, I am. But she asked that I give her away, because she doesn’t have anyone else to do it. She said that she thought Stitchum would have wanted me to.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Honestly? I don’t want to. I feel like I’ll be thinking of him the whole fucking time, and it’ll bring up too many memories.
I held his hand as he fucking died, Josh.
Now I’m supposed to smile and give his wife away to someone else?
He loved her so much. Had her picture sewn into his hat.
Talked about her all the time. I know he’d want her to be happy, and he’d never stand in the way of her getting married again.
But, fuck. I don’t want to be there to watch it.
” I rub a hand across my forehead, willing the tears to stay away.
I miss him. I miss all the guys. Lives cut short, for what? Absolutely no fucking reason.
“You’re allowed to feel how you feel, Leo. You’re entitled to say no to this request. You don’t owe her anything.”
“My decision is what cost her her husband,” I snap.
“Not your decision.”
“I pushed us to leave when we did. I could have chosen another route, or asked for more scouts, maybe find whoever planted the IED. So many things I could have done differently.”
“Leo, you could have changed all of those things, and the result may have still been the same. Or, it might have been worse. We can’t play the ‘what if’ game with the events from that day.” Josh’s voice is calm, pleasant even, but it feels like fingernails on a blackboard.
“Or it could have meant everyone survived. Everyone. Do you even know what it’s like to live with that on your conscience?
To know you’re responsible for six guys dying?
” I shout, looking down at Josh. I don’t remember standing up, but my chest heaves as I’m taken back to that day.
“It is my fault. It’ll always be my fault. Nothing you say will ever change that.”
In the worst timing ever, the timer sounds on Josh’s desk, signaling the end of the session. Tilting my head back, I close my eyes, uttering a deep “Fuck.”
“I absolutely despise ending a session like this, Leo. I never want to send someone away when they’re angry.
I want you to go home, thinking about your emotions right now.
Name them. Write down exactly how you feel.
When you’re this angry, how does your body feel?
Does your pulse race or your breathing increase?
Do you feel like you could snap at anyone for just about anything, even if it really isn’t their fault?
Then I want you to write down the opposite emotion.
So if you’re angry, you write jovial. If you’re sad, write down happy.
We’re teaching your brain to rewire itself, Leo.
Every time you feel a new emotion, write it down in your notebook, and we’ll discuss it all next week. ”
After shaking Josh’s hand, thankful he doesn’t comment on how my hand trembles in his, I leave his clinic a bundle of taut nerves.
God, I’m so fucking pissed. I stop by my car, reaching up to grab handfuls of hair.
I pull it hard, hoping the pain helps to ease some of the aching in my heart, but all it seems to do is exacerbate it. I hate this.
I hate that my brain is fucked up.
I hate how my friends are dead.
I hate that my parents walk on eggshells around me.
I hate that the love of my life broke my heart.
I hate that she moved on and got the family I wanted.
I hate her.
But I don’t actually hate her at all. Quite the opposite, which makes me furious. Nodding my head, I unlock my car, jump in, and decide I’m telling Ella exactly what I think.
Thirty minutes later, I’m beating on Ella’s apartment door, consequences be damned.
It’s only as I hear her unlocking the door that I realize the kids may be asleep, and I’m momentarily chagrined.
As Ella opens the door, I find her wearing another one of my old shirts.
It’s an old Eternity Springs High School wrestling shirt, and she probably stole it back then too. It only heightens my fervor.
“Where are the kids?” I blurt out, my breathing ragged and audible. The hallway is hot. Why is it so fucking hot? I whip off my coat, attempting to cool off, and catch the quick glance Ella does as her eyes track down and back up.
“Whitley has them tonight. She said I deserved a break. Are you okay, Leo? Your face is red,” Ella says quietly, studying me in that edifying way she’s always done where I could never tell a lie because she’d home in on it immediately.
Fuck this.
Reaching out, I step into Ella’s apartment, my hand simultaneously cupping her neck, my thumb over her throat, and I feel her swallow harshly.
I feel her quick intake of breath as she steps backward, but I track her.
Slamming the apartment door, I follow her across the room until she’s backed against the wall.
Her pulse beats wildly under my thumb, and her eyes are wide as she waits for me to speak.
“I’m so fucking mad at you, Ella. So mad.
You broke me. I’m fucking broken because of you, God dammit! ”
I watch as her eyes fill with tears, but it doesn’t satisfy me to see her pain or guilt.
It just fuels me even more. “You could have talked to me about things. Why didn’t you trust me enough to be honest?
We’d been together for that long, and you couldn’t even tell me the truth about what you were feeling.
You waited until you broke up with me to admit you’d been struggling.
How can I fix something I don’t know is broken? How fucked up is that?”
“You would have heard what you wanted to hear, Leo,” she states, her voice remarkably clear and strong.
I’m momentarily struck by how proud I am of the woman Ella has become.
She doesn’t get rattled by every little thing, and she holds her head high.
“If you can honestly stand here and tell me that our breakup was out of the blue, and that you had no idea I was struggling, then you’re completely full of it. ”
“I would have done anything for you,” I say passionately. “I would have come home. I swear.”
Ella shakes her head as the tears fall. “And I would have felt awful about that. I wanted you to come home because you wanted to. Not because of me. If I’d asked, and you came home, I knew the guilt I’d feel would be insurmountable. I couldn’t do that.”
“Then why couldn’t you move to be with me?
Why? I’d have dropped everything for you.
It would have been amazing, El. But you wouldn’t even give it a chance,” I say quietly, my own vision blurring.
Leaning my forehead against hers, I align my body so as much of me as possible touches her.
Breathing her in, I whisper, “I don’t know how to un-break me.
I don’t know how to move on from you. And worst of all, I know I don’t want to. ”