Chapter 11 #2
“To us, but she hasn’t a clue. I think inside she’s worried that you are rejecting her. So the longer you take to open up and to talk to her about it, the harder it is for her to deal with it.”
“I haven’t opened up because I don’t know what I want to do about it yet.”
“In what way?”
“All this wedding stuff,” he said, with a wave of his hand. “It gets a guy thinking.”
At that, Shane laughed. “It so does. My partner and I have been discussing just that for quite a while,” he admitted, with a smile. “And it’s not the easiest thing to reconcile.”
“No, it isn’t, and I,… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it.”
“Why do you think that there’s anything you need to do?” Shane asked, confused.
He stared at him. “Because I wanted… I’m thinking about asking her to marry me,” he stated point-blank. “However, I’m hardly a good catch.”
At that, Shane sank down at the end of his bed. “I’ve heard that time and time again here, and you are all wrong there,” he murmured. “She spends all her time with you. Doesn’t that tell you something? Doesn’t that show you that she’s interested in you?”
“That’s part of the problem,” he replied. “She and I are friends, good friends. But does she like me more than that? I feel as if I’m jumping the gun. Again it’s all this wedding stuff that puts ideas in a guy’s head.”
Shane burst out laughing. “I get it. I really do get it. As for how she feels about you, you know the best answer is to just talk to her yourself.”
“Yeah, but what if she doesn’t feel the same? I just told you how I feel about not being whole and healthy, and yet I’ve come a long way. Still, I’m not there yet. I might never get there.”
“You’ve come a very long way. You’re up on your own legs.
You’re walking outside daily, even when rehab had you extremely tired.
And you’ll still get a bunch of those days when you leave here, no matter how it works out with Nelly down the road,” Shane pointed out.
“So it does seem as if you’re holding on to a certain amount of worry over all this. ”
He looked at him and asked, “Wouldn’t you be?”
“Yes, I absolutely would be. I absolutely was. However, when you know it’s right, you know it’s right.”
“But when do you know it’s right?” he asked curiously. “I’ve been sitting here, racking my brain about it, wondering how I’m supposed to know if it’s right.”
“Well, if you left Hathaway House tomorrow, and you didn’t have her in your life anymore, how would you feel?”
“Bereft,” he said instantly.
“That’s a good start.”
“But it’s not me that I’m concerned about, it’s her.”
“She’s never shown any interest in anybody else in this place except for you,” Shane shared.
“And I’m a firm believer that, when it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.
So you might want to just analyze a little more how the two of you interact and then get some better idea on her feelings for you.
Personally I think you’re on the right track.
I don’t know if she’s quite ready for a commitment stage, but you won’t know until you ask. ”
“And I could also just hold off and wait a little bit longer.”
“You could, but considering it’s affecting your ability to do your work here, and she seems more and more worried at your continued silence,” Shane noted, “maybe you shouldn’t.”
“Is it affecting me?” He looked at him.
“You’ve been extremely unfocused. I guess that’s a good word for it.
I was coming in to talk to you about it right now, but I saw her leaving, and she didn’t look as if she was doing very well.
So the question is, do I need to separate the two of you, so that you aren’t out of focus all the time and so that she isn’t having a negative impact on you? ”
“That would not be a good idea,” Zander declared bluntly. “And I get that, from your perspective, it probably seems as if she’s the reason I’m not doing all that well, but you would be wrong.”
“Maybe, but you need to prove that to me. I’m not really seeing it yet.”
He stared at Shane. “How does anybody prove that?” he asked, bewildered.
“Show me that she’s not the reason your focus is scattered, for a start,” Shane replied. “And, when we have our session tomorrow, you show up 100 percent and not just at 50.”
He stared at him. “You’re saying that I didn’t even realize that I was slacking?”
“Well, you are slacking,” Shane said bluntly. “And now, if we’ve got that out of the way, I suggest you deal with whatever it is that’s bothering you as much as you can right now. Then tomorrow, when you’re ready, you get down there, and we knock your workout outta the park.”
“Got it,” he muttered.
Long after Shane left, Zander worried on it. The last thing he wanted was for Shane to keep her away from him, thinking that she was having a negative effect on him. He quickly texted Shane. Don’t move her.
Shane replied, We’ll see tomorrow.
Great , Zander muttered to himself. Now there’s no end to the stress that he was putting on himself.
If he hadn’t texted Shane, maybe it wouldn’t have been quite so stressful.
He shook his head at it all. He hadn’t come here for this, and yet, in the back of his mind, he wondered, seriously wondered, if there was any chance of finding somebody in here to help him.
At that, he picked up his phone and contacted Xavier.
When his friend answered the phone, they talked about aimless stuff for the first little bit, and then Zander finally got to the heart of the matter. “I’ve got a problem.”
“Yeah, usually, when you call, you do,” he replied, with a laugh.
He explained about Shane’s ultimatum.
“Ouch, that’s not like you.”
“I know it isn’t, and I did get off track. I didn’t realize how badly people were affected by it because I got myself into another bit of a spot.”
“Tell me more. You know you can always talk to me about anything.”
“Yeah, but it’s not something that I ever really expected to talk to anybody about,” he murmured.
At that, his friend laughed. “Okay, now I’m really curious. So what’s going on?”
He hesitated and then admitted, “It’s Nelly.”
“What about her?” And there was only curiosity in his friend’s voice.
“I think all this wedding stuff is getting to me,” he added quickly. “And it’s a stupid idea.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve had a lot of stupid ideas, and they didn’t rack you up sideways and stop you from sleeping and get you in trouble with your PT therapist,” Xavier shared. “So what’s going on?”
“I really love her,” he murmured. “And I was wondering about asking her to marry me. And I’m putting all that down to all this wedding stuff going on here.”
At that, Xavier whistled. “Dude, nobody would be happier than me if she said yes.”
“I know I can talk to you about anything. I just don’t know that you understand the problem I’m going through right now.”
Xavier snorted. “Seriously? You don’t know if I’ll understand? Remember that I just went through this.”
“Sure, but you did get through it,” Zander pointed out. “I’m not through anything. I’m caught up in the crazy middle part that just makes no sense.”
“And I was there too,” he reminded his friend. “And I can tell you that, as soon as you get to the other side, everything is so much more worthwhile.”
“And what if she says no?”
There was silence on the other end. “Do you think she’ll say no?”
“No. I don’t know. I have no idea how she feels about me,” he shared.
“That’s not true,” Xavier argued. “You wouldn’t even be contemplating what you’re talking to me about if you didn’t think that she returned your feelings.”
“Sure, but I also don’t know that she returns them in the same way.”
“Now that I can see,” he acknowledged, “but still that’s fear and doubt speaking.”
“Sure, none of this is easy. How am I supposed to expect her to want to spend a life with me, when I’m still such a mess?”
“Yeah, I had the same arguments with my partner,” he replied.
“And I can tell you that she got quite angry with me for even thinking along that route. Yet it’s automatic for us to do such a thing because we don’t know how any of this will play out.
And then she asked me that, if she had an accident, would I bail on her? ”
“Of course not,” Zander declared. “And why the heck would we bail when we’re the ones who are the best to guide them through it? We’ve already been there.”
“Exactly,” Xavier noted, “and that was her point. If I wasn’t the guy who would be there for her, then she wasn’t interested. And, when I tried to reassure her that I was, her point was Then why would you insult me by assuming that I wasn’t the person who cared about the trouble you’re in now? ”
“Oh.” Zander sat back in his chair. “I didn’t think of that.”
“No, I didn’t either,” Xavier said. “And you can bet that was quite an eye-opener.”
“You’re quite right,” he murmured. “I absolutely would be the one to stick around and to help her out. Obviously I wouldn’t want to wish this on anybody, but, considering that we do have the skills to deal with this stuff, that would not be a hardship for us.”
“No, it wouldn’t, but it would be a hardship for them,” he stated.
“So I would think seriously about what it is you want out of life, what it is you want out of this new life that you are working on right now, and then how you’re still better off to know, one way or the other, how Nelly feels about all this.
Maybe instead of popping the question, have a discussion with her first. See if marriage is even on the page for her. ”
“Well, it is. We’ve already had some discussions about that in a general sense,” he replied cautiously.
“So then I see this as just more a case of nerves for you.”
“Sure,” he agreed, with a laugh. “It’s always about nerves.”
“And, of course, the last woman you asked to marry you said no.”
“Exactly, and I really don’t want a repeat.”
“Right. That was a very long time ago, and I think you were also three-quarters drunk,” Xavier noted.
“I had to get drunk to get the nerve up,” Zander replied.
“And then you wonder why she said no?” Xavier asked, then laughed.
“I know, but, hey, at least I tried.”
“And that’s the lesson for you right now, is at least you tried back then. And you care so much more right now that you don’t need to get drunk first,” Xavier declared. “I’ll be cheering you on from the sidelines.”
And, with that, his best friend disconnected.