I dialed her number.
She picked up just as I was about to hang up. “Hullo?”
Jesus C, she sounded like crap. “Rhian?”
“What do you want, Joss? I was sleeping.”
Yeah I could just imagine that she’d spent all her time in bed since James had left. Suddenly I felt angry at her. “I’m calling to tell you, you’re a complete idiot.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Now get on the phone and call James and tell him you made a mistake.”
“Fuck off, Joss. You know better than anyone I’m better off alone. Have you been drinking?”
“No. I’m sitting here while your boyfriend lies crashed out on my couch.”
Her breath hitched. “James is in Edinburgh?”
“Yeah. And he’s heartbroken. And he told me everything. About your parents, about your mom.” I waited for a reply but Rhian had gone deathly silent. “Rhian, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why haven’t you ever spoken about your parents?” she countered.
I blinked back the stinging in my eyes as they landed on the photograph of my family on the bedside table. “Because they died along with my little sister when I was fourteen and there’s nothing else to really say.” I didn’t know if that was true or not. In fact after the panic attacks, I was wondering if not saying anything was the problem. I took a deep breath and told her something I had never told anyone. “When they died, the only person I had was my best friend Dru, and when she died a year later I had no one. I was completely alone. I spent the most impressionable years of my life taking care of me. There’s never been concerned phone calls or people checking in. Maybe there would have been if I’d let them, but I’m used to taking caring of myself and not wanting to rely on anyone else.”
After another moment where the only sound I could hear was the thudding of my heart, Rhian sniffled. “I think that’s the most honest you’ve ever been with me.”
“It’s the most honest I’ve ever been with anyone.”
“You’ve just always been so self-contained. I thought you were okay. I thought you didn’t need anyone to be concerned…”
I settled back on the bed with my own heavy sigh. “The point of this reluctant outpouring of all my crap isn’t to make you feel guilty. I don’t need anyone to be concerned for me. That’s my point. Will that change one day? I don’t know. I’m not asking it to. But Rhian, when you trusted James with all your baggage you decided that day that you were asking someone to be concerned. You were tired of being alone. Will staying with him be hard? Yes. Will fighting your fears every day be difficult? Yes. But how he feels for you… jeez, Rhian… that’s worth it. And telling yourself that it’s okay to run away from him and to be alone just because I’m alone and okay with it, is bullshit. I’m alone because I just am. You’re alone because you made a choice. And it’s the wrong fucking choice.”
“Joss?”
“What?”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been a better friend. You’re not alone.”
Yes I am. “I’m sorry I haven’t been a better friend, either.”
“Is James still there?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t want to be alone. Not when I could have him. God, that sounds so cheesy.”
I shook my head, smiling—the tightness in my chest easing. “Yeah it does sound cheesy. Sometimes the truth is cheesy.”
“I’m going to call him.”
I grinned. “I’ll get off the phone.”
We hung up and I lay there in the dark listening. After twenty minutes I heard my front door creak open and shut.
I found the sitting room empty, the blanket on the couch rolled up. A piece of paper lay across it. A note from James.
I owe you.
I gripped tight to the paper and walked numbly back into my bedroom to stare at the photo of me with my family. If anything these last few weeks had taught me, it was that I obviously – like Rhian – wasn’t over losing them. I had to talk to someone. But unlike Rhian, I didn’t want to talk to anyone who could use that crap against me. My therapist in high school had tried to help me but I’d shut down every time. I was a teenager. I thought I knew best.
But I wasn’t a kid anymore, and I didn’t know best. And if I wanted the panic attacks to stop, I needed to make the call in the morning.
7
“So, Mystery Man is gone?” The voice scared the bejesus out of me and I jumped, the coffee on my teaspoon scattering onto the counter.
I threw Braden a withering look over my shoulder. “Don’t you ever work? Or knock?”
He was slouched against the kitchen doorway, watching me make my morning coffee. “Can I get one?” he nodded to the kettle.
“What do you take?”
“Milk. Two sugars.”
“And here I was expecting you to say black.”
“If anyone is black around here, it’s you.”
I made a face. “Do you want coffee or not?”
He grunted. “Someone’s pleasant in the morning.”