“I don’t think you’re putting yourself second because of anyone but yourself,” he said. “You’re afraid that you could feel something for me, and that terrifies you.”
“Feeling is overrated, remember? I don’t feel things for people, Snake. And I don’t need you to feel anything for me. And I definitely don’t need you telling Carla that I make you feel long-term, because it’s never going to work.”
“Never going to work because of the baby?”
“Never going to work because you and I are toxic. I learned that from a bottle of Zoloft, weeks of therapy, and a doctor who prescribes me pills every month. And if you think we’re stable enough to make something work, especially with you having a baby, you’re even stupider than depression.”
He looked at the ground and didn’t look up again. I’d succeeded in hurting the feelings he esteemed so highly. And it wasn’t even that I meant to; it was that I didn’t want him to make this harder. Despite everything, he always hoped and believed and trusted, and I just . . . didn’t. I couldn’t.
“I better change,” he said, undoing the buttons on his jacket.
He disappeared into the fitting room without another word.
I called Snake later that night, prepared to mend whatever it was that I’d broken at the store. Unsurprisingly, he ignored all three calls. Texts, too. I’d struck him somewhere that did a lot of damage, and while it was more than a little vindicating, it mainly hurt like crazy.
I knew it was stupid to fall into a depressive state over a few dodged calls, but I wasn’t exactly the master of my depression. So I stopped trying to dominate my uncontrollable insides and let myself go. I cried. I blew my nose into a school permission slip on my nightstand because I mistook it for a tissue. I swallowed my Zoloft.
And then I thought about how alone I was. And how painful the mere act of breathing could be. And what it meant to be whole, because I always felt more like a million origami shreds glued around an inflated balloon. And if I would ever be stupid enough to be happy. And if people would stop being people and be permanent instead.
I reached for my phone again, dialing the number I knew by instinct. The number that wouldn’t change. The number that would be immortalized inside my head, regardless of what could never physically or otherwise exist on the other end of the line.
This number is no longer—?
“I miss you.”
—?in service.
Chapter Fourteen
MY MUCH-NEEDED THERAPY SESSION WAS RESCHEDULED for Tuesday. When I arrived, Dr. Rachelle bent forward in her chair, paying me what I labeled her creepily undivided attention. I had a tissue in my hand even though I wasn’t crying, because she insisted I be ready. I didn’t think I could produce any more tears after the debacle from the night before.
“It looks like you’ve had a rough day,” she said, invoking her killer instincts (see: common sense).
“It’s me. Your expectations should be pretty low by now.”
“My only expectation is that you be genuine. That’s what counts.”
“I don’t feel like being genuine.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I have no one!” I yelled, surprising myself.
She slid on her horn-rimmed glasses, something she always did when she predicted that our session was about to get real.
I wrung my hands, buzzing through past phone calls, through robotic voices that wouldn’t, couldn’t, humanize. “You know how many times I’ve called her since she’s been gone?” I asked.
“Who?”
“One hundred sixty-two,” I said. She studied me long, not keeping up. “I’ve called her one hundred and sixty-two times. And you know how many times she’s answered?”
A recognition sparked in her eyes. “Ah.”
“Never. She’s never answered me, not once. Because she can’t. She can’t come back, even if she wanted to. She’s gone for good, right? That’s what you said the first time I came to you. That I had to accept that she was gone for good so I could learn to grieve.”
Dr. Rachelle waited for me to keep going, to cry and fit and rage. But I didn’t see the need. And I wasn’t sure I had the strength. “But you didn’t fully grieve, did you? Calling a canceled line one hundred sixty-two times doesn’t sound like someone who’s moved on.”
I tugged at my sleeves and looked everywhere but her face. I knew what she was doing without having to watch. She was cocking her head, squinting her eyes just a little. Sometimes, it was all too predictable. “How am I supposed to move on when the only person I trusted after that screwed me over? Oh, and left. Left and screwed me over.”
“Alex,” she said. “Say his name. Say both their names.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You don’t want to because it’s uncomfortable and hits at all of your triggers, but that’s the only way to confront grief. Grief doesn’t digest. You have to feel it until it passes through.”
Dr. Rachelle was always good for a metaphor. Unfortunately, she was right about this one. As much as I wanted to disregard her advice, she was right about most things. Plus, she was the only person I could be open with who wasn’t allowed to fight back or tell me that I was wrong. I didn’t want to hear someone talk; I wanted someone to hear me talk. And to listen—?and pretend to care, useless or not.
“Alex.” I held my breath for ten seconds, then let it out. Another method Dr. Rachelle had taught me. “Bree.”
“Alex. Bree,” she repeated, inching her chair closer. “What does that trigger in you?”
“Disappointment. Heartbreak. Sadness.”
Talking about my emotions was easy as long as I pretended they were filler words. If I replaced them with something else, they had no meaning at all.
“I think you’re forgetting one that’s very central to who you are,” she added.
I knew what she was going for. It was another word I pretended was empty. A word that ironically was empty when I considered it.
Loneliness.
There was nothing more frightening to talk about. Not because I never felt it, but because I felt it too much. It was sacred to me. Loneliness was like my own imaginary friend; the more I acknowledged her existence, the more real she became. Losing people, having nothing, it was all a matter of the mind until I made it tangible. Until I acknowledged that it was there.
“The loneliness is my own fault,” I told her, scanning her brown eyes for a reaction. I got only a blank, waiting stare. “I would have never been this miserable if I hadn’t let myself care so much. When I lost them, it gutted me. And I can’t let that happen again. I’ll take the void and the Zoloft and the three stages over having to go back there.”