He cocked his head. “You thought a girl was tweeting you to take your clothes off?”
“Yes!” Tessa’s mind raced, her heart pounding like a jackhammer, as she recalled the incriminating details of that final conversation.
Take it all off, baby… C’mon. Tweet a nude…
All this time, she’d been worried that Scott would discover her Eric Thorn obsession, but this was so much worse. This was a real guy that she’d been chatting with. She’d flirted with Taylor, however unwittingly. She saw how it must look.
“Scott—”
“Save it. Don’t insult my intelligence.”
He turned to leave the room, and Tessa trailed after him. Her anger had lost its edge, and a new wave of panic swept over her. She had to undo the damage somehow—make Scott understand. She followed him as far as she dared, halting just across the threshold of her bedroom door. For a moment, he paused at the top of the steps with one foot hovering over the edge.
“Scott,” she called after him. “I’m sorry. Please come back. I can explain everything.”
He didn’t even look at her. “I’m out,” he said.
“Wait! Don’t go yet. You know I can’t follow you down there!”
“Good,” his voice called back as he descended. “Don’t follow me, Tessa. Don’t call. Don’t text. Don’t talk to me at all. I hope you and your phone have a nice time together. I got the message loud and clear.”
15
CATASTROPHIZING
Journal Entry #32—September 20, 2016
I’m never going to get better. I feel like I spent the last three months climbing my way out of a deep, dark hole, and I just lost my grip and fell all the way back down to the bottom again. I don’t know if I even want to try anymore.
Tessa’s vision swam as she tried to focus on the handwritten words in her thought journal. She sat listlessly in her beanbag chair, dressed in a pair of rumpled pajamas.
Since the argument with Scott three days ago, she could barely summon the energy to leave her bed. She hadn’t moved a muscle, except to dial Scott’s phone number. He’d finally texted back this evening, but her relief had evaporated the moment she read the message.
Scott: Stop calling. It’s over. Don’t make me change my number.
Tessa felt her eyes welling up again, and she swiped an angry hand across her lids. To hell with Scott. As if she were some kind of pathetic stalker who couldn’t take a hint…
At least his message had shaken her out of her lethargy enough to pick up her journal. She had to keep writing, she told herself. Keep going. It didn’t even matter what it said. Just fill up one page so she had something to show for herself at the next therapy session.
She hunched forward in the beanbag, shoulders slumped, as she put her pen back to the paper.
I could’ve dealt with losing Taylor, or even losing Scott. But both of them? In the space of a day? How do I bounce back from that? There’s nothing left. It’s hopeless.
Tessa closed her eyes, trying to channel her inner therapist’s voice. She knew what Dr. Regan would say when she read this entry back. Tessa, do you think it’s possible that you’re catastrophizing?
She remembered when Dr. Regan first explained the concept. Catastrophizing: a form of distorted thinking that made problems seem more insurmountable than they truly were. Was that what she was doing?
Tessa shook her head, and her pen flashed across the page.
It’s not catastrophizing if it’s actually a catastrophe! A real catastrophe. Sometimes horrible things actually happen. I can’t just pretend like they didn’t!
With a shaky breath, Tessa flipped the journal closed. It wasn’t helping. All she felt right now was an overwhelming bitterness. She didn’t know whom she hated most. Scott, for his blithe dismissal? Dr. Regan, for her emotionless reserve? Or Taylor…Taylor, the liar, who brought her whole world crashing down with his oh-so-clever jokes and innuendoes.
She needed a distraction—anything to soothe away the painful ache inside her chest. Her eyes landed on her phone, and Tessa crossed the room to pick it up. Even if she didn’t have a single person in the world who actually cared about her, she still had Eric Thorn.
Tessa plugged in her earphones and pulled up her favorite song. “Talk to me, Eric,” she whispered. “Tell me a secret. Tell me what’s going on with you.”
As if in answer to her request, his soft, smooth tenor voice sang the opening verse of “Aloe Vera.”
We lingered on your terrace.
I drank up all your wine.
You said, “Baby, take your clothes off.
Get rid of those tan lines.”
With a low moan, Tessa pressed her thumb down against the volume button until the music hurt her ears. Eric’s voice pounded inside her skull, too loud to bear for long. But not quite loud enough to drown out the burning anger.
I fell asleep to the sound of your voice
Whispering to me.
But you left me there to blister.
Ran off with the only key.
? ? ?
Taylor @EricThornSucks
@TessaHeartsEric I swear I’m not a bad guy. Talk to me? Please?
Eric sat up in his hotel bed, looking over his recent tweets. He’d been tweeting at Tessa for days with no reply. His account looked utterly dead now.
He banged the back of his head against the headboard.
He knew it was probably hopeless at this point. He should cut his losses. Deactivate the account. Forget she ever existed. And yet he couldn’t quite bring himself to pull the trigger. He’d grown accustomed to their nightly chats—downright dependent on them, apparently. He’d finally found a safe place to vent his worries and frustrations, and she offered more than just a sympathetic ear. She had this sixth sense for telling him whenever he was exaggerating.
No, he thought. Not exaggerating. What was that word she used the other day?
Catastrophizing.
Pretty sure that’s not a word, he’d replied. But it was a word—another psychobabble term he’d looked up afterward on Wikipedia—and she was damned good at catching him whenever he was guilty of the crime.
Now she wanted nothing more to do with him, and he couldn’t shake the sense of loss. Life had felt less bleak these past few weeks. He’d even started smiling again.
Maybe that was why he couldn’t sleep these days. Maybe it was the sinking realization that, without her in his life, he had nothing left to smile about.
Or was he just catastrophizing?
“Come on, Tessa,” he whispered to his phone. “Come back. You can’t really be that mad.”
He started entering another useless tweet:
Taylor @EricThornSucks
@TessaHeartsEric I can’t sleep. I miss talking to you.
He rubbed his eyes wearily, his finger hovering over the Tweet button. What difference did it make, really, whether he sent it or not? He had zero followers. No one would hear him either way.
Eric set the phone back on his nightstand and switched off the lamp.