His heart twisted in his chest. He wanted to gather her to him, hold her safe and make it all go away, even the memory of it. But he only made his hand gentle on her arm, and kept his voice calm as he asked, “What did you do?”
She reached to ladle some more soup into her bowl. “Took a piece of the glass and tried to cut my fasciotomy scars open. It wasn’t a conscious thought at the time, of course, but later in therapy we talked about how the surgical procedure had been necessary to relieve the pressure building up in my leg. And in a real sense, pressure was building up again in me. My entire body, my entire being was suffering from compartment syndrome. And I tried to release it.” She looked at him. “I didn’t do a good job. It’s harder to cut through scar tissue than you would think. Plus in my line of work, my legs tend to be visible. It wouldn’t be something I could keep secret. So I started just making these little cuts. Like on my lower back or along my waist or stomach. And then I’d…” She put her hand to her head again, laughing a little. “Oh boy.”
“It’s all right.”
“I’d put straight alcohol on the cuts. Or I’d get this lotion—it was anti-itch and it had menthol in it.”
He cringed himself, his face screwing up in imagined pain. “Jesus, you’d put that on your cuts?”
“Yeah. Anything to make them sting. The harder the better. I used vodka once. Salt another time—how about that metaphor?”
“You were feeding the hurt,” he said. “Just like you and I used to do.”
“If I made it sting bad enough I could actually get off on it. It was just a really deranged time. I was in trouble.”
“Did John know this was going on?”
“Well, naturally he found out.” She glanced at him and her face colored behind an apprehensive smile. “I’m sorry. I’m acting like a teenager.”
“It’s all right.”
“I’ll eventually stop blushing when I talk about the other men in my life.” She ran her fingertips beneath her eyes. “It’s just… When there’s no official breakup, it’s hard not to feel every other man is cheat—“
“No,” he said. “No. That was David. And we’ve talked about him. Everything else, everyone else—it was your life after I left. All right?”
Eyes closed, she let her breath out, nodding her head. “Thanks,” she whispered. Her shoulders relaxed. “When John and I started sleeping together, naturally he saw the cuts. And right away he was on it. But in such a supportive, awesome way. He knew how fragile I was, he knew just how to approach it. It sounds dramatic but he saved my life. I started going to a therapist and doing the dirty work.”
“Digging.”
“Digging. Learning how to stop scarring and punishing myself. It all circled back to forgiveness. I had to forgive myself. I couldn’t go anywhere, couldn’t grow or evolve until I did.”
“And is that when you sent me back my stuff?”
She nodded. “My skin healed. The sun came out and it was spring. Things were going really well. I felt better. Felt like myself again. John and I were turning the corner into our relationship. And I still had this box of your stuff. He kind of gave me a soft ultimatum, asked me, ‘When are you going to let go of him?’ And I said, ‘Right now.’ I packed it all up. I called you, just to let the record show I tried one last time.”
“I hung up on you.”
“And I sent it back. And I was fine. I thought I had moved on. Few months passed, I went to Chicago for the Phantom auditions and when I came home, John told me you had called.”
Erik flopped sideways, putting his forehead into the crook of an elbow. “Could that conversation have been any more awkward?”
She laughed. “Frankly, no.”
“I swear. As it dawned on me you were living together, I was just a blithering idiot.”
“When he told me you called I was a blithering idiot,” she said. “To be fair he sprung it on me the second I walked in the door. Hi, honey. Erik called.”