Possessive Neighbor

I can see in her eyes she’s battling something substantial, and I’m not sure how to get her to tell me what’s on her mind. “It doesn’t have to be okay, Hope. You can be mad. Hell, be pissed. But don’t appease me.”

Her mouth opens and closes a couple of times before her thoughts form, and she speaks. “I’m not. After some time, I figured that what I saw might not have been what was happening.”

“You did?” Now I’m confused.

She nods. “I’m always missing something. Not understanding what I see, even when it’s obvious for everyone around me.” Pulling her hand back, she drops them both in her lap. “I have alexithymia.”

“What’s that?” I ask before she can explain further.

“I was born with it. Doctors said I have some wires crossed in my brain, which, in turn, makes it extremely difficult for me to identify emotions. In others and in myself. And retaining relationships, even friendships, is nearly impossible because I’m always misreading emotional cues.”

And now everything makes sense. I suspected it was something like that, but I had no idea there was a medical explanation.

“I require a lot of reassurance, Reed. I don’t mean to, and I don’t like it, but I’ve had so many people tell me one thing only for them to mean the opposite, and they expect me to understand where the truth lay. I’ve lost plenty of friends because I moved on from a problem unresolved too many times.”

“That sounds really lonely.” I can see the sadness in every line of her body. She may not be able to read emotions, but I can read her, and what I see is disturbing. “So you pulling away, even when you suspected you didn’t read the situation correctly, was you trying to understand what happened?”

“Yes and no.” She blows out a deep breath before answering. “I didn’t answer you because what I saw, what that woman did…my body ached. My chest felt like it was cramping. As if there were a vice slowly tightening, and I didn’t know how to make it stop. I didn’t know that what I was feeling was a broken heart.”

Brushing a hand down my face, I feel like shit. She was going through so much without even knowing how to identify what was happening. I should have pushed harder to see her.

“I’m sorry. So fucking sorry that I hurt you like that.” My voice cracks, and I lean forward, pressing my forehead to hers. “I swear, I’ll never hurt you again. Not ever.”

“I believe you.” She whispers the three sweetest words I never knew I needed to hear.

7

Hope

“How did it go?” Luca’s voice echoes in my car as I drive to the grocery store. Lunch with Reed went far better than I imagined.

“It was good.”

“Did you tell him?” Luca has been on me all morning to explain my secrets to Reed, and he’s right. But I can only confess so much at once.

Sucking in a sharp breath, I prepare for him to give me heck. “I told him about the alexithymia.”

“But not the baby?” he growls.

“No, Luca. Not the baby. I didn’t want to do that in a public place. That’s not an easy thing to tell someone, you know.”

“He needs to know, Hope. The longer you wait, the angrier he’ll be.”

“Are you mad at me?” I shake my head in confusion because Luca didn’t want me to have anything to do with Reed last week.

“No.” He pauses. “I just don’t think it’s fair that either of you gets emotionally invested if this could be the thing to break you up.”

Great. Now I’m nervous again. “You’re right.” I mumble the words as I stop at a red light, trying to brush the tears out of my eyes with my sleeve. “I never should have spoken to him.”

“Hopeless, dammit, that’s not what I meant.”

“But it’s true. Why would he want me with another couple's baby anyways?” The sound of horns blaring catches my attention just in time to glance to the right as an uncontrollable car comes speeding my way. “Luca!” I scream at the impact.

Glass shatters.

Pain explodes in my skull as it hits the window.

“Hope!” I can hear my brother holler through a distance. “Hopeless, talk to me!”