“Do you hate me for it?” I ask the smiling, teenage version of my sister, with her red cap in her hand. “Can you forgive me for accepting you’re gone forever so soon?”
Wiping harshly under my eyes, I let the exasperated air leave me in a sharp exhale. “And now I’m going crazy, talking to no one.” I swallow and sniff away the evidence of my slight breakdown before confessing. “Not the person you were in the end, but the real you. Could the real you forgive me?”
As if answering or interrupting me, or maybe hating my confession – I’m not sure which – the old floor creaks. It does that when the seasons change. When the weather moves from bitter cold to warm. The old wood stretches and creaks in the early mornings.
Still, I can’t breathe for the longest time, feeling like someone’s with me.
Any sense of safety has vanished.
I wish Jase were here. It’s my first thought.
Even when he hides from me, I still wish he were here. I’m choosing to stay away and yet, I wish he were here. How ironic is that?
The back and forth is maddening. Be with him, simply because I want to. Or hold my ground because he can’t give me what I’ve given him. Truth and honesty in their rawest form. He makes me feel lower than him, weaker and abandoned. It’s hard to turn a blind eye to that simply because I want his protection and his touch.
It hurts more knowing I went through my darkest times naked in his bed. Bared to him, not hiding this weakness that took me over. He couldn’t even tell me what happened that landed my pathetic ass in jail.
Without a second thought, I snatch my phone off the table and dial a number. Not the one I’ve been thinking about. It’s not the conversation I’ve been having in my head and obsessing about for the last hour.
No. I’m calling someone to get my life back. My life. My rules. My decisions. My happiness.
The phone rings one more time in my ear before I hear a familiar voice.
“There’s only one thing I’ve ever had control over in my entire life, and it’s been taken away from me.”
“Jesus Christ, Bethany. Could you be any more dramatic?” My boss sounds exasperated, annoyed even and that only pisses me off further.
Leaning forward on the couch, I settle my heels into the deep carpet and prepare to say and do anything necessary to get my job back.
“I need this, Aiden,” I say and hate that my throat goes dry. “I can’t sit around thinking about every little detail anymore.”
“Did you take a vacation?” he asks me.
“No.”
“You need to get out of town and relax.” The way he says ‘relax’ feels like a slap in the face. Is that what people do when they’re on leave for bereavement?
“I don’t want to relax; I just want to get back to normalcy.”
“You need to adapt and change. That takes a new perspective.”
Adapt and change. It’s what we tell our patients when they’re struggling. When they no longer fit in with whatever life they had before. When they can’t cope.
“Knock it off,” I say, and my voice is hard. “I’m doing fine. Better than fine,” I lie. It sounds like the truth though. “I need to feel like me, though. You know me, Aiden. You know work is my life.”
“Go take a vacation and I’ll think about it while you’re soaking in the sun.”
“I can’t.” I didn’t realize how much I needed to go back to work until the feeling of loss settles into my chest like cement.
“Well, you can’t come back.”
“Why the hell not? Why can’t I go back to what was?”
“Why can’t things go back? Do you hear yourself, Bethany?”
“Stop it,” I say and the request sounds like a plea. “I’m not your patient.”
“Your leave is mandatory. You aren’t welcome back until the leave is over.”
“My patients are my life.”
“That’s the problem. They shouldn’t be. You need something more.”
“I don’t want something more.” The cement settles in deeper, drying and climbing up to the back of my mouth. It keeps more lies from trickling out.
“I’m looking out for you. Go find it.” The click at the other end of the line makes me fall back onto the sofa, not as angry as I wish I was.
Fuck Aiden. I’ll be back at work soon. I just have to survive until then. I hope I remember this moment for those long nights when I can’t wait for my shift to end.
Swallowing thickly, I consider what he said.
I need something else.
Something more.
A memory forms an answer to the question: what is my “something more?”
Marry me.
My palm feels sweaty as I grip the phone tighter, then let it fall to the cushion next to me.
Marry me. His voice says it differently in my head. Different from the memory where he told me to do so because then I wouldn’t have to testify against him.