Surge

17

House hunting had servedas a fantastic distraction for the past several days while waiting for the mediation to roll around. It solved my mental issues, but my physical ones were still omnipresent.

The day of reckoning finally arrived, and I dragged my feet through the never-ending reception rooms and corridors at RI. I was as heavy as an innocent man heading to the guillotine. The only thing keeping me from falling over was a comical reel going through my head that the staff around me would soon break out in song and dance like I was just a character out of a modern Les Misérables retake.

This was a strange thought. Loads of them had been crossing my mind lately. Even though I’d felt pretty positive about life—I’d meditated a million times on the fact that Maeve meant more than money, and I had her now—I’d been having the strangest brain fogs. Weird daydreams. Almost hallucinations.

I dreaded the moment I’d see Jay’s face and yet welcomed it at the same time. Maeve didn’t want me like this anymore, and neither did I.

I opened the door of the legal department, immediately greeted by the receptionist. “Hi, Drake! Jacinta told me you’re in the Beacon Hill Suite today.”

I rapped my knuckles on the desk. “Thanks. Everyone else in there?”

“Just Jacinta and Hunter that I know of.”

They’d told me to get here thirty minutes early just to run over everything once more. Apparently, though, in mediation, unlike a court case, the client didn’t usually speak very much so they weren’t too worried about me making mistakes. But neither was I. Only liars worried about things like that. Once I was ready to see and speak the whole truth about my time with Jason Fry as a band member, that part all became less of an issue. It’d been the lies I’d told to cover his ass that I had to train myself out of.

I hadn’t really realized just how much those lies had impacted my memory. Nostalgia was often based on only part truths. And that’s what I’d held a torch for. In my moments of playing Zen music in the background, trying like hell to meditate, I saw more clearly that I’d let my mind’s eye see what it’d wanted to see in Jason Fry. This process had served as therapy. It released me from thinking this shit was somehow my fault.

I no longer thought I’d failed Jason as a friend.

In these moments of stillness, I also concluded it’s okay not to be the hero. For years my hero mentality had come front and center through all of this. I’d never realized I thought myself stronger and harder than everyone around me. That I thought I could take a bullet better than they could; a dagger through the heart would hurt me less. I didn’t think I’d soon get rid of this trait but I sure as hell learned that sometimes you were the fortress wall but sometimes you had to rain down arrows.

I’d only just seen Maeve a few hours ago, when she’d left my apartment to come to this very place. Still, when I peeked over the desktops, her eyes were square on me. She got up and approached me, quick hurried steps but somehow light as a feather. My vision changed while watching her, and the whole thing turned into some movie scene: a couple of bright lights flashed and zoomed across my eyes, and when Maeve spoke, her voice was viscous as if having to travel through honey to get to me.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I nodded. I could tell she wanted to tell me I didn’t look so great, but she stopped herself.

Her fingers swept along the back of my hand, discreetly but full of emotion, and her touch snapped me back into a reality I felt I was slipping away from.

“Babe,” her voice sounded almost distant even though she was right there, “in a couple hours, this will literally be all over. You think I’m a shark? Jacinta is living proof megalodons aren’t extinct. She’ll swallow those guys in one go.”

I managed a light laugh in spite of wondering what the fuck was wrong with me. Then it occurred to me. I was having a full-blown panic attack.

She took my hand fully this time. Now I knew she was really worried because Maeve loved PDA but not in front of colleagues. Holding my hand in here was of epic proportions. She must have read my symptoms as strongly as I felt them. I didn’t think a black man could get so pale as the ashy ass that had stared back at me when I’d shaved in the mirror this morning. If the man in the mirror was what she looked at right now, there was cause to be concerned. He wasn’t exactly a picture of youthful manhood.

“Hey…” She gazed up at me, a kind smile curving her red lips upward. “… I mean it. Tonight, we’ll be at your place with Whole Foods sushi, looking through the Pinterest boards I made for the new house.”

“Now when did you manage to do that?”

She tossed her head back and forth and squeezed one eye shut. “Moving out has been a long time coming. I’ve had them for years. But I’m pretty sure a lot of it is still relevant.”

Something about this tiny moment was a shift for us. Maeve was well and truly out of her shell now. She was letting herself love and be loved. She didn’t hide anything anymore. Not her love. Not her support. Not her dreams, past present, or future. Crazy that I knew all this simply by the confession of a Pinterest board. But it meant a lot. Maeve was in it now. And she knew I was, too.

I smoothed some hair behind her ear. “Man, you’re beautiful.”

Her eyes dropped to the floor.

I lifted her chin. “Hey, don’t do that. You’re beautiful, Fairy. See the truth in my eyes.”

She stared into me with her intense browns.

“Do you see it? I mean it. You. Are. Beautiful.”

She nodded and bit her lip.

“Good. That’s better. You’re a goddess and you gotta own that shit.” I let go of her hand. “Now I gotta go own mine.”