At the sound of her voice, Finn’s body pulled out of the car, looking over at her.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
He didn’t mean at the moment. Seeing as we were in the middle of the day. He meant that he had been struggling to sleep every single night since he’d first seen the disaster area.
Honestly, he’d shown a miracle amount of self control in holding off this long. Clearly, it had been eating at him until he couldn’t take it anymore.
Now, it could be somewhat shocking when you found that Finn had broken into your home–or car–and cleaned the hell out of it. It wasn’t even unusual to feel upset, judged, or invaded upon.
That said, though, this was Gemma we were talking about, someone who was soft and gentle with people, with their individual issues.
“Oh, that sucks,” she told him. “But thank you so much for channeling it into helping me with this mess. I know it had to be a lot of work.”
“I like the work,” Finn assured her.
It was nothing but the truth. When shit was getting to Finn, when his head was an ugly place, the only thing that helped was throwing himself into a cleaning project.
Sometimes, he lucked out in that there was a job to handle, something that required laser focus to make sure he got every little bit of blood or skin of saliva gone so that it couldn’t implicate a client.
When his head was a battleground, he found other ways to get those bad feelings out.
So, occasionally, he would break into one of our homes, clean away silently for hours while we were off on jobs, or simply sleeping a floor above.
It was something we had gotten used to, being a part of his world, understanding how he couldn’t help himself.
Thankfully, Gemma was part of the team, understood him, wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it.
“It looks amazing.”
“I should have asked.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” she corrected, shaking her head. “In fact, anytime you can’t sleep and want to clean something of mine, you’re welcome to. I love cooking. But I hate cleaning.”
“I hate cooking.”
“Then you can clean for me, I can cook for you. It is a perfect friendship,” she added, giving him a huge smile that made the tension slide out of his shoulders.
I had no idea what the future held for any of us, but I knew for sure one thing–it would be better with Gemma in it.
Gemma – 3 weeks
I was up early.
It wasn’t unusual anymore.
Bad dreams had a tendency to come regularly still. I had a feeling they would be part of my life for quite a while. I couldn’t claim I was getting used to it, that it didn’t bother me. The truth was that I knifed up in bed out of the nightmares, heart racing, soul aching, with bile rising up in my throat.
It took a long while to deep breathe through it, to get the images to float away, to bank down all the physical symptoms.
I was getting better at handling it, at least.
The first week and a half, when they came, I had to wake up Lincoln, ask him to hold me, stroke my hair, make me feel less alone in it.
Now, though, I was able to ground myself, bring myself back to the present.
They bothered me.
They seemed to show no signs of slowing.
But I was handling it.
That was all you could do when a situation was beyond your control–find a way of dealing with the emotions, make yourself keep moving forward.
Sometimes, I could go back to bed after. Others, I had to get up, do some yoga, or meditate. Others still, like early this morning, I couldn’t seem to get my mind to relax again. So I got up. I got my day started.
Some days, that meant I started to prep food. Others, it meant I continued on my job search.
But this morning, this one was special.
This was Lincoln’s birthday.
And my chance to make one of his dreams come true.
It was something really special, I thought, to know you had the power to do that for someone. Like when a newly signed professional football player paid off their single mom’s mortgage. Or when your parent fulfilled your dreams of going to Disneyland.
My heart was overflowing as I quietly assembled everything I would need, started mixing and flipping and setting the island.
Then, finally, just as I was uncovering it all, there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
My smile was huge as he moved into the kitchen, eyes bleary from sleep, a little unfocused, definitely not expecting the spread before him.
My man wanted pancakes.
And, well, my man got pancakes.
Short stacks of every variety I could think of. Blueberry, strawberry, banana, chocolate, rum, pumpkin, red velvet, peanut butter, Nutella, and plain old buttermilk.
I’d also made some fresh-squeezed orange juice and picked up six different kinds of syrup.