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Relief was next. I didn’t have go through it again. I didn’t have to share my darkest self with a set of twelve strangers and hope they believed me over him.
Finally, nausea arrived.
I jumped up and grabbed her trashcan, pulling it up to my face just as I puked into it. Pamela’s presence beside me let me know she’d risen too, but she didn’t touch. She just hovered. When I was done, she handed me a wad of Kleenex from the box on her desk. I wiped at my mouth, and then sat on the sofa again.
That’s when I started to cry.
Pamela moved to the sofa beside me, a quiet presence. “May I rub your back?” she asked. “To comfort you?”
I nodded, and her hand drifted up and down my spine, centering me and letting me feel her care.
“You don’t have to be so nice to me,” I whispered.
“I want to be nice. Is that something you struggle with? Letting people be nice to you?”
My chin wobbled, and more tears fell. “Sometimes. Yeah.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“But for a long time, I was better about it.” I shredded the gross Kleenex in my hand. “I had friends that treated me well, and for a few years I felt happy, loved even.”
“But something changed?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
I didn’t want to tell her, so I motioned at my head. “In here.Things changed. I started hating myself again.”
Pamela was quiet a long moment before asking the next hard question. “Why?”
She wasn’t going to let me get by without telling her. I took a shuddery breath, scrubbed at my face, and then slid away from her hand, saying, “You won’t want to touch me once you know.”
“I doubt that.”
I shrugged, picked at the lace of my skirt, and wished I really was covered in fairy dust so I could magic my way out of there.
“Anything you say to me is confidential,” she reminded me.
“I know. I’ve had therapists before. Court-appointed even.” I smirked miserably. “Back when my dad raped me.”
She didn’t flinch.
Eventually the silence grew too heavy, and I blurted out, “‘Things changed’ when I found out I have HIV. I’m going to die soon.”
Her long exhale let me know she’d been holding her breath. She didn’t contradict me. She didn’t try to placate or say scientists were working daily on a cure. She just let me have my feelings.
“May I?” she asked, holding her hand up above my back again.
I nodded, and the soothing rub started again. Tears started fresh, and this time I couldn’t seem to stop them. She didn’t pull away. She stayed right by me.
“Mitchell,” Pamela said, when I’dfinallystopped crying into the gross wad of tissues she’d handed me earlier. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
I couldn’t say the same. Not yet.
But I thought it was possible I’d find a way to be glad one day before I died. Maybe I’d even be happy. With Luke by my side, maybe I really could be.
Chapter Thirty-Five
