“I was already planning to come in and do some charting.” She reached for the bottle of water on the table beside her, and the sleeve of her sweater inched up, revealing her semicolon tattoo.
“McKenzie has one of those.” I gestured toward her exposed ink. “Behind her ear. She…told me what it means. She got it after she thought about ending her life, when she realized she wanted to keep living and that her story wasn’t finished yet.”
She nodded and gave me a sad smile.
“You know what it’s like, don’t you?” I asked. “To feel like this. You’ve been there.”
She didn’t speak, and her face gave nothing away.
“And if I had to guess, I’d say you weren’t actually coming in to do charting. You came in because you’ve been the one sitting where I am.”
“I had charting to do,” she said with a shrug. “Now, let’s talk about why you’re here.”
I lifted my brows. “Because you were already coming in today to do some charting.Allegedly.”
She narrowed her eyes and took a sip of her water before placing it back on the table.
“You’re really not going to tell me, are you?” I asked.
She placed her notepad on her lap and a pen in her hand.
“Why are you here today, Luca?” she asked softly.
I sighed and dropped my head back against the cushion. “If you’ve been online or turned on your television in the past twenty-four hours, then you probably already know the answer to that question. You’ve seen what everyone’s saying about me.”
Once again, her face gave nothing away.
Geez, she should take up poker.
“I’m familiar with what people are saying online.” Lacey crossed one leg over the other. “But I’m more interested in whatyouhave to say.”
I picked at a frayed thread on my jeans, not meeting her gaze.
“I’m getting what I deserve,” I answered, my voice barely above a whisper. “It feels like retribution for the shitty person I’ve been.”
“Is that really what you think?” she asked.
“A lot of the things coming out about me are true,” I admitted. “Like that Brandi girl whose name I couldn’t even remember. She was right. I didn’t care about her. Hell, I barely cared about myself. For a long time, there was nothing but a revolving door of nameless, faceless women and an endless supply of liquor and whatever else I could get my hands on. Anything to numb the pain. And then I had the nerve to put myself out there like I was some role model for mental health and not the train wreck I actually am. I’m a fucking fraud. I don’t deserve for people to look up to me, let alone love me.”
“Did you put yourself out there as a role model, or did other people give you that title and you felt you had to live up to it?” she asked.
“What difference does it make?”
“It’s hard enough to manage our own expectations of ourselves, but trying to live up to everyone else’s at the same time?” She paused, allowing her words to settle over me. “That sounds pretty impossible, don’t you think?”
I blinked. “Okay. Maybe I didn’tclaimto be anything, but when I started sharing my personal experiences, I became one—whether I wanted to be or not.”
She steepled her fingers in her lap. “And you think that means you can no longer mess up? Not only that, but you also can’t have messed upeverin your life because…what? Because people who make mistakes don’t deserve anything good?”
I pushed my tongue onto the roof of my mouth.Well, when you put it like that.
“You’re dealing in absolutes. Black or white. Either or,” she continued. “And when you try to place human beings in these finite categories, you’ll be disappointed every single time. People are nothing if not the gray areas in between. We are living proof that multiple things can be true at the same time. You can make mistakesandbe a good person. You can feel betterandstill not be healed.”
I barked out a dry laugh. “I know I’m nowhere near healed. I’m not sure I’d even say I’m better.”
“You’re not giving yourself enough credit. You’ve made a lot of progress, but you did what many people do when that fog starts to lift. You stopped devoting that time to yourself and fell into old habits when things got difficult. And for you, that means distancing yourself from those you love.”
“I tried to call McKenzie first,” I confessed. “When I saw that shit online…I panicked. I called her and begged her to come to me. I felt like the walls were closing in, and she was the only person who could take that away.”
