“Have you been waiting long?”
“Half-hour or so,” she says.
“No yoga this morning?”
“No yoga. Just checking on my friend.” She offers me a kind smile, and I can’t help but return it.
I scan the lobby, certain that if Destiny is here, Gray is too.
“He’s getting a drink,” she says, understanding my sudden turn in attention.
“It’s like nine in the morning.”
She shrugs. “He’s on vacation, no?”
As if on cue, Gray strolls up with a Bloody Mary in hand, stirring the drink with a celery stick. He looks more relaxed than I think I’ve ever been a day in my life.
“’Ey, yo, what’d the doc say?”
I swallow hard, not because I’m nervous, but because saying it out loud for the first time like this is harder than I thought it would be.
“He, um, he thinks I have anxiety.”
“Oh shit,” Gray says, but in a neutral, non-judgmental kind of way.
“And what do you think about that?” Destiny asks, also without judgment.
I haven’t had much time to process it, so this is the first time I’m thinking about what Destiny is asking. The truth is, I’m not sure how I feel about it, except that I don’t think he’s wrong.
“I think it’s probably right. I told him that I had a panic attack this morning, he asked me what happened, and I told him everything. He gave me a screening, like a questionnaire to fill out, and I was, like, the highest scores on all of them. Based on all that, he said that it was likely that’s what was happening.”
When Gray suggested that I might have had a panic attack this morning, I didn’t think there was any way he could be right, but after reading through some forums on the internet about other people’s experiences with panic attacks, I realized that maybe he was right. That rabbit hole led me down another one on anxiety, and between what I read on my phone while I waited for the doctor and my conversation with him, an anxiety diagnosis doesn’t feel foreign at all. In fact, I feel a bit relieved. I finally have a word for something I’ve been feeling for a few years and could never really put a finger on.
“Cool, you want to get something to eat?” Gray asks.
His nonchalance throws me off guard. I wasn’t expecting him to freak out, but I also wasn’t expecting this.
“I, uh, think I might go for a run, since I didn’t finish my workout this morning.”
“Do you want company?” Destiny offers.
“I don’t think so, but gym tomorrow?”
She gives me a nod of confirmation and then, for the first time ever, hugs me. For a second, I forget what to do with my arms, but end up hugging her back, grateful for the moment of connection.
“You’re going to be okay,” she says, quiet enough for just me to hear. Her kindness this morning has left me reeling a bit. Not because she hasn’t always been a kind person, but because our relationship is usually teasing banter and veiled insults to push the other person while lifting weights. Somewhere amidst all of that, I guess we really became friends. Moments like this areoften when people show their true colors, and Destiny’s colors are obviously the good ones.
Before leaving, she gives my arm an affectionate slap and promises to whoop my ass tomorrow morning.
“What are you going to do?” I turn to Gray. His Bloody Mary is half gone and he’s got a tomato juice mustache on his upper lip. I’m glad to see that he’s taking to his time off. He deserves it.
“Sit by the pool. Not think about work.”
“Good luck with that. I’ll join you after my run. Put some sunscreen on, yeah?”
“There he is,” Gray says with a smirk as I leave him to head to the beach.
A run is always going to clear my head, and I’ve got about a million thoughts to sort through. Namely about what happened last night in light of this new information.
