She shrugs without looking up at me. “Don’t really have the energy to be a person today, okay?”
It’s a small plea—please don’t make me explain this to you; I don’t have the energy. Guilt stirs in my stomach.Did I do this?Was it the way I ended the conversation after group? Did I make me caring look like rejection?
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Are we…good?”
She finally looks at me, and the look is sharp. “Why would we be anything?” she asks. “Boundaries, remember?”
If the sentence were a paper airplane, it would fly in a circle and hit me right in the forehead. I deserve it. I’m the one who called time in the middle of a deep moment, putting the safe walls back up. I take the hit and nod.
“Is that why you’re upset?” I ask, scared I did that all wrong. “Because if it is, I—” I almost say I’m being moved out of your group next week. It sits on my tongue, begging to tell her. But it feels manipulative to say, so I swallow it back down. “—I just want to know if I made it worse.”
She shakes her head, a tiny gesture that still manages to have empathy in it. “No. It’s just…there’s a lot going on. I’m a little late to being a person today. That’s all.”
“Okay,” I say, and I try to leave it alone. “If you need anything,” I add, “you can… Well, you know where I am.”
She nods. “I do.”
She turns and walks off, and I let her.
* * *
After sitting in my dorm for long enough, knowing the thoughts won’t cool themselves off, I lace up my shoes for a run and head out along the school’s track. The air’s bitter late in the day. It feels like muscle memory from every night when the thoughts were too loud, when my body needed a release before it decided to pick up a bottle and a girl as a better distraction. The field floodlights are on even though no one’s out here.
On the seventh lap, I stop. My chest burns, but it’s not a bad burn. It’s the kind that says I used my body for something more productive than drowning.
When I get back to the dorm, my room smells like laundry and the cologne Erik is always drenched in. He’s at his desk with headphones on, listening to a lecture. He looks up, raising his eyebrows in question.
“You good?”
I pull the other chair out, turning it backwards and sitting, facing him. “Can I get your advice on something?”
Erik pulls the headphones off. “Of course.”
I don’t know where to start, or what I even want to ask. I feel like whatever is going on with Lydia is just something I need to say out loud, something I need someone else to walk with me through, so I know if I’m messing uphere or if I need to walk away from a girl like her…not formysake, but for hers.
“Okay…so, there’s a girl.”
Erik straightens up immediately. “Like…in the romantic sense?” he asks, shocked. “Did I just fall into the matrix or something?”
“Shut up so we can get to the advice-giving part, please, Erik.”
He waves me off. “Fine, fine, go on. Wait—who are we talking about? Are we talking about—”
I stare up at the ceiling. “Yes…her.”
“Hmm, so this has turned into romantic feelings?”
His expression is shocked for a moment, and then he starts smiling.
I nod.
He mirrors my nod, waiting for more, and trying to put the puzzle together in his head before I’ve given him any of the other pieces.
“Well, at the beginning of this school year, she showed up at the recovery group I’m facilitating for my clinicals—”
“Whoa, time out,” he interrupts. “Why didn’t you tell me she was in your group? And we’re talking about a girl in the ‘maybe romantic sense’, and you’re talking about the recovery group? Isn’t there like big ethical no-nos around that kind of thing?”
“Well…I was getting there if you’d stop interrupting.”
