“Different how?”
“I’ve done the work, Julian. Years of it. That room wasn’t new ground for me, it was... I’ve already grieved what I went there to grieve.”
“So… you didn’tneedit.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“If you didn’t need it,” I said, “thenwhywere we there?”
“Julian.”
“Why were we there, Alyssa?”
She did the thing with her lips and I watched her decide that the truth argued well was better than a lie defended badly.
“Because you would never have gone for yourself,” she admitted. “Not in a hundred years. So I found a group, and I asked you to go for me.” Her chin came up. “Yes. I did that.”
There it was.
The first thing through was like falling. A floor I’d been standing on going out from under me, with the realization that she had looked at me and decided I was a thing to be moved into position. She feltsorryfor me. I almost would have preferred her to have hated me.
“You played me,” I said. “You manipulated me.”
“I was trying to help?—”
“By lying to me? By pretending you needed support when you just wanted me where you thought I should be?”
“Yes. But Julian, youneedthis. You need someone to care enough about you to?—”
“To what? To trick me? To decide that you know better than I do what's good for me?”
“You would never have gone otherwise.” She didn’t back down. That was the thing about her, cornered, she came forward.
“BECAUSE I DON’T NEED IT!” I raised my voice and she flinched, but I couldn’t stop. “Because I'm notbroken, Alyssa! I'm not a goddamn project for you to fix.”
“I never said you were broken.”
“Then WHY?!” I spread my arms wide, all my anger and hurt spilling out. “Why can't you accept that I handle things differently than you do? Hm?”
“Because handling isn't healing.” Tears were streaming down her face. “Because watching you carry years of grief alone kills me. Because you deserve so much more than the emotional prison you've built for yourself.”
“It's not a prison! It's discipline. It's strength. It's what kept my family from falling apart. What made us successful.Mesuccessful.”
“And what's it cost you, Julian? What has all that cost you?”
I stared at her. “It cost me my peace.” The words came out quiet, deadly. “It cost me the ability to go through a day without thinking about things I'd rather forget. It cost me sleep, focus, the life I'd built before you decided I needed saving. You proud of that?”
“I’m not proud of any of it. But I’d do it again, because you need to face the fact that?—”
“Do you hear yourself?” I came off the counter. “You decided what I needed and you went around me to put it in me. You didn’t ask. Youmanagedme. I don’t do that to you. Whatever you think of me, I don’t scheme on you. I take you the way you come. I work with you.”
“Youworkwith me? Julian, you bulldozed half my life before I could get a sentence out. The car. The condo. The things that got fixed that I never asked anybody to fix.”
“Those made your lifebetter!Do I look better to you, Alyssa? Huh? Right now, standing here… do I look like a man who’s better?”
“You look like a man who’s still fighting it,” she said. “That’s the whole difference. When something’s wrong you need to try to change it. To grow. You tell me all the time that I need to learn how to accept help. Why won’t you take your own advice?”
“So I need to change,” I said. “That’s what you’re telling me? That I’m a man who needs improving and you’re the one who can see the version of me I’m too broken to reach?”
