“What about her feelings?” Rhiannon squinted me over. “Did she talk about hers?”
“I guess, yeah.”
“Can you give me an example?”
A deep breath escaped my nostrils. “I don’t know. She told me about feeling unloved and unwanted by her boyfriends a lot.”
“And what did you think when she told you those things?”
My heart thumped hard, and my chest got tight. “They didn’t deserve her anyway. She needed to stop worrying about them.”
“How did you know that?”
Raising my shoulders, I shook my head. “Because she could hold a job when she was single. She cooked dinner. She was awake when I was getting ready for school. She functioned better without them. They just made her life harder.”
Rhiannon’s phone rang on the side table. She silenced it. “And those feelings, you only saw her express them when she was having problems in her relationships?”
“I guess, yeah.” I gestured to her phone. “You can answer that.”
“It can wait.” Her eye contact didn’t waver. “Her feelings were catastrophes thatdidneed solving, right?”
That wasn’t an insult to my mom. It was close to one though. I had to consciously release my tight fists. “Well, she was in a revolving door of abusive relationships, so yeah, I guess so.”
“And when she didn’t solve them, you had to pick up the slack. You got ready for school by yourself. You had to cook dinner.”
“She was overwhelmed,” I said, doing my best to keep from coming off aggressive. “I was fine.”
“I know. Just like you’re fine now,” Rhiannon said. “And you are, Gwen. You show up to work each day. You’re saving to open your own business. You’re opening yourself up to love again, and that’s huge. I’m proud of you.” Her phone rang again, and she silenced it once more. “But your problem has never been whether you can take care of yourself. It’s always been that you think you have to take care of everyone else.”
I’d killed a man to protect my best friend. So I couldn’t argue with her about that.
“Is it such a bad thing?” I asked. “That’s what community’s all about. Sacrifice. Give and take.”
“No, it’s not a bad thing.” Eyes big, brows creasing in the middle, she frowned. “But doesn’t it get heavy? Carrying around everyone else’s pain?”
A chill swept over my arms. All I could do was shrug in response.
“Let me ask you this, Gwen.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Have you ever had someoneyoucould really lean on? Someone you could tell everything to, and they wouldn’t judge you. Someone who would help if you asked.”
“Does Simone count?”
“Before Simone.”
No. I didn’t. Mom was chaos. Her problems were always bigger than mine. Throughout my teens, my friends had relied on me the same way she had. I was who they went to with theirproblems. When mine were bigger, they were nowhere to be found.
Chewing my cheek, I shrugged again.
“That’s why I want you to name your feelings, Gwen. Because I want you to have mutual relationships. I don’t want you to carry everyone else’s burdens and never lay out your own.” Her phone rang. She grunted, ignored it, and muted the ringer. “Closeness, real closeness, is vulnerability on both sides. Are you sure you weren’t afraid when David hurt Simone?”
A knot swelled in my throat, and my fingers quivered. I clenched them steady. “I don’t know. Maybe I was.”
“And you didn’t want to tell Simone that because, like your mom, her crisis was bigger. She was the hurt one. Your feelings went to the back burner because they had to in that moment.”
A half smile touched my lips. “Are you agreeing with me?”
“I am actually.” Rhiannon chuckled, and so did I. “But Sebastian didn’t have a crisis, did he?
There went my smile. “No, I guess not.”
