Page 158 of Secrets on Ice

I don’t sit down because I’m confused and a little defensive. I choose to stand in the doorway in yesterday’s clothes, with my arms wrapped around myself, and I feel something close to fear.

“This is Dr. Hay,” Cassidy says. “She specializes in trauma. She does home visits, and before you get angry with us, I don’t care, you can be as angry as you want, because we love you too much to keep watching this,” she explains with tears in her eyes.

“I’m fine.” I laugh.

Nobody laughs.

“You’re not fine, babe,” Collette says quietly.

“You haven’t left this apartment,” Jo says. She’s the one who says the hard things, Jo. “You haven’t been to work. You’re not eating. Cassidy hears you crying through the wall, and then you tell her you slept fine.” She holds my eyes. “We’re not doing this because we’re angry. We’re doing it because we’re scared. You’re disappearing, Ember. We can all see it, and we can’t just stand by and let it happen.”

My throat closes. “I don’t want to talk to a stranger,” I whisper.

“I know,” the woman, Dr. Hay, says. Her voice is even and warm, and it doesn’t push. “That’s a completely normal thing to feel. You don’t have to talk to me today at all, if you don’t want to. But your friends love you very much, and they asked me to come, and I’m already here. So maybe you can sit down and just chat.”

I look at Cassidy. She’s crying. Tears are running down her face while she watches me, my best friend, who has held me on the floor of this apartment more times than I can count, who has cleaned up after my nightmares, lied to my mother for me, and carried our whole life on her back while I fell apart. And something in me, some tiny, exhausted thing, gives up.

“Em.” Cassidy comes over and carefully takes my hand. “I can’t help you fix this. I’ve tried. I would do anything, you know I would, but this is bigger than me. It’s bigger than all of us. You got hurt badly. And you’ve been trying to white-knuckle your way through it alone, and it’s not working. That’s not weakness, that’s just too big a thing to carry by yourself.” Her voice cracks. “Please let someone help you. Please, I can’t lose you to this.”

And there it is.

Lose me.

Because that’s what’s happening, isn’t it? I’ve been so busy going quiet, going still, making myself small enough that I can’t break anything, that I didn’t notice I was also disappearing. That every day I sit in this apartment and let the gray close over my head so much so that there’s a little less of me left.

Sully left his home so I could heal. And I haven’t healed, I’ve just gone under. I think about him, one floor up, checking in with Cassidy because he’s not allowed to check in with me, giving up everything so I could get better, and me repaying it by lying in the dark rotting. He doesn’t deserve this, and neither does Cassidy.

“Okay.” I hear myself say.

Cassidy goes very still. “Okay?”

“Okay. I’ll sit. I’ll … I’ll try. I don’t know how to do this, but I’ll try.”

Collette makes a small sound and presses her hand to her mouth. Jo lets out a breath she’s clearly been holding. And Cassidy pulls me into her arms so hard it knocks the air out of me, and I let her. Over her shoulder, Dr. Hay gives me a small nod, like this is enough, like showing up is the whole first step.

“That’s all we have to do today,” she says gently. “Just sit, and we’ll start there.”

So, I sit, and for the first time in I-don’t-know-how-long, surrounded by the women who refused to let me vanish, I sit down, and I start, in the smallest possible way, to come back.

Coming back doesn't happen all at once. Nobody tells you that, you think there'll be a moment, a switch, a morning you wake up, and you're you again. It isn't like that. It's slow, and it's ugly, and it's a hundred tiny unglamorous things done over and over until they stop being impossible.

Dr. Hay comes twice a week at first. We don't do anything dramatic. We just talk, and sometimes we don't even do that. Sometimes we just sit, and she teaches me stupid little tricks for when the panic comes, like breathe in for four, hold, out for eight, or name five things I can see. I feel like an idiot doing them. I do them anyway, and they work more than I want to admit.

I start eating properly again. Actual meals, not just enough to get Cassidy off my back. The first time I finish a whole plate she pretends not to notice, which is how I know she notices.

The nightmares don't stop, but they change. They come less often, and when they come, I wake up in my bed, and I know where I am. I breathe in for four and out for eight, and I don't scream, and there's no one in the room for me to hurt. He's only one floor up, and I know Cassidy disappears sometimes in the evenings, for an hour here, an hour there. I feel bad that I still don’t have the balls to see him, but I do watch his games, although I don’t wear his jersey.

Cassidy told me one night that he has been suffering with nightmares, too, but after finding out I took a chance with therapy, he’s done the same, talking to the team’s psychologist. I’m glad.

The first time I leave the apartment, Cassidy comes with me, and we don't go far. Just down in the elevator to the lobby, her arm through mine and my heart going like a drum the whole way down. I stand in the lobby of my own building, and I don't die. The doorman says good morning like I'm a normal person and not someone clawing her way back from the bottom of the ocean. We go straight back up after ten minutes. It's pathetic, but Cassidy squeezes my hand in the elevator and doesn't say a word about how big it was, which is exactly why it's safe to do it with her.

Next, it's the restaurant downstairs. We get a table, just the two of us, and I sit with my back to the wall so I can see the whole room, which Dr. Hay says is fine, do whatever you need to feel safe. When the waiter comes, I order a meal, and after a beat, a glass of wine to go with it. I watch it come, I watch him set it down, and I make myself pick it up and drink it, because I refuse to let that man in Vegas take things from me anymore.

Then it's the office.

I go in for an hour, then half a day, then a full one. I open the boxes we shoved in the corner, and I go through the samples and the mood boards and slowly, slowly, the part of me that loves this work flickers back to life. Sam's apartment. The Maine house. Cassidy finds me one afternoon surrounded by fabric, actually working, and she squeals with excitement.

Then run club. I don't run, I walk, and Jo walks with me and doesn't make it a thing. The cold air hurts my lungs, but it feels good to be outside again, almost.