Page 148 of True Blue

I raise my eyes to hers. Her hair is wet, turning the thin white tank top she’s wearing translucent. She’s wearing small blue sleep shorts.

She looks good enough to eat.

“Now, here’s what’s going to happen,” Indie says, tilting her head and narrowing her eyes. “I am going to ask questions, and you are going to answer them. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I nod.

“Full honesty, Teddy. I don’t care if you think the answer is going to hurt my feelings.”

Squeezing my eyes shut briefly, I open them and meet her eyes, nodding firmly.

“You will not speak unless I ask you something directly. I’ve heard enough for a lifetime, you explaining away your grieving mother, your delicate ex-girlfriend, and your toxic family. I don’t want to hear any more fucking excuses, Teddy. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Indie,” I say, keeping my eyes on hers evenly. “Whatever you want.”

Through the ache of the reminder of how shitty I’ve treated her this past year, I still feel in awe of her strength and courage. I’ve been terrified of change and discomfort my entire life. Indie molded herself into the woman—the doctor—she is today, through change and discomfort.

Dr. Meyer said that Indie and I were an interesting case because we both experienced abuse, but in two different ways, and we dealt with it in two very different ways. Indie was neglected, while I was smothered.

Both are awful.

“Indie had the courage to leave her situation,” I told her, burying my face in my hands. “God, she was just sixteen, too. Supporting herself. Putting herself through college. I was fucking stupid at sixteen, more concerned with video games, hanging out with my friends, and asking Stacy Chapman to the homecoming dance. I can’t even imagine…”

Dr. Meyer nodded.

“Survival will usually push people to do what’s necessary. Indie probably measured what was more terrifying for her—leaving and facing the unknown, or staying in a situation that was very toxic with alcoholic parents.”

“And me?” I asked quietly.

“You were bathed in comfort and told that love looks like this,” Dr. Meyer said. “Despite your Nana trying to show you a different version, a healthier version. It’s interesting because it can really look almost the same. Your mother’s care can be packaged and presented to look like a doting, loving mother.”

My mouth twisted in disgust.

It’s like finally getting the right prescription on a pair of glasses. I see everything clearly now. All the careful words my mother used to anchor me to her. Thinly veiled threats of self-harm and abandonment that my mind couldn’t recognize, but my nervous system did.

“But that type of abuse, it’s like a low dose of poison dripping through your system—slowly corrupting you. And because everything looks pretty on the outside, because you’ve been told this is healthy and normal, you almost start gaslighting yourself—is this really unhealthy? Am I wrong? No, they’re wrong. They’re the outsider. They’re not us.”

It was an odd feeling—validating and horrifying. I’m not crazy. I’m not wrong for how I felt. But I discovered it too late, and I lost the one person who mattered.

“Families with a bond like that will band together and attack the one who points out the issue.”

Indie saw it. Indie tried to get me to see, and I refused. Worse, I defended it. I defended my mother. I defended my family. I chose them, and I chose wrong.

“The moment I say leave, you leave.”

I nod.

“Speak,” she hisses.

I gulp, heat pooling in my stomach despite myself.

“The moment you want me gone,” I rasp. “I’m gone.”

She stares at me for a long moment before nodding. She’s never been so clipped with me before, even in our small disagreements. She always speaks evenly, firmly if she has to, but Indie believes we can always talk through problems. That’s the doctor in her.

Goddamn. I fucking missed her so much. Every bit of her. Her voice. Her scent. Her presence.

“Refresh my memory, Teddy,” Indie says, scrunching up her face and tilting her head like she can’t remember. “What was it that you said to me? That night. You remember, don’t you?”