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Her reaction actually makes me huff a humorous laugh. “I’ve literally heard you tell that to patients.”
She joins in my humor, giving me a genuine grin. It lightens the mood slightly, and I’m grateful for it. “I can’t talk about it and get worked up. We’re in a coffee shop, for fuck’s sake. I don’t even have mascara with me to touch up.” I look her square in the eyes and see my friend again. The bond nearly physical between us, I joke, “I can’t walk out of here with black streaks down my face.”
She agrees, saying, “This place doesn’t have a bathroom either. So no crying…” and then she persists in order to understand, “…but you left, you were emotional. The breakup was mutual?”
“Not really.” My gut churns with my response.
“So you left him?” Fuck it hurts to hear her ask that. My heart agrees, stalling and refusing to resume beating until I respond. I nod and give a small yeah, ignoring the pain that claws at my gut.
There’s no way in hell I’m going to be able to eat those lemon cake squares.
“And then he moved back but he’s been here for a while and …” I trail off and when Bethany doesn’t say anything, I steel myself to confess the truth to her.
“And the night at the shopping center, our night out was the first time I’d seen him and spoken to him.”
I’m surprised by the sorrow that worries Bethany’s expression when she says, “And I just let you go with him. I’m sorry.” Her voice cracks.
“You trusted him,” I say to defend her and make sure that defense is audible. “It had to happen, Bethany. It was bound to. I’m happy you were with me when it did.”
Her smile is weak, and the conversation pauses for a moment while she composes herself. “What did he say?” she asks once she’s finally got a grip on her regret.
How do I tell her he didn’t say a word to me? Again that shame rises at the fact I’d let a man get to me the way he did. More than that, protectiveness spreads through me. I find myself wanting to defend Seth. I don’t want her to think of him like that. He wasn’t always an asshole she’d hate this very second if she knew what transpired.
He was good.
I did this to him.
With a shuddering breath, I skip over the details of that night, only giving her the bare essentials: He dropped me off and told me to meet him last night.
Telling her what happened yesterday proves to be difficult too. I don’t know how much of my perception is real. Was he cold to me like I remember? Or was he waiting to see what I’d do, like I was doing with him?
“It looks like more happened than just that, Laura,” Bethany prods, when I try to gloss over it.
“The thing is, I’m not okay. Not emotionally. I keep finding myself back in that place I was when I left. It’s like I’m grieving all over again.”
“So this is about the bad thing that happened to someone close to you? Or leaving Seth?”
“I think both,” I admit to her, truly unsure.
“An emotional state isn’t linear.” She reminds me of something I already know, and her eyes tell me she knows that I know.
“I know, but grief is supposed to be in stages and—”
She cuts me off, her voice pleading with me to understand. “Those stages misrepresent emotions. I just got into this with Aiden.” She makes that last comment under her breath, fiddling with her napkin and then popping a lemon square in her mouth. Aiden is our boss at the Rockford Center. We don’t always see eye to eye on things. It’s good for the patients though. If one method isn’t helping them, we have others.
“No, I know, and I agree with you. The stages are a depiction of the mental capacity to deal with shock and stressors that are too much to handle. Denial isn’t an emotion, it’s a coping mechanism. The stages are a timeline and they move in order and never in reverse because it’s about coping, not about emotional ability.” I stress the last line with the side of my hand hitting the table. “Yesterday, it felt like I was on a roller coaster, a scary one that I don’t want to be on, and it kept moving back without warning, sending me down the same hill I ran from.” The emotions, the wretched feeling I’m describing—it all creeps knowingly toward me again.
“It’s not the stages of grief you’re talking about. It’s simply loss.”
“It is,” I admit quietly and close my eyes. “I’m feeling the loss all over again.”
“Losses,” she says, stressing the plural, “and memories… they’re chaotic, they come and go as they please with no patterns at times. They can be triggered.”
