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“It’s okay.” I hug him. My heart pounds. “I’ve got you.”
I pull him with me to the counter and fumble for a lunch-size paper bag while he leans over, palms braced on his knees. The gasping sounds he’s making hurt my heart and make me sweat with fear for him, even though the rational part of me knows he’s just having a panic attack.
I grab his forearms—“Let’s sit down, okay?”—and together we sink to the floor. He leans back against my cabinets, his hands grasping weakly for his thighs. I pull the bag open and look into his eyes as I lower it over his mouth.
“It’s okay. You’re here with me, with Gwen.”
His dazed eyes cling to mine, even as his chest pumps and his muscles tremble. With my cheek against his chest and my hand straining to keep the bag over his mouth, I look up at him.
“Barrett, you’re with Gwenna. We’re in my kitchen. Feel my arm around you? You’re okay.”
I squeeze him tightly and a second later, he raises a hand to hold the bag. With my free hand, I stroke his neck.
“You’re here with me, baby. We’re making tacos. After we eat, I want to show you your Myers-Briggs profile, and you can laugh at what a dork I am. I thought maybe you would end up staying over…so I did something for you. Do you want to see?”
He blinks at me, and he seems to realize at the same moment I do that he’s not sucking air out of the bag anymore. His shoulders are still tense, but his frenzied breaths are calmer now. His eyes are still far off, but they’re holding mine.
I have this image of myself bursting out the front door when I used to have a flashback. Anything to move, outrun the moment.
“Come here…” I hold my hand out for him but he moves the bag off his mouth and stands without grabbing onto me. I clasp the hand that isn’t holding the bag and lead him slowly through the den and my office.
We step into my bedroom and I turn out the overhead light. Then I lead him over to the bed, where I flip a button on the extension cord draped over my night stand and my ceiling lights up. It’s striped with lines of Christmas twinkle lights.
“When I used to have nightmares, I would wake up to these and it would pull me back here faster.”
I watch him blink up at the rainbow of lights.
“Come here…”
We lay down. He’s slow and careful, like a fast movement might somehow startle him. I don’t let go of his hand.
When he’s lying on his back, I snuggle up against him, resting my head on his hard arm, gently re-lacing my fingers through his. “I think I know what happened.”
Unless he’s scared of laundry rooms, the overbearing scent of gardenias is the only thing that makes sense. Smell is tied tightly to memory.
“If it’s the plants,” I whisper, “I can throw them out.”
“Why?” It’s so soft I can hardly hear it.
I stroke his cheek. “Because I don’t need them.”
&nb
sp; I wrap my arms around him. His shoulders jerk with leftover tension. Then he shifts onto his side and buries his face in my neck.
I’m surprised…but it feels good. So right. I wrap my arm around him, inhaling the scent of him: so new and yet so soothing. I feel the width and hardness of his back and think of where it’s been. I wish he’d never been to those places.
I curve my hand around the back of his head. I barely know him—but it doesn’t feel that way.
“I went into her brother’s flower shop. In Syria.” He doesn’t lift his head, just rasps the words against my collarbone. “She said…I didn’t look like other Westerners. She said my eyes looked different.”
He stops, breathing deeply. I rub circles on his back while silence rolls around us.
“She put this aloe on my neck, and there was a freezer room. But to get to it, you had to go through this other room.” I feel his forehead press against my throat as he breathes.
“She called it her gardenia room. They were piled in there…like yours.”
My heart squeezes as I try to picture him standing in this tiny room filled with gardenias, sunburned, maybe shirtless as this woman rubs his back.
