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Now his heart dropped into his stomach. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it sure as hell wasn’t this. A thousand things rushed into his head at once. The overwhelming number of feelings made his head spin. Terror. Anger. Shock. Anxiety. He should be happy for Gram. She was finally getting something she’d wanted for years—the possibility of having her only child back in her life. Walker couldn’t imagine how she felt. But he had to think of himself too. How was he supposed to go from not speaking a word to Benny in over a decade to knowing that he was less than two hours away at any given time? What would happen if he called to speak to Gram and Benny picked up? Even if he spent the rest of his life avoiding Greenbelt, he wouldn’t be able to avoid his father now. Not completely.
It wasn’t even that he didn’t want a relationship with Benny. Maybe that was a small part of it. But mostly he didn’t know how a relationship between them could even be possible. They had so much baggage. And beyond that, they knew next to nothing about one another. Walker and Gram had their problems, but they were close in a way he and Benny hadn’t gotten the chance to be. He and Gram knew each other’s favorite meals, they knew how the other reacted when a spider was found—hell, they’d even known each other’s bathroom habits at one point. There were times when Walker blanked on what Benny’s voice sounded like.
There was so much shit between them that Walker was afraid they didn’t have a chance of having a healthy relationship. He figured Benny felt the same. That was why it had been so easy to stay away from each other for so long.
There was also that little boy inside of him. The one who cried for his father at night. Who spent long nights lying awake, begging someone, anyone, to make sure he was all right. The little boy and the grown man both found themselves torn between excitement and anxiety at the promise of seeing their father.
He turned his eyes to Gram and saw her looking at him, apprehensive. How was he supposed to tell her his fears? Especially when, for her, this meant getting her son back.
“That’s…” He stopped, completely devoid of words he thought wise to express externally, but he knew she could read every emotion running across his face. “That’s…”
His breaths came faster, and he touched a hand to his forehead, feeling the heated skin.
Gram didn’t say anything and neither did he, but they could both hear his panting as they each waited for the other to say what they were feeling.
“I know you’re probably…” She shook her head. “I know this is probably a lot for you. I know you boys aren’t close—”
“We haven’t spoken since I was seventeen, Gram,” he interrupted.
She let out a shaky breath. “It’s not for me to decide whether you have a relationship with your father, Wally. It would be wrong for me to even give my opinion on that.”
“I already know what you think.”
She wanted her family. It was obvious in every word out of her mouth and look on her face. In a perfect world, she never would have lost it in the first place. But this world wasn’t perfect, and what she had was a family that was so fractured, it made gluing the pieces together feel like an impossible task.
“Well, if you know me so well, you know that I think you should at least consider seeing your father. He’d like to see you.”
“Did he say that?” Walker swallowed.
Gram paused. “No, but I can tell.”
He shook his head. He didn’t know nearly enough about his father to assume anything about his wants. Honestly, he wasn’t sure Gram did either. The entire conversation was setting him on edge. His jaw clenched tight and his heart beat hard against his chest.
“Did he say exactly when he was comin’ through?” He wanted to know so he could prepare himself.
“He doesn’t know for sure yet. Said he’d give me a call when he knows for sure. You might already be back in Charleston.” She looked at him with imploring eyes. “Think you’d be willin’ to come back to see him? Talk to him?”
“I don’t know.”
He ran a hand through his hair, suddenly feeling haggard and aged. His mind had been completely made up about leaving Greenbelt and not returning. Now everything was getting all jumbled. Before, his desire to stay away had gone relatively untested in his mind. He’d gotten flack for it, but his conviction to stay away had stayed strong. But his relationship with Gram was shifting, he could feel it even only a few days after their talk. There was also Aja and the feelings for her that grew by the second—especially after they’d had sex. Now, finally, his father. The chance to see the man face-to-face, even amidst all his fears of doing so, was already weighing heavily on his heart.
He’d spent so much time thinking about the people who kept him away from Greenbelt that he hadn’t stopped to consider there might be people who could make him want to stay. This made his head hurt. How could he hate and not hate a place at the same time? How did he both long to leave and feel compelled to stay? None of it made sense, but it all made him want to run somewhere and hide away. Suddenly the little clear space in the back of his closet sounded mighty appealing. It was small and dark and quiet—it had the ability to calm all of his senses. It would be hard to fold his long legs and broad shoulders into it, but the discomfort would be worth it, as long as it reduced the anxiety he was feeling.
Thankfully, Gram accepted his answer easily, even if she didn’t like it. They were silent, her pressing the toast into the butter-coated skillet and him trying to calm down. He wasn’t sure how he’d managed to hold it off for so long, but now he could feel the anxiety building. Creating pain between his shoulder blades as he stiffened, putting pressure on his calves as his knees bounced, and making his jaw hurt from his grinding teeth.
It never failed to surprise him how he could be fine one minute and completely off the rails the next. He’d grown familiar with the telltale signs of a panic attack. This wasn’t that. This was straight anxiety, the kind that threatened to stick around for however long it wanted. Minutes, hours, days—it had a mind of its own.
He preferred the panic attacks. The short bursts of fear and emotion were almost comfortable. He knew they would pass relatively quickly, and after he could crawl into bed, let his emotional exhaustion drag him into a deep sleep, and wake up the next day to only a slight headache. The anxiety stuck around too long for his liking. It followed him to work, to the bar, it even slept right next to him every night. It was still there in the morning too, up bright and early to make him breakfast and remind him that he was never, ever truly safe.
He wasn’t going to run upstairs and hide though. Mostly because that wouldn’t serve him, but also because he still wanted that French toast. He’d been in therapy for ten years, and he had the calming techniques to show for it. He worked through the ones he knew, trying to think of one that would allow him to do most of the coping work inside his own head. The last thing he needed this morning was to slip into a mindfulness meditation in the middle of the kitchen and spend the rest of the day fielding questions he didn’t want to answer from Gram.
Progressive muscle relaxation exercises had always been his favorite. He could complete them quickly, anywhere he needed. At work, in the car, in a strange woman’s bathroom the morning after some aggressively mediocre sex. With this exercise, ten minutes was all he needed to start reducing his anxiety.
He started by relaxing in his chair as much as he could. The old wooden furniture wasn’t nearly as comfortable as the couch would have been, but it was all he had. He focused his attention on slouching his shoulders some and spreading his legs and thighs until his body felt less like it was being held together by safety pins. Then he fixed his breathing. Deep, heavy breaths in his nose and out his mouth that helped build awareness of his calm surroundings and steady his heart. Starting from the bottom of his body, he worked his ankles, tensing and rolling them, flexing his feet upwards. Creating tension, then releasing it. He continued these actions with the other parts of his body, his calves and shins, his thighs, his ass. Isolating muscles, making them rigid, then soothing the strain.
He became aware of nothing but his body. The way it moved and shifted as he manipulated himself. Everything else faded, even the things happening around him. His ears were too busy being brushed by his rolling shoulders to hear the French toast frying. His brain was too busy focusing on his body to think about the uncertainty of the future.
By the time Gram set their food on the table, his body was floating, and his brain had calmed. The anxiety surrounding the choices he would soon have to make wasn’t going to disappear completely. It would come back, and it likely wouldn’t leave until his decisions—whatever they turned out to be—were made. But for now, he felt OK. He would take some time to enjoy his breakfast and his grandmother’s company and try to feel comfortable and at home in his body and mind—those things did serve him.
