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Grace
The panic attack that proved to me that nothing I thought I had accomplished, I actually accomplished, wasn’t one that I necessarily wanted to talk about, but I could tell that it hurt Sawyer to know he knew nothing of it.
That I hadn’t opened up to him about it when I had nearly everything else.
He may think his jealousy was what started to build the wall between us, but suddenly I was realizing that maybe it was me. I had been stepping back. I had been keeping myself from him.
It was almost as if I had been trying to prove to myself that I could find what I had with Sawyer, in another man—or rather, in Jeremy.
And, well, Jeremy proved real quickly that he didn’t have the same qualities that I had appreciated so much in Sawyer. Still though, I stayed with him. I had known Sawyer for five years. I couldn’t compare the openness I knew with him, to a brand new relationship with Jeremy.
Jeremy and I had met at Bean There, as clichéd as that sounds. Meeting over coffee.
But it was true.
He had been standing behind me while I waited for my iced latte and when I felt him move too closely, my anxieties had me fumbling my cup when it was ready, spilling the cold beverage on the floor and on his tennis shoes. He’d simply laughed it off and while it hadn’t completely eased me, I was willing to grab lunch with him when he asked.
I had been with Jeremy two months before my attack. It was another month before I asked Sawyer to meet him.
And if I thought Jeremy’s indifference to my panic attack had been a slight fixable flaw, the way he acted after meeting Sawyer was a much larger issue, and I hadn’t been blind to it.
One time, one time, I had picked up my phone to tell Sawyer something during our drought of not speaking, and Jeremy had asked who I was texting. When I told him, he became angry.
Not in the ‘throw pillows and fists’ way, no, but in that quiet way some men got.
And because it wasn’t like Sawyer was reaching out to me anymore, it was easy to let talking to him go to appease Jeremy. Jeremy was my boyfriend and my potential future; Sawyer was a friend.
I saw the error in my ways now, of course, but at the time, it made sense.
Currently, Sawyer moved to stand beside me, putting a plate in front of me before sitting in the stool next to me, another plate in front of him. Giving me time, he cut into his stack of French toast. I watched the easy movements, the bunch of his forearms and the tightening of his fingers.
I lifted my eyes to his face, seeing that his eyes were focused on his task but his shoulders were bunched. Sawyer had enough on his plate; he didn’t need to shoulder my burdens, too.
Maybe if he knew the worst of the worse, he would step back. No more hand holds or brushing lower backs. Maybe he’d be content with long distance friends who spoke on the rare occasion.
His eyes lifted to mine now.
Insert some witty ‘turn off your head’ comment, but he was keeping quiet. He was giving me time and God knew I loved him for it.
My breath hitched in my chest.
Loved him like a friend. Like a friend…
We didn’t know—
Oh, but we did. We knew one another far better than I knew any other person, and he knew me inside and out. There was very little Sawyer didn’t know about me, and what he didn’t know, he usually could sense.
I moved my gaze from his intense yellow one, looking down at my plate and folding my hands in my lap. Suddenly I wasn’t very hungry.
With a sigh, I opened my mouth to begin but Sawyer reached out and put his big hand on top of my folded ones. “You don’t have to, Gracie. Honestly. It just…” He shrugged a shoulder. “I guess it just hurts a little to know we were still close at that time but you didn’t let me know about it.”
“I didn’t want to burden you with it,” I told our hands. “I’m a twenty-six year old adult. I can handle my issues.”
He squeezed my hands then shook them ever so slightly. “You are not a burden. Not now, not then.”
I offered him a small smile and, as badly as I wanted to keep his hand on mine, I moved my hands so I could cut into my French toast. I needed something to do when I told him this story. Not because it was horrendous, but because it was embarrassing.
Having panic attacks was freaking embarrassing.
