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“Fuck,” I said. My legs were weak, and I slowly sank down onto the wide-plank floor, my back braced against the kitchen cabinets. With my elbows firmly on my knees, I settled my head in my hands. My fingers prickled ominously, and someone, somewhere, wrapped their cold, icy hands around my throat and gripped hard.
I tried to remember the trick my sister used when she felt like she was going to lose it.
Five things you can see.
Four things you can hear.
Or ... five things you could touch and four things you could name.
I couldn’t remember. But that slight question about what I was supposed to focus on was enough to shoulder through whatever fog had crept over my brain.
I could see Charlotte’s Tigers hat on the kitchen table. The rip on the bill.
I could see the stack of tile samples she’d left on the coffee table in front of the couch.
That was as far as I’d made it when she walked out of her bedroom, headphones in her ears. She was smiling.
Until she saw me sitting on the floor, trying to count myself down from a panic attack.
Charlotte froze, pulling the earbuds out and setting them on the table. Her eyes were wide, her mouth slightly open.
She didn’t say anything right away, and I was glad. Standing like she was in the middle of the house, she gave me more things to focus on.
The soft purple of the shirt that fell over her hips, practically covering her denim shorts.
The wisps of hair that always escaped from her ponytail, no matter how many times she redid it.
She licked her lips and slowly folded her long legs as she sat cross-legged on the floor across from me.
“Will talking about it help or not help?” she asked quietly.
“I’m fine,” I managed. But my voice betrayed me. I hardly recognized it, sounding as it did like it had been pulled through a pile of cracked glass, covered in sand, and dragged along the ground.
My answer didn’t prompt an argument from her, even though I clearly wasn’t fucking fine.
Her eyes looked sad, though, when I said it. And I had to tear my gaze away from her face so that I didn’t have to see it. It made me want to rip my skin off, do something to rid myself of the feeling it provoked. Everything in my head felt too tender, too raw, to think about making Charlotte sad while I was ... losing my shit.
She let out a slow breath and inched closer. My eyes pinched shut when I saw her fold her hands together in her lap, like she was restraining herself from reaching for me.
If she touched me when I was like this ...
I’d never been more terrified of anything in my entire life.
We’d constructed our lines so carefully. And I didn’t want to destroy those tender pieces we’d each decided to protect because I was caught tight in the sudden throes of grief.
All this felt an awful lot like rolling over at her feet, exposing the most vulnerable parts of my underbelly to someone who could slice me in half with the wrong word.
No matter what I was or wasn’t willing to admit, Charlotte was important.
To me.
I wasn’t sure when that had happened. But in that moment, sitting with her on the floor, I couldn’t deny the hand that had been dealt in my life to bring us together. I couldn’t deny that all my noticing of her really only meant one thing—I wanted her more than in the way I currently had her.
I wanted her in a huge, life-altering way. And the fact that she moved toward me in a moment like this was why I liked pushing her buttons.
Why I liked playing with her hair and hearing what she had to say.
Why I liked staring at her face while she talked.
