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He let you have your highs and lows. Without feeling the need to comment on them.
It was freeing not to hide my feelings, or make excuses or apologies for them when they popped out.
I just got to be.
I wasn’t sure I had ever been able to simply be before in my life.
Without the constant voice in my head telling me all the things I should – or shouldn’t – be doing, what I was screwing up, what I needed to work on, what I needed to think, eat, do – there was so much quiet inside.
Occasionally, when one of my stitches would poke at me, when I would catch sight of the scars on my face or the new one on my arm, when I would go to reach for my ring necklace out of habit and find nothing there. The space was a bad thing, when it left room for the ugly to sink in again, to dampen my mood even when I was standing in the sunshine surrounded by happy animals, when everything that brought me a small amount of joy was there for me.
I had no idea if it was right to say I was getting better. I wasn’t looking for a permanent end to the pain. I was looking for ways to cope, ways to let the thoughts go when they popped up.
I wasn’t stupid.
Living in the woods wasn’t a cure for whatever trauma was left, whatever depression, anxiety, or maybe even hints of PTSD still existed within me. Fresh air and clean eating and goat and dog snuggles couldn’t make all the bad go away. This was going to be a long road. I was going to have setbacks and bad days.
Healing wasn’t linear.
That said, the lack of pressures here was absolutely – I felt – making a difference, easing me forward, but acting as a buffer for me when I fell back.
“Coffee?” Ranger growled at me, making my head snap up.
“Is that even a question?” I asked, watching as he shot me a small smile.
Ranger wasn’t one for vice. You never caught him snacking between meals, over eating, lazing about except for when it was bedtime, being attached to his phone, drinking.
But he likely had more caffeine than blood in his system most days. Despite it being a multiple step process to make it each time.
I had been a big coffee drinker in my old life, but it had reached a whole new level since moving in with Ranger.
It was put to good use, too, during the days as my body adjusted to its new schedule, the hard work that would sap all my energy if it wasn’t for the constant liquid gold Ranger constantly plied me with.
“So what is Finn like?” I asked as I took my plate to the sink to start to wash.
“No,” Ranger barked at me, making me turn just in time to see him approaching, hand reaching out, sinking into my hip, and pushing me out of the way. “You cooked,” he added, meaning if I cooked, I didn’t wash up. And I usually found that insistence sweet, but at the moment, I was too busy focusing on the way that the skin on my hip felt a little tingly from his giant hand.
Tingly.
That made no sense.
“He might take some getting used to,” Ranger said as he turned on the water.
“Who?”
“Finn,” he told me, shooting a look over his shoulder, brows drawn low.
“Oh, right. Yeah. Why would he take some getting used to?”
“He’s a little OCD. He’s going to come here and clean. He doesn’t mean it like an insult. Like we don’t keep the place clean enough or something. It’s just… something he has to do. You kinda just need to go with the flow.”
“I think most people would count themselves lucky to have a friend who cleans their place without expecting anything in return. What does he do? For the company,” I specified.
“He cleans,” Ranger told me, shrugging. “If something happens in someone’s place, some tragedy, he cleans it up. Or if someone needs to be disappeared by Gunner, he will erase all traces of them from their old apartments and such. He’s got a ridiculous eye for detail. Not like that,” he told me when my gaze moved downward, looking at his giant flannel swallowing up my body, thinking about my utter lack of makeup. “About the job,” he clarified.
“Does he like it here, or does he grumble like you said Gunner does?”
“It’s a little out of his comfort zone. Dog hair everywhere. Dirt always being tracked in. I don’t think he has ever lasted more than one night here before. It’s not just here. He doesn’t like staying anywhere but his own place for the most part.”
“He’s going to have a hard time with Gadget,” I mused, looking at where he was trapped in a pen. There was a little puddle beside him, something that didn’t bother either Ranger or me. We just cleaned it up as we saw it. But for someone with cleanliness issues, I could see that being anxiety-inducing.
