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“You know…” In times of crisis, I’m awesome at saying the most hurtful things possible to myself. I framed this one as an observation, so I could talk about myself behind my own back. “I don’t have any other friends. Isn’t that pathetic?”
“I wouldn’t say you don’t have any other friends,” Neil said quietly. “I know I don’t count, because I’m your partner, but I consider you my friend. And you have other friends.”
“Name one. Right now, I have alienated literally every other friend I had when I fucked off to London and stopped calling them.” My laugh was like acid reflux. “That’s how great I am about multitasking caring for people. How can you even stand to be around me?”
Neil stood and came to kneel on the carpet in front of me, shirtless, still in his suit trousers and shoes. He took my hands. “You know, and I know, that this is self-pity. But I want some part of your grief-addled brain to hear me: nothing you are saying about yourself is true.”
“I don’t know anyone who isn’t directly connected to you,” I argued. “And before that, I didn’t have that many friends, either. I mean, there’s the circle of friends you see at every party you’re invited to. But no friends I could call up in the middle of the night with a broken heart. Nobody I can make last minute plans with, or rely on to make me feel better when I’m feeling like…like this. Besides you,” I added quickly.
“You needn’t do that. I’m secure enough in our relationship that I don’t have to be all things to you at all times.”
That made me laugh, but only a little. Then, the tears started flowing again. “What if this is it? What if I don’t make any more friends? For the rest of my life, it’s just me and you and Emma and I become that weird lady from our building?”
“Mrs. Smoot-Hawley?”
“That’s not the point!” I dropped my head to my hands. “Neil, what if I’m incapable of maintaining a relationship with anybody?”
It hurt so much when I said it…it felt like a real fear, not something I’d constructed to feel sorry for myself about.
What if I really couldn’t maintain a relationship with anyone?
“Holli said…” My mouth felt dry. “Holli said that I’d dropped everyone to be with you. When I came to New York, I dropped Jessa.”
“And Jessa is a friend from home, I presume?”
I nodded miserably. “I haven’t spoken to her in years. I just went home and I didn’t even bother to introduce you to her. She was the most important person in my life for years, and now, she’s just someone whose updates I roll my eyes at on Facebook. I can’t stand the fact that this is how it’s going to turn out with Holli, too.”
“Darling, it’s far more common to lose touch with your friends from secondary school than it is to keep them—”
“But I can’t seem to keep anybody!” The giant, festering pimple that was my current emotional state had reached an ugly, sore head. I didn’t want to be talked out of hating myself. Fresh tears blurred my eyes, and my chest seemed to cave inward under the force of my pain. “What if the same thing happens with you? What if, in a couple of years, you realize how fucking awful I am? Or I just… I don’t know. I get bored and wander away?”
He reached up and brushed my hair back from my face. “I can’t imagine that happening to us. But I couldn’t imagine it happening to Elizabeth and me, either. You and I are both taking a rather large leap of faith with each other. But there is no reason to believe that you’re going to go through your life wantonly abandoning the people you love.”
I scooted away and stood, going to the nightstand for a tissue. I wiped my eyes, though I wasn’t done crying. I probably wouldn’t be for a very long time. “You know…it shouldn’t surprise me. I keep everybody at arms’ length. I don’t open up. I’ve heard this a thousand times before. I’m just fucking like him.”
“Like who?” The bewildered pain on Neil’s face when I looked back hurt me to my core. He didn’t want me to feel the way I felt right now, but he was helpless to stop it. I’d spent the last year hiding my fears and problems from him, and now, I was finally unable to hold them back.
The dam broke, and the words shot out of my mouth like a t-shirt cannon loaded with daddy issues. “My father!”
Neil looked like someone has slapped him. No, he looked like someone had slapped me. “You can’t really believe that about yourself.”
“Why not?” I demanded. “He makes up half my DNA. Why wouldn’t I be like him?”
“Why would you?” Neil was just as adamant. “That man walked out of your life. He walked away from his daughter. If that’s the type of person he is, then the best thing he could have done for you was walk away. But his choice, his selfish, stupid choice doesn’t reflect on you, Sophie.”
“It doesn’t reflect on me? I do the same thing with everyone I know! Before we went home for Christmas, I hadn’t seen my family in for fucking ever! And these are the people I’m supposed to love. And when you were in the hospital, when things were really, really bad, I thought…”
I couldn’t say it. It was too horrible to admit to him.
His beautiful, sad eyes shone with unshed tears, and I hated myself for even opening that can-of-worms. “You’re not going to hurt me, Sophie. Please, finish your thought.”
I was going to hurt him. “I thought about leaving. About just walking away from you.”
He didn’t say anything.
“There is something broken in me, Neil! I can’t find it to fix it, but it’s there, and I know that everyone can see it. They can see the broken thing in me, and they know…” I sobbed so hard my chest hurt. My nose and eyes ran, but I didn’t wipe my face now. I was paralyzed by the pain of my own admission. “They know I can’t be loved. Not even by my own fucking parent.”
He moved fast, wrapping me in his strong arms, crushing me against him tightly, as though he could squeeze the sadness out of me.
