Chapter 34

I slump back, mirroring Emma’s casual pose as the small happy laughter and squeals echo gently from outside with Jake’s voice intermingled and drift our way. Emma leans back for a second to peek outside, a warmth hitting her face and lighting up her eyes before she returns to focus on me.

“Well?” Emma reminds me. I was sitting watching her, my head lost somewhere between her ten thousand questions and just sheer fatigue.

“I’ve been better! Life sucked here and yet still sucked in New York, so go figure. I’ve felt better, and Arrick pretty much made me come home, so I guess I didn’t really choose it.” I shrug and swipe my mug to take a mouthful of the strong coffee, Italian roast or something Jake, ‘the coffee connoisseur’, has obviously filled it with. I blanch at how strong it is, even with creamer.

“Bristly … Uncharacteristically so.” Emma raises eyebrows my way with only a look of calculation on her face, no doubt her psychology degree working overtime in that quick brain to pinpoint the route to my awful personality facelift.

“It’s a touchy subject and getting off the defensive is harder than it seems.” I sink down again, reprimanded and scolded, even though she has barely tried to.

“I’m getting a little tension where Arrick is concerned. Are you two fighting over you coming home?” Emma leans in towards me, studying me closely, and pushes her mug to one side so she can rest her elbows and arms across, making it comfortable to lean her ample bust on. That instant sharp slicing shard hits my heart again, blinking back the almost instant prickle of tears and bite on my lip to curb it. Hating how his name can bring it on like this.

“Arrick and I are done … He has a life to be getting on with and doesn’t need, or want, my drama. Silly little girls with selfish problems are so not his thing anymore.” I state sharply then have to sniff back the emotion that threatens to spill over. Emma regards me in silence for a moment.

“Arrick adores you, Sophie, he always has. I’m quite sure, that even with a life elsewhere, he will always find the time for you. In fact, I know he will. It’s just a fight; something that will pass. Do you want to talk about it?” Emma smiles gently, urging me to open up, but I only shrug more. I shake my head with sheer tiredness over this whole thing. I just want to not think about him for like five minutes. I sigh and exhale heavily, letting out a tense breath which signals how crap I feel.

“I need to just deal with things on my own and accept that he is moving on in life. I can’t keep expecting him to always pick up the broken pieces for me, and I get the vibe he doesn’t want to anymore either.” I fiddle with the handle of my mug, unable to retain eye contact while feeling so utterly washed out and deflated inside. This conversation is harder than I thought it would be, but for entirely different reasons.

“Is that part of your sadness? That you’re losing what you two had? That you maybe miss him?” Emma frowns softly, her brows framing soft blue eyes in an endearingly pleading way, urging me to keep going.

“No. Yes. Maybe? … I don’t know.” I sit up straight and raise my palms in frustration. “It was easier before … Even after … after what sperm donor did. I was happy for a while, but then … I don’t know, Emma. Something changed inside of me, and in the last couple of years, it’s just kept growing.” The words flood out in a rapid flow of relief, just pouring out because I need them to. Because I am sick of mulling this over alone, and I trust that she will never judge me, because this is what she does for me, always has. Effortlessly gets me to talk, even when I don’t want to. She was the first person I ever admitted to that I ran from violence and sexual abuse, back when I didn’t even know her. It set the bar for how we became.

“Is it the past coming back to haunt you once more?” Emma soothes. Watching and retaining everything I say so she can analyze it all with that fast brain.

“I don’t know. It’s like there’s a deep hole in here.” I pat my heart childishly. “It started off small and it grew and grew, darker and wider, making me feel like I’m suffocating. I don’t know why it’s there, or how to fix it, Ems. It just shadows me all the time, and at first, getting trashed and partying helped me ignore it.” The heavy ball of anxiety expands to a heavy weight through my entire torso, aching and groaning internally with the effort of being contained. I feel like I can no longer breathe again, and I am suddenly overwhelmed with the need to cry. Emma chews on her lip thoughtfully.

“How long have you felt this way? More specifically, when did you first notice it?” Her voice is soft and even, regarding me seriously, lifting her own mug to take a calm sip. She is in therapist mode and I know the drill. They ask a question and you should pour out as much as you can. I’ve been to enough sessions to fall into this mode seamlessly.

“I don’t know, a while. I can’t pinpoint it. I don’t remember feeling this way until after I went on that skiing trip with Arrick and his friends a couple years back. That is the last real memory I have of feeling complete stillness in here.” I tap my heart again, frustrated with whatever this is. Glad that I have someone who can maybe help figure out the root cause, and that maybe, finally, there is something I can do about it. “After that, it was just was there, and it got worse and worse until I couldn’t breathe anymore. I can’t think straight because I don’t even know what it is. I’m so sick of the nothing it makes me feel in life … Like that movie, you know? The Never-Ending Story. When the huge black nothing sweeps through and clears everything into chaos and oblivion until there is nothing left. That’s how this feels inside.” I realize tears have made their way down my cheeks, without even noticing, and Emma’s hand has found its way across the table to hold mine. I don’t even know how both things happened when I was so consumed in trying to describe the pit that is always within me.

“Did something happen after that trip, something that could have triggered an old scar or memory, maybe?” Emma squeezes my fingers, pulling over a box of tissues on the table and pushes them to me. I take one with my free hand and wipe my face, not really crying properly, more of a leaking of fluid from my eyes, while I still feel pretty wiped out inside.

“No, not that I can think of. Just life, school starting, parents making me feel pressured to choose a career path. Arrick moved to the city to take his fighting career more seriously, and nothing … nothing that could do this!” My anxiety rises, my voice pitched as my breathing shallows. Anxiety and emotion manifesting in the first throes of an anxiety attack and I take the automatic slow steady breaths to curb them like she has always shown me. I stopped having full-blown panic attacks years before, but sometimes, like now, they start to hit me again.

“When you were seeing James, your counselor, did he ever suggest any type of meds?” Emma regards my expression, but the mere mention of medication hits me in the chest violently.

“I don’t want meds, I’m not crazy, and I managed without them before. You know how I feel about pills, Emma.” I jut out my chin defiantly. Anger spikes out of nowhere as the memory of my mom pushing her drugs and pills, to get through life, hits me hard in the brain. I despise that memory as much as I despise her. She was a functioning junkie on prescribed meds, and partly the reason she’d been a shit excuse of a mother who never stopped what was happening to me.

“We need to get you back into a regular session, work you through this and pinpoint what it is that’s making you feel this way.” Emma’s still gripping my hand securely. More squeals from the happy children outside just seems to agitate me, highlighting how shitty my existence has become when everyone else sounds like they’re happily loving life.

“You think I don’t know that? You think I want to be this way?” I snap, losing my shit with her in just a sheer outpouring of pain. Anger brimming to the surface as a chaos of thoughts and feelings consume me. “I’m lost, Emma. Life means nothing to me anymore, and the people I thought had my back left me alone. The one person who I thought would always be there for me, while everyone else had someone of their own … He left me.” It comes out in a whoosh of tears and rambling; my pain formulating sentences that my brain doesn’t have time to edit.