Chapter 36

The past twenty-four hours just prove that he is still the only thing that can make this ache subside … Because this ache is for him and him alone. Arrick devastated my life when he walked away, just like he devastated my heart last night by leaving my room.

I break down in tears as logic overrides naivety.

“I can’t be … He’s in love with Natasha … He’s taken … He’s not in love with me. This isn’t true or…” I wail brokenly, something inside of me snapping into place and realizing that Emma is onto something after all. Emma has hit the nail on the head, and I was too stupid to ever see it.

All I can think of is the years of memories with him, the trust and bond between us. The happy times and shared moments; the bad ones and how he wiped away my tears. The pain I felt when he told me he was leaving, and the hatred when I met Natasha for the first time and realized this one was different for him. She wasn’t temporary. The overwhelming pettiness and dislike for a girl I assumed just annoyed me endlessly, while all this time it’s been heartbreaking jealousy because she has him in a way I never can.

The past eighteen months of simultaneously pushing him away with my behavior to punish yet clinging to him with need. I have spent the entirety of his relationship with her trying to regain my hold on him in stupid ways, smug when it works, devastated when it doesn’t. Lashing out at him for it, and it’s all becoming painfully crystal clear to me in this face-slapping moment of clarity.

The way everything was turned upside down in my life slowly after he was gone, and trips to see him were less frequent as his life got in the way. I started pulling away from him, rejecting his care and wisdom. My own life lost any sense of purpose, and I slowly drifted into obliviousness without him as my grounding force. I cannot deny what is hitting me square in the face with resounding force as it clicks, rendering me speechless and numb.

I am in love with my best friend.

And I never even knew it.

“We take this from another angle … We don’t deal with the past issues again; we deal with how you feel about him and give you tools to cope.” Emma is moving into counselor mode, mentally working out a route of therapy needed, and dealing with the problem like a checklist of things to do. Cutting out the emotional side and just focusing on this as a problem to overcome, as she does with her charity kids, but her noise is almost non-existent to me.

All I can do is keep running over and over in my head all the reasons I cannot be in love with him and meeting all the blinding obvious answers that I am, and probably have been for a long time. Too stupidly blind and immature to even realize it. It’s all too much while she carries on acting and talking like this is some simple problem that a few therapy sessions can fix, and not the absolute worst tragedy of my entire doomed life.

I shake my head violently, standing fast and unaware of when I even sat back down. I scrape the chair across the marble floor loudly. Words fail me as tears pour instantly and my head becomes a blurry mess or conflicting chaos. This is too much to handle.

“I can’t … I just need … space.” I try to breathe, gulping air as a full-blown panic attack hits me like a punch in the gut and I’m not prepared for it. It had been building up and now consumes me with all the aggressive violence of having a plastic zip-tied bag over my head. I try and gulp in oxygen, fear gripping me so tight my stomach tenses and I struggle to get anything at all. My lungs constrict, like they are about to collapse with the effort and my heart begins to hammer. I could be trying to breathe in sand right now as it would have the same effect. Everything starts to darken, arms splay out desperately, trying to catch onto something in terror, as it hits me hard.

I’m pulled to Emma’s touch on my wrist and then on my arm, her heat by my side, but all I can see is panic inducing darkness as the room closes in on me.

“Take slow breaths, Sophie. Slow and easy, try to calm your breaths and breathe through the attack. Lean down, head lower for me like a good girl.” Her voice is distant and faint like she’s so very far away in the darkness. I try to cling to her voice in the haze, but there’s only burning pain and terror that I’m suffocating slowly, sure I am going to die as I just cannot inflate my lungs at all. Emma’s arms come around me, guiding me down to my knees on a cold surface and then my forehead is on the cold flat too, and I lose any sort of orientation about how my body is. For all I know I could be hanging upside down by my legs. Dizziness and blinding fear having consumed me, so that my senses do not know what’s up or down, or even where I am anymore.

“Sloooow. In and out … don’t try and fight against yourself. Stop gasping and try to aim for one inhale. Listen to my voice, just focus on me and not everything going on inside your head.”

Emma’s voice is around me; pure concern crying out in every precise word. Emma has dealt with my attacks in the past and hasn’t seen one in a long time; neither have I, and I seem to have lost the ability to get through it myself. I cling to her voice, her directions, and the calm presence she is being for me. I slowly manage to get a few quick gulps of air, and then a few more. The blackness pushing back as I start to gasp in enough to be able to inflate my lungs partially.

“Can’t … love.” I struggle to formulate what I feel, reverting to another bout of struggling gasps to fill my lungs again.

“Don’t talk … Just breathe and try to calm yourself. It’s going to be okay, Sophie. You’re going to be okay. It will pass.” Her serene and grounding voice is all that’s holding me steady as the haze lifts with more oxygen in my lungs. I realize I am kneeling forward with my face on the floor, and her body is half wrapped around me protectively. Seeing the gray marble come into close focus and getting my bearings once more, I notice the pools of water by my nose, small little puddles of tears, and it seems so ridiculous for a second that I giggle. I don’t even know why, other than relief that I can inhale once more, and I no longer think I may black out. “Keep breathing, slow and steady. Good girl … That’s right.”