Page 19 of Doors & Windows
The offer was so absurd he nearly laughed. “It’s your house,” he said, adjusting the paper towel to shield his thumb from the ceramic.
“Only by the luck of family lineage,” Ellis said. “And, in case you need reminding, it’s your house, too.”
It was not that simple of a truth, even if Ellis truly did see it that way, but Jonah saw no reason to argue right then. Tentatively, he crossed to the far end of the sofa and settled into it.
“You don’t have to go,” Jonah said after a moment, stilted and stiff. It was strange to give permission thatwasn’t really his to grant, but Ellis seemed to relax at the reassurance and let it drop.
For several minutes, neither of them spoke. The quiet was surprisingly comfortable, smoothed over by the shared meal and the drone of the television, but it didn’t stop the familiar tingle of anxiety that prickled in Jonah’s fingertips. He gripped his spoon tightly, the metal edge digging into his skin, and forced himself to breathe normally.
He resented this part of himself that had emerged from the rubble of the last couple of years—the one that reacted poorly to something as innocuous as proximity to another person, even when his brain understood that there was no immediate threat to his safety. Sometimes the feeling would hit before he could make sense of it, all reaction and no logic, and it required him to retrace the steps of his anxiety to find the root. Sometimes there wasn’t one, at least not that he could discern.
Sometimes it was this: being alone with a man in the middle of the night, every nerve in his body waiting for the moment a hand would fall heavy on his thigh, fingers would stroke his cheek, would turn his head and—
“I’ve been seeing someone.”
Ellis’s words were so unexpected that Jonah had to run them back a few times to make sense of them.
Jonah glanced his way, but Ellis was looking at the TV, his expression carefully blank. A few long seconds passed without elaboration, so Jonah cleared his throat. “Like… a girlfriend?”
Ellis’s responding laugh was equally unexpected. He shook his head, some of his tension shaking off with it. “No. I mean a doctor. A therapist.”
“Oh.” Jonah didn’t know what to say to that. Didn’t know why Ellis was telling him at all. “Okay,” he said. Then, because he was inexplicably curious to know the answer, he asked, “Because you can’t sleep?”
“Among other things.”
Jonah gave a meaningful look at the clock on the wall. “It doesn’t seem to be helping.”
His laugh this time was a quiet, self-deprecating thing. “It would probably work faster if I could take her advice on getting a prescription. I was…” He stopped and started again. “I’m an addict. I haven’t used in a decade, but that doesn’t mean I’m immune to relapse. I don’t like to put myself in a position to slip.”
This was more information Jonah didn’t know what to do with. He thought about the little white pills Shepard used to slip him, back in the beginning, when it was harder for Jonah to quell his body’s resistance to the abuse. He could still taste the lingering powder in the back of his throat. He wondered how much Ellis knew about that element of what went on in the house. How much of a threat it posed to his stability.
“It is helping, though,” Ellis said. He was looking at Jonah now, his eyes intent. “In ways that are less visible, I think.”
All at once, Jonah understood why he had brought this up. His hackles rose.
“I don’t want to overstep,” Ellis said. “Do you mind if I ask… Have you seen anyone? Since moving home with your mom? Or moving here?”
The idea of seeing a therapist while he lived with his mother was laughable. It was a fundamental truth that had been instilled in him since childhood, that when you face hardships, you turn to prayer. You humble yourself. You search inside for the things you’ve done wrong in the eyes of God and make yourself clean. To turn to the conceit of man in place of spiritual guidance would be blasphemy.
For the brief time he’d been back in Indiana, Jonah had watched his mother go to her knees every night in prayer as her eldest son wasted away before her eyes. Not once had it occurred to her to get him help from a professional. Not once had Jonah had the strength to ask for it, nor to weather the judgement that asking would bring.
Now that he was here, now that his head stayed above water on most days, that reasoning felt thinner. Old habits died hard, he supposed.
But it was more than that.
Seeking professional help meant embarking on an excavation that Jonah was not ready to undertake. Things he had carefully buried would be dragged to the surface with all the tenderness of a breathing tube ripped from his throat, snagging on flesh, making him choke. He would have to tell someone—a stranger—about where it all started. With his parents. With Dominic. Then, with everyone who came after.He would have to recount the visions he still saw in blood-soaked nightmares. Shepard’s face shadowed in the belly of the whale and the weight of his corpse on Jonah’s lungs.
No. He didn’t want to remember.
You already remember,a cold voice whispered at the back of his skull.You will never forget.
“No.” Jonah winced, surprised to hear the steel in his own voice. “I don’t… I haven’t. I’m fine.” He could feel the burn of a gaze on the side of his face, but he refused to meet it.
“Jonah,” Ellis began uneasily, and Jonah was suddenly aware of just how rarely he addressed him by name.
Names had a strange history between them; when they’d met, they’d been Leo and Marcus. He wondered if Ellis, too, had trouble remembering which one he was some days.
“What you’ve been through would be a lot for anyone to cope with, but especially someone so young. Sometimes I forget just how young you are.”
