Page 102 of The Plus One
“I want you to stay,” Indira cried. “I want you to find a therapist. I want you to have a stable home. With me. I want us to work together to actually build something that can last.”
“Oh. Sure. Fuck all my obligations then, right?”
“Yes. Fuck your obligations. Fuck your scholarship. Fuck it all.” She stepped toward him again. “You’re so dead set on perpetuating this cycle of self-harm out of guilt that you aren’t even willing to fight for other options.”
“Because there aren’t other options!” He flung his hands out at his sides. “Not for me. It’s a contract, this legally binding fuckingagreement. I don’t even know where I would start to get out of it. And I…” Jude’s throat locked up, a choked gasp escaping him.
“You what?” Indira said, voice soft.
Jude closed his eyes, shaking his head like he could empty it of the memories. That would never happen.
“I’ve watched too many people suffer,” Jude said, voice low. “Too many people die on my table for me to take some easy way out.”
Indira was silent for a moment before clearing her throat.
“Living—fully, unabashedly, fearlessly living—isn’t the easy way out, Jude,” she said. “It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever fucking do. Numbing yourself is the easy part. Hiding in self-loathing is the escape. You want to make those losses worth it? Then fucking choose yourself, Jude. Choose us. Choose your health. It’s okay to let go of something that’s hurting you. That won’t ever change the love you had for it. If anything, it will let you preserve that love. But you can move away from something that doesn’t serve you. That doesn’t make you weak, that makes you brave.”
Jude rested his hands on the counter, his head hanging as he tried to catch his breath.
“We’re on the same team here,” Indira whispered. “We can work through this together. We have to.” She placed her hand on his back, and Jude flinched away.
“Stop. Just fucking stop. You’re making this so much harder. This isn’t some puzzle for you to solve. I’m not some patient for you to fix, Indira.”
The usual transparency in Indira’s eyes shuttered closed as his words hit her. She dropped her gaze to look at the floor, and Jude could almost hear the thoughts whirring through her mind.
“You’re right,” she said after what felt like an eternity. Her eyes flicked back to Jude’s, but the vulnerability was back in them. With a fresh look of determination that scared him shitless.
“You aren’t my patient. You aren’t a diagnosis. You aren’t a case file. You’re the person I love. You’re the person I would do anything for. I’m not here to fix you, Jude. I’m not. And I never was. No onecan single-handedly fix another person. We all hurtle through life, getting bumped and cracked and broken along the way, but we are solely responsible for our own healing.”
Her voice fractured, eyes red-rimmed as she stared at him.
“And it’s work,” she said through gritted teeth. “It’s fucking hard. I will never know what it was like for you to see the things you did, experience the trauma you did, and I can never take that experience away from you.”
Indira took another tentative step toward him, gently taking his hand and holding it to her chest.
“But I do know what it’s like to feel broken and unlovable,” she said, tears falling down her cheeks. “I know what it feels like to think you’re unworthy of someone’s care and support, that you don’t deserve to lean on others while you get your shit together. But I also know it’s possible to change that thought process. We tell ourselves lies over and over again, the brain this fickle organ that sometimes likes to hurt us. But just because we tell ourselves something, doesn’t make it true. I’m not here to change you or heal you.”
She took a shaky breath, ducking her head to press a kiss to his knuckles. “I’m here to support you. To love you. Every step of the way. Let me help you. Let’s figure a way out of this.”
Jude pulled his hand away, the world collapsing around him. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.
He felt so overwhelmingly hopeless and lost and broken, he was surprised he was still standing upright.
And Indira. His Indira. Seeing the tears streak down her cheeks felt like someone had lodged a hook deep into his chest and pulled until his bones cracked. He did that to her. Him and his shitty choices and his inability to cope.
He couldn’t stay and keep hurting her.
“I need to leave,” Jude said gruffly, moving to the door in quick strides.
“Jude.”
The sound of his name on Indira’s lips always seemed to stop the earth from spinning, changing its entire axis with her cadence.
He looked at her over his shoulder, hand poised on the doorknob.
Tears still marked her face, but her shoulders were squared, chin set. “Get the air you need. But when you come back, we go forward together.”
Jude swallowed, turning his face away in shame and anger and sadness.
