Page 50 of Well, Actually
The room is as silent as it was all those years ago when I said that damning phrase, and my gut twists like a dirty dishrag in the relived embarrassment.
“And… yeah. He didn’t say anything. We lay there in silence for what felt like an eternity until he fell asleep. I fixed my clothes, walked home alone, and didn’t hear from him after. And it… well, it really fucked me up, I guess.” I gesture vaguely at the mess I’ve made of everything. “That was the first time I was vulnerable with a guy—with anyone, really—and it went horribly. And I haven’t opened up that way again. It was so singularly humiliating that I suppress any intimate feelings as much as I can. I haven’t, um, told a partner I love them since.”
“How long ago was this?” Roberta asks softly, tipping her head to the side.
I glance at Cooper, then away. “I guess a little over six years now?”
She nods. “That’s quite a long time to carry these feelings.”
“Yes,” I agree emphatically. “It is. It really screwed me up and I’m angry that it did. I need to get over it. Get over myself.”
“What have you done to address these feelings?”
The question is a record scratch. “I’m sorry?”
Roberta shifts in her seat. “You’re saying this moment drastically altered the way that you interact with partners—that you withhold telling people you love them because you’re so hurt by what happened—so what have you done to work on that?”
I make a series of choking, spluttering sounds.
“Because to me,” Roberta continues, ignoring my crisis,“it seems like you had this experience where you tried being vulnerable with somebody you cared about and it didn’t go the way you wanted or planned or even objectively well. But it also sounds like you’ve used it as an excuse to stop opening up with other people. To stop searching for intimacy in relationships.”
“I feel like you’re a really mean therapist,” I blurt out, back pressed so harshly against the couch I might weave myself into the fabric. “I didn’t think therapists were supposed to be this brutally honest.”
Roberta tries to hide her smile, then shrugs. “I just think you’re strong enough to handle some tough love.”
“Eva’s as tough as they come,” Cooper says, reminding me he’s even here. I grind my molars together, a ripple of anger tracing down my arms.
Tough.Tough.
The word exerts an irritating pressure like a piece of meat stuck between teeth.
Iamtough.
And I’m sick of having to be.
I’m sick of having to choke down my feelings, fend for myself. I’m sick of stepping into glass armor every day, waiting for whatever stones people on the internet chuck my way, whatever fractures the powers that be at my job chisel onto my surface. I’m sick of having to scrape my way to aloofness just so I’m not a nuisance to my friends. My family.
I deserve softness, goddammit. I deserve tender moments and gentle caresses and whispered sweet nothings. I deserve someone, somewhere, wanting to like me for me and not the hardened veneer I gloss my vulnerability with.
“You thinking that might be part of the problem,” I say ona shaky breath, finding the courage to look at Cooper. “Things hurt me like they hurt you. I’m just as human as you are.” Apparently my body is really trying to prove the point, and a few hot teardrops roll down my cheeks. I furiously scrub them away before dropping my hands to the couch.
The room is silent, another moment where my too-big feelings have rendered everyone speechless and uncomfortable.
The warmth of skin on skin is sudden and jarring, a jolt of comfort and an instinct to recoil and compress myself into something small. I glance at where Cooper’s fingers wrap gently around my wrist, just enough pressure to feel like a buoy as I sink in these feelings.
“You’re right,” he whispers. My eyes skip up to his face, but his focus is trained on where he touches me, his eyebrows furrowed. The pad of his thumb grazes a circle along the sensitive skin of my inner wrist, gentle as butterfly wings. “Just because you can take it doesn’t mean you should have to. You shouldn’t always have to be bouncing back.”
I can’t look away from him, and fear claws like a trapped animal in my chest as tenderness surges through my limbs.
“Thanks for saying that,” I mumble, finally breaking eye contact and slipping my hand away from his. I brush my hair off my face. “And I appreciate the sentiment, but, as I’ve been trying to say, it’s also not that big of a deal.”
Roberta lets out a soft breath, and I decipher disappointment in the sound. She leaves the space for me to say more, but a minute passes and I don’t take it.
“And Rylie?” she says, turning to him. “What are your thoughts on that evening?”
Cooper clears his throat, and I feel him adjust in his seat but I keep my eyes pinned on the carpet.
“I think about it a lot, actually. With regret,” he adds quickly. “I can’t say that what I felt for Eva at that time was love—”
