Page 91 of Healing Hearts
It would be so, so easy to sink back into how we used to be with each other. But there’s a part of me that’s wary, worried he’sgoing to smash my heart instead of just causing a spiderweb of cracks.
Oh, god. If he brought me here to tell me he’s dating again, I might vomit. And it won’t be from seasickness.
“Can you give me a little hint about what this is about?” I ask as he pays for the boat and the attendant gets one of the larger ones set up for us.
“I’d rather we were out there so I don’t get cold feet,” he says.
That is not a helpful comment for my peace of mind, and I grip my hands together in front of me. Then I practice my deep breathing, the routine I’ve done with Amir when he’s feeling emotionally overwhelmed.
Trent’s hand lands on the small of my back, and the contact makes me want to rotate into his side, gather him close and never let him go. But the familiar gesture also settles my anxiety in a way I never would have predicted. He’s put his hand there so many times for so many reasons. It’s like my body knows with that single handprint that whatever he’s going to say on the boat won’t break my heart more.
We climb into the boat, and it rocks, but this time neither of us laughs about the motion. Nothing feels funny yet, and I miss that ease.
He rows us out into the middle of the lake and then he clicks the oars into place. He swallows and runs his hands down his face.
The swishing in my stomach returns.
“I, uh, I’m not sure where to start. Which, since I asked you here, probably seems like poor planning.”
“I don’t care where you start, Trent. But I have to be honest, all of this is making me really anxious. Are you—are you dating someone else?”
“Absolutely not,” Trent says with a startled laugh. “Not a chance.”
I release the pent-up breath, and my whole body quiets. Whatever this is, it’s not that. Thank god.
“Some of this is hard for me to say out loud, but my therapist thinks—I think—it’s important you know it all.”
“Therapist?”
“Took your advice—well, your advice and Grady’s. It’s been good for me. You know? I was so in my head in ways that weren’t helpful or maybe even true.”
“Trent, I’m so proud of you,” I whisper.
A hint of a smile almost appears, and he puts his elbows on his knees. “That means a lot, Em, but you don’t even know the half of it.”
“Tell me,” I say. “Whatever you want to tell me, I want to hear it.”
“Not all of it is good.”
“That’s okay.”
“You know about the drug stuff in high school,” he says, “but what I never really told anyone, what I rarely said out loud was that…” He takes a deep breath. “Part of me was proud of what I accomplished then—even though I got arrested and went to jail, even though what I did hurt people. For a long time, I felt really ashamed of being proud of that. And I guess, what I’ve figured out with Amber’s help—that’s my therapist—is that I wasn’t so much proud of the drug part, but I was proud that I was able to build something. It was hard for me to pull those two ideas apart, and so I saw my success as something, subconsciously, that I was ashamed of.”
Some of that makes sense. Trent was good at joking about being good at things, but genuine compliments made him uncomfortable, and he would divert attention to someone or something else. When he worked for Earl, he’d seemed better at taking people’s kind comments, but maybe that was because he didn’t own the business, wasn’t responsible for everything.
“On top of that, when I moved back to Little Falls, it felt like people were only comfortable with me getting so far beyond what I’d done at nineteen before someone felt the need to remind me that I’d been that guy, and that guy had been a total piece of shit.”
“Oh, Trent.” Tears fill my eyes, and I really wish we weren’t in a rowboat so I could hug him.
“But I’ve had to learn how to separatewhatI did fromwhoI am. If I let people who don’t know me create my value, then I’m always going to struggle to get beyond that. They know what I did, but not who I am.”
“It’s going to take time—”
“It might,” he agrees. “I also have to be okay if it never happens. If there are people who will always identify me by what I did and not who I am. I have to know and believe in who I am, and I have to have faith that people who do know me, who love me, aren’t bullshitting me when they say I’m a good man.” His voice cracks.
I knew there was a lot to uncover, a lot going on under the surface, but I’m startled by how deep it goes, how far those roots crept, unseen.
“Honestly, I’m not quite there with all of that. When you believe things about yourself, it takes a long time to reprogram those lines.”
