Page 114 of Revelry
I paused.I don’t trust peoplewas practically my slogan. Except recently every time Gertrude had asked me to trust her, I had. And everything had worked out fine. Had worked out amazing, in fact. She had always done right by me, given me what I needed, and I knew that’s what Neil was trying to do now.
He gestured to the bottom of the wall and I followed him over, my knees practically wobbling as I walked. Neil started climbing and I glanced up, and up, my throat drying.
“You think Gertrude would like to do something like this? Something adventurous?” Neil called down when he saw I hadn’t moved.
Asshole.
I growled in frustration then reached out, my hands shaking, palms sweating and slowly began my climb. I didn’t look down, didn’t think about anything except Gertrude and eventually I reached the top. I had to pause and collect myself before I stepped out onto the platform.
“Come on, Tate. You’ve already done it, you just don’t realize the hardest part is over,” Neil said. He was hunched down next to me, holding out a hand, ready to help me onto the platform. I pushed out a shaky breath. He was wrong though. The hardest part would be whatever I had to do to get down.
I gripped his hand and he pulled me onto the platform. Moments passed while I collected myself, trying to give myself a pep talk, Gertrude style, to stay calm. I glanced around the woods, the trees looked amazing from so high up and I was immediately reminded of Gertrude’s late night tree climbing habit and our chats. The breeze gently wafted their pine scent towards me. The birdsong broke the silence and yet somehow made everything better.
Neil went through the motions of setting up the harness and talked me through which ropes were which. I tried to shut out what was happening, my fingers itching to click and ground myself but I knew this was what I was trying to beat and I held off. My nerves screamed at me to do it but I shut them out and focused on one thing. The look on Gertrude’s face when I told her all about this.
“Now I want you to think about everything that is holding you back from living a peaceful, happy life.” Neil began, then pointed at the ground. “And you’re not going to come down from here until you decide what kind of man you want to be and what kind of life you want to live by the time you reach the bottom.”
My mind was running at a million miles an hour as I looked over the edge and saw just how fucking far down that was. My stomach flipped and I jolted like I was already falling.
“You hear me, Tate?”
My pulse pounded in my ears, my vision blurring. “Yeah, I hear you.”
“I’m going to be by your side, we’ll do this together. But I mean it, Tate, you’ve got to really do this, you owe it to yourself. And to her.”
I stood at the edge, closing my eyes and blowing out deep breaths to try and center myself. It wasn’t working. I was shaky and on edge which didn’t bode well for my descent. I need to break out of this. Needed to channel my thoughts.
What kind of man did I want to be? I didn’t even know.
“Tate?” I heard Neil’s voice from next to me. He was leaning off the edge, his feet pressed against the wall as he hung, swaying in the breeze. He sounded too far away. I chanced a look over the edge and immediately panicked.
“I want you to think hard,” Neil said.
I don’t know how long I stood there, paralyzed by fear, staring down at the ground below. But then I realized exactly that. Iwasfrozen by fear in my life. That’s why I needed Gertrude in the first place, I needed her to show me how tolive.To push me past the realms of comfort and into truly living. And now I needed to figure it out for myself.
“What kind of man are you going to be when you get down there, Tate?” Neil called. “I want you to shout it out.”
“That’s stupid.”
“I know, but do it anyway.”
“I want…” My throat clogged. “I want to be secure.”
“Good, that’s good! What else?”
I wracked my brain. “I want to trust people.”
“Well, this is a good start, hopefully,” he said, then swung over to pat me on the back.
When I didn’t say anything else, Neil urged me on.
I swallowed hard around the words clogging my throat. “I don’t want to be angry anymore. Or bitter.”
“With your parents?”
“Yeah.”
“So then maybe something you should do when you get down there is think about crossing off the highest trigger on your ERP list; having a conversation with your father?”
