Page 98 of The Way I Am Now
“Are you getting help for all this? More than the meds. Like counseling or something?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I have a therapist back home. We talk once a week.”
“Is it helping?”
“Mostly, I think.”
“Good, I’m glad.”
She gets so quiet for so long, I think she’s fallen asleep. But then she raises her head to look at me and says, “What about you?”
“What? Sorry, what about me?”
“Have you ever seen anyone—I mean, for the stuff with your dad? Or just in general?”
“Oh.” I think back to the Alateen meetings my mom brought me to when I was in middle school. “When I was younger, I went to a few group meetings but . . .”
“But what?” she asks me.
I shrug. “They just weren’t for me, I guess.” But as we lie here, I remember more clearly. That’s not what happened. The meetings conflicted with basketball and I stopped going.
“Hey, you should really try to sleep, okay?” I tell her. “I’ll be here the whole time.”
EDEN
His alarm goes off at five, like every other morning. Except he doesn’t wake up to it. And he’s not holding me like he was when we fell asleep. He’s facing away. I reach across him for his phone and snooze the alarm.
I whisper his name and touch his shoulder, run my hand along the side of his face. Nothing. “Josh?” I repeat, slightly louder.
He flinches awake. “Oh, what, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing. Your alarm went off.”
He takes a deep breath in and rolls onto his back, at least a little closer to me. “How is it morning already?” he groans.
“I know.” I prop myself up next to him and look down at his face. My eyes travel to the cuts on his neck—they look even worse. I lean in and kiss the red lines as softly as I can.
He reaches up and touches my face, my hair. “It’s okay,” he whispers, reading my mind.
I lie against him, and he kind of tenses up before he puts his arm around me.
“I technically still have the day off,” I tell him. “So I’m gonna try to get a call with my therapist today.”
“Okay, that sounds good.”
“Would you—no, never mind.”
“No, what?” he asks. The alarm goes off again. “Dammit,” he says, reaching to turn it off. “Would I what?”
“Would you . . . ?” I was going to ask if he’d be on the call, to tell her what happened, to tellmewhat happened too, but I feel like it’s not fair to ask him to relive it. “Would you just hold me for a few more minutes before you go?” I ask instead.
“Yeah, come here,” he says—of course he does. He rolls onto his side and wraps me up in his arms.
“Tighter,” I say.
