Page 93 of Change My Mind
“It took about five minutes to get him back to breathing mostly normally. Does he have them often?”
I shook my head. “He’s had one that I know of before. Earlier in the summer.”
“Do you remember what scents he picked out?” Clara asked.
“Wood sage and sea salt. Why?” I replied instantly.
The beginnings of a smile broke out on her face. “Was just curious.”
“Wait, wood sage and—He’s that dialled in to your perfume even when he’s in the depths of a panic attack? Oh shit, he’s down bad,” Rachel said on a laugh.
“I need to talk to him,” I said.
“Not tonight, you don’t. Just give him, give yourself, the night. Come on, let’s go build a pillow fort and watchMiss Congeniality.”
Fifty-Six
ELI
Jesse pulled a slice of cake out of his yellow jacket and held it out to me within a minute of us leaving Vivi’s.
“You need to eat,” he said as he shook it in my face. I pushed his hand down.
“I don’t eat Victoria Sponge cake,” I said. Jesse simply pocketed it and procured a slice of caterpillar cake from his other pocket. I laughed softly. “How many slices of cake do you have on you right now?”
“Just those two. Why did you make three Victoria Sponges if you don’t like them?”
The words felt like they were sticking in my throat. Talking about this particular thing always hurt a little. But at least I hadn’t forgotten about it. I cleared my throat.
“It’s my mum’s birthday on Monday. I used to make her a Victoria Sponge every year. I’m not a baker, so I start doing practice ones around Halloween. I’ve never fallen out of the habit and end up with an abundance of sponges for about a week.”
I took a massive bite of cake and immediately felt better. I forgot how hungry the come down from a panic attack could make me. That, combined with the fact that I’d hardly eaten today, made me ravenous.
“That’s beautiful. Did you always not like them, or is that a recent development?”
“I don’t know why, but something about them has always bothered me. I love cake, I love cream, and I love jam individually, but all together, I can’t cope.”
“That’s…unique,” Jesse said slowly.
“You can say it’s fucking weird, I don’t mind. I know it makes no sense.”
“Yeah, it is pretty weird.” He paused for a deep breath. “There is no way for me to pivot to this casually, so I’m just going to come out and say it. We can either talk about it now while we’re walking. Or we can wait until we get home and have a heart-to-heart face-to-face, where you will inevitably clam up because you don’t want to make eye contact while you bare your soul.”
“Are you going to believe me if I say that it was brought on by my dead mother’s upcoming birthday?”
“No, I’m not. I think it was a contributing factor, but you could breathe just fine until you couldn’t.”
A silence fell over us as I ate the rest of my cake, the chocolate making me feel more and more human with every bite. Jesse didn’t push. He just walked by my side and waited.
We were both walking uncharacteristically slowly for two men with legs as long as ours.
“Well, the therapist that I will start seeing on Monday will tell me that it is all rooted in trauma,” I tried to joke. Jesse snorted and then levelled me with a look that told me that answer wasn’t going to work either.
All things considered, it had been a long time since I had told a friend, apart from Addie, anything too deep. So many ofmy friendships had become shallower as time moved on, and I continued to be the only one of us to have experienced near-world-ending grief. It became too hard to have to keep explaining that grief worked in waves—sometimes it was in the background, and sometimes it made you feel like you were drowning out of nowhere. And as my friendships—and relationship—became shallower, I threw myself into work more, where I didn’t have to talk at all. Not about anything meaningful.
Jesse had never given the impression that he would be anything but supportive, no matter the ebbs and flows. I mean, he just left his own engagement party and his fiancée on her birthday for me. And was feeding me cake and letting me figure out my shit in real time without getting annoyed that we were walking in silence.
“It is rooted in trauma. Trauma of getting disowned by my dad for not wanting to follow in his footsteps, and the rest of the family just going along with it. I mean, before she died, Mum tried to keep in touch. She called me on a semi-regular basis. She still sent me a card on my birthday, and I saw her every year around hers, but she didn’t fight for me. She didn’t challenge her husband on what he was doing; she let it happen. I was still expendable to her.
