Page 101 of Heartbeat

“And I will kick your ass if you do it again.”

“Noted,” I said, smiling.

She smiled again. Another rare Marcy moment.

“I’ll help with Kim,” she said. “She’s very nice; you’ll like her.”

“He had a crush on Cynthia before her.”

“Thompson?”

I nodded. “She blew him off though.”

“Sounds like Cynthia.”

My phone vibrated for a third time, but this time, I checked if it was still Ethan. I might have grinned once I saw that it was indeed him; I couldn’t be sure.

“So,” she said, looking at the phone and then at me. “You’re dating.”

“I’m not dating.”

She simply raised her eyebrows. “Is he cute?”

“How did you?”

“Oh, please. You almost melted when you said his name. Ethan, is it?”

I nodded.

“You know what they say about first loves, right?”

“What’s that?”

“They never die.”

Chapter Nineteen

This (seeming) Endlessness

School went by in slow motion. I was pretty much absent in all my classes, having the hardest time focusing on the simplest of tasks. Ethan had training all day, which meant I wouldn’t get to see him until we met after my session, and no one I knew shared any of my classes—which was actually not the worst thing. So much was going on, it seemed as though all I’d been doing the past few weeks was running to catch up. In a way, I’d always felt like that though—that I was missing it. As if things happened so swiftly, I couldn’t hope to easily keep up. It was the kind of thing most people felt, at one point or another, but it bothered me to no end. I’ve always longed for a steadier pace. Not too still, just slow enough so I could appreciate it—both the good and the bad.

This time, it was somewhat different. There were areas of my life I wished would slow down considerably to properly understand it all. Other areas, alas, I wouldn’t mind going by faster. Like the conversation with Marcy. It might mean that I am an awful human, but I wasn’t ready for it. And yes, I wished it could’ve been quicker, but only in a way that its contents could’ve been preserved. It was necessary, both for me and her, but…it took too much.

That was the thing about living with what felt like an anvil attached to your chest at all times. Interactions became chores, duties of sorts that I had absolutely no control over. I might have genuinely wished for them to occur, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t take from me more than I could spare. And I was also rarely ready for it, the ripping of inches of self that couldn’t be prevented—not unless some form of isolation was put into effect. And that was something I no longer needed—or wanted, for that matter. I didn’t care for the idea of isolating myself, at least not by myself. I would gladly run away, be alone, and shut most things out…with him. Still, it felt sad, sometimes, knowing I had no timetable, no end date to rely on or look forward to. That was usually when and why some people lost hope. And it was due to one of the most wicked characteristics of depression: its (seeming) endlessness.

But then, how was it that the same thing—in this case the interaction with others—could equal duty with one person and, with another, become something absolutely craved? The anvil was still there, so why did it seem to shift its weight at random? Except it wasn’t random, was it? Few things truly were. It was, however, incidental. I knew why I felt so tired since seeing Marcy. In a way, she was the one who made me aware of it. It didn’t have anything to do with Ethan and yet it had everything to do with him. I kept trying to reconnect with the people in my life who had failed to show me what a boy, who I’d just met, seemed capable of doing with utter ease and exceptional readiness. For that, I had no answers. Perhaps a question.

What did that make me?

*

“Thomas?”

“Sorry?” I hadn’t heard her, too busy looking outside as I stood in her office. I finally turned to her after who knew how many times she’d called my name.

“Where were you?” Dr. Foster asked, smiling.

“Oh, I—” I tried buying some time, but it was of no use.

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