Page 80 of The Cabin

“C’mon, Sol. That’s not what I mean.”

“I know what my faults are, Grayson. That’s why, I, I don’t know, communicated them to you ahead of time. In hopes you would, crazy concept, be understanding when they inevitably came up…” I’m backed in a corner and I need to lash out. I need to get away from the vulnerability necessary for this conversation. “It doesn’t matter what you mean and it doesn’t matter if you think I’m baiting. There’s nothing to bait. This is casual. The end.” I feel myself retreat into my body, close myself off.

He laughs and it’s miserable. “If you expect me to believe that then we don’t know each other as well as I thought we did.”

“Wedon’tknow each other, Grayson! You can’t know someone in three weeks. I’m just the random girl you started hooking up with because there was literally no one else around.” I haven’t retreated enough to take the bite out of my words.

“Of course I fucking know you, Sol. I know your deepest, darkest fears and regrets. I know what you look like in the morning. I know what you look like when you come. I know what you look like when you're about to give me the reaming out of a lifetime and I know the exact moment you’re going to storm off. I can tell immediately when the book you’re reading turns into a sexy scene. I know all about your career and your dreams. I know what makes you sad and I know that talking about your students makes you so happy. I know that even though you need a little push sometimes, you love to dance and be silly. You love animals. You are brave and courageous and so fucking smart. I can read your thoughts right off your face. I know when your initial reaction to something is to shy away, and I see the battle you have with yourself play across your face. I know before you even do it what you’ve decided. I know when your passion to start living your life wins, and when your insecurities have reared their ugly, totally bogus heads. I know your milkshake order. I know your t-shirt size and made sure you had shirts here in case you needed them, secretly hoping you’d need them because you spent the night. I know how you like your coffee and your pancakes and your eggs and your steak and the fact that your pasta can’t be too oily because you don’t like when the oil separates from the cream. I could go on and on and on, Sol.”

“Well that’s just –”

He steps closer to me. “Tell me what you want.”

“What?” I can smell him all around me.

“Tell me, in this situation, exactly what you actually want to happen.”

I…can’t. I cannot say to him that I want to kiss his face off for saying all those things. That I want to go to New York and support him. I told him yesterday that we were going to do this together, but that felt a lot more general and safe to say in comparison to, ‘Hey, I want to force you to be in a car with me for six hours and have me up in your space while you deal with a really stressful, personal thing because I am so smitten with you that the thought of not seeing you for a few days is making me itchy.’ And I definitely can’t say, ‘I wanna be there with you. I wanna do stressful, personal things with you. Not just hook up.’ Not when I know he doesn’t want the same thing. That’s just setting myself up for embarrassment. What’s the point?

Supporting him with the Natalie situation can be played off as something friends do for each other. Wanting to sleep in his bed every night and wrap myself up in him whenever I want is not something friends do.

I’m quiet for too long.

“Exactly. You can’t. You won’t.”

My hands fly up and he takes a step back. “What if you don’t want the same thing?!”

“That’s a part of living! You have to go after what you want or you lose yourself in what other people want.” Ouch. He’s not finished. “Do you want me to back off? Do you even want to be doing what we’re doing? Because I will, if that’s what you want. I don’t want to keep doing this if you're only doing it because I want to.”

I’m frozen. I’m spiraling. OfcourseI want to keep doing this. I love doing this. But I can’t tell him that. I want more than he’s looking for.

“Okay, Sol. Fine by me.” He’s assumed my answer from my continued silence. “Grab your bag, let’s go.”

“I can walk down to my cabin it’s –”

“Say ‘fine’ one more time.” His tone has me shutting my mouth. “You’re not going back to your cabin.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re coming with me to New York. I’m not leaving you up here by yourself without a car or a phone.”

“Grayson –”

“Get in the truck, Sol.”

I’m feeling about five too many things and I don’t want to have a panic attack in the truck.

“I’ll meet you out there in a second. I just need to grab something.” He grunts in response and I don’t slide down the wall until I hear the door close.

I put my head in my hands, massaging my temples and then through my hair, attempting to ground myself.

Okay. It’s okay. There are things that are still very difficult for me and they cannot be fixed in the span of three weeks. It would be impossible to get over that many years of trauma in this timeframe. I’m not sure you ever ‘get over’ trauma. But I do think there are things that can be done to ease the pain. To allow healthy functioning. This is a trauma response. Joanna is always saying that, right? Every time I push a new person away she says that. That I’m keeping people at a distance so they can’t hurt me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me something I don’t know. I’m paying hundreds of dollars a month for someone to confirm how pitiful I am.

Yeah…okay. I hear it. I hear the way I’m talking about myself. When I get back home I think it’s time I start taking therapy a little more seriously. The negative self-talk and insecurity are at an all-time high. They almost entirely disappear when Grayson is worshiping my body. But as soon as it’s over, everything creeps right back in.

I started therapy two years ago when I caught Brian cheating at the request of my parents. They didn’t know the nature of the breakup, but they could tell how it was affecting me.

I’ve shown up every week without fail. But I fudge my responses to keep things surface level and seemingly all fine and dandy. I don’t know if Joanna ever really believes my BS, but she’s been extremely patient with me anyway.

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