‘So, will it be the last?’ I asked curiously, pouring coffee from the machine and now dumping creamer in it. Trying to focus my thoughts on anything but my own selfish attitude for once, and internally chastising myself for it.
‘Who knows, Jake still very effectively uses his sexpertise to bend me to his way of thinking, so I can never tell. And it’s not like his libido is ever an issue if we want another, sometimes I think he needs an anti-Viagra pill. I struggle to keep up with him sometimes, especially now we have some little darlings to run us ragged and I am once again resembling a beached whale.’ Emma giggles. Throwing back her trademark short wavy, tawny hair, back off her face; her style hasn’t changed in so long and she still looks as young and pretty as she did years ago. Only difference is, being with Jake has changed her from a very controlled, tailored and closed off PA, to the warm maternal beauty, shining example of love, with a weakness for feminine dresses, sitting before me.
‘I can see you two having the football team before you’re done.’ I slide the mug in front of Emma and slide into the seat opposite her a little heavily. Knowing her and knowing us, I need to just get this over and done with so we can put it out of the way.
‘Are we going to get to the point or keep making small talk and pretend it’s not why I’m here?’ I look at her pointedly, a little hint of attitude brimming underneath that is in no way called for when it comes to her, but lately it’s been like second nature.
‘Nice to see you haven’t changed all that much Soph’s. Direct and doesn’t beat around the bush. You can cut the frost though, I am still capable of taking on stroppy Sophie, even though I weigh like five hundred pounds more.’ Emma smiles at me, turning fully into the table to face me head on.
‘Always assuming I’m going to give you a hard time, so go into ultra-defensive mode.’ Emma lets go of her mug and pushes her hand over mine on the table loosely.
‘You should know me better by now. I don’t judge you Miele, I never judge you.’
‘No but you have a way of making me feel guilty about everything, like you’re doing right now.’ I sigh, sliding my hand free and placing it on my lap to fiddle with my other fingers defensively, already that relaxed aura is slipping and the tight knot of apprehension and anxiety forming that hard ball in my stomach. Emma slightly narrows her gaze, that quick brain evaluating how she should respond to me. Her effortlessly keen perception and ability to switch to suit a mood is one of the reasons she is one of the states most coveted children’s psychiatrist.
‘How about you just talk and I just listen. We shall take it from there and not rehash the past few months…. You won’t get anything from a lecture, or hearing how hurt we all were or worried.’
Emma ignores the withdrawal of contact and instead lifts her mug to take a sip slowly, eyes watching me carefully. Still, even years after thawing out and becoming a much softer person, she still has all the grace and mannerisms of the very controlled woman she once was.
‘Is this the new methods you counsellors are using nowadays?’ I smirk, knowing fine well Emma is currently not working as a therapist in her children’s charity. Jake has one rule over Emma that he will never bend over, no matter how much she flutters lashes at him, and that is she never works while pregnant; something she lets him have, to cut down on his stress levels. Emma raises a questioning eyebrow.
‘Letting me think you’re not going to guilt me, yet making me guilty, with a reminding sentence that I should be.’ I shrug and lean back in my seat, stretching a little to relieve some of the tension in my muscles and sighing heavily, always trying to push my moods into a more even keel lately and getting pissed at myself for the lack of ability in recent months.
‘No, it’s just a method I find works with you.’ Emma discards her mug and sits back, ready to listen and bringing a sense of calm to the table. I smile, despite myself, and shake my head at her. Hating how she always knows how to get through me and yet glad that she does.
‘What do you want me to say? I’m sorry I took off, I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment to all of you? Is that what you want to hear? I’m sorry I got so reckless and wild that my parents tried to control me, and I ran off like a spoiled brat after a tantrum? Yes… I did all of the above, and yes, believe it or not…. I am actually sorry about all of it.’ I’m fragile still, hating the prying and the lectures I know will be coming with being back. Hate that to stay here, I will have to talk and explain and go back to therapy once more, so that everyone sees that I am trying to change. Hate that my last couple of years will be dissected until they are all sure I am mended, like I was once before, and won’t be able to relax until I am.
‘No. I want to hear about you and how you have been doing, how you’ve been feeling. I want to know that you have been okay, been looking after yourself and I want to know why you finally decided to come home.’ Her tone stays even and bright, that dead pan but gentle expression, keeping me on the same even mood.
I slump back, mirroring Emma’s casual pose as the small happy laughter squeals, echoing gently from outside with Jake’s voice intermingled, drift our way. Emma leans back for a second to peek outside, a smile hitting her face and lighting up her eyes before she returns to focus on me, with a look my way.
‘Well?’ Emma reminds me. I have been sitting watching her, my head lost somewhere between her ten thousand questions and just sheer fatigue.
‘I have been better, life sucked here and yet still sucked in New York, so go figures. I have felt better and Arrick pretty much made me come home, so I guess I didn’t really choose it.’ I shrug and swipe my mug to take a mouthful of the strong coffee, Italian roast, or something Jake, ‘the coffee connoisseur’, has obviously filled it with. I blanche at how strong it is, even with creamer.
‘Bristly… Uncharacteristically so.’ Emma raises eyebrows my way with only a look of calculation on her face, no doubt her psychology degree working overtime in that quick brain to pin point the route to my awful personality facelift.
‘It’s a touchy subject and getting off the defensive is harder than it seems.’ I sink down again, reprimanded and feeling scolded, even though she has barley tried too.
‘I’m getting a little tension where Arrick is concerned, are you two fighting over you coming home?’ Emma leans in towards me, studying me closely and pushes her mug to one side so she can rest her elbows and arms across, making it comfortable to lean her ample bust on. I feel that instant spark of slicing shard in my heart again, blinking back the almost instant prickle of tears and bite on my lip to curb it. Hating how his name can bring it on like this.
‘Arrick and I are done… He has a life to be getting on with and doesn’t need, or want, my drama. Silly little girls with selfish problems are so not his thing anymore.’ I answer sharply then have to sniff back the emotion that threatens to overspill. Emma regards me in silence for a moment.
‘Arrick adores you Sophie, he always has. I am pretty sure that even with a life elsewhere, he will always find the time for you. In fact, I know he will. It’s just a fight, something that will pass. Do you want to talk about it?’ Emma smiles gently, urging me to open up, but I can only shrug more. Shaking my head with sheer tiredness over this whole thing, just wanting to not think about him for like five minutes. I sigh and exhale heavily, letting out a tense breath and just signalling how crap I feel.
‘I need to just deal with things on my own and accept that he is moving on in life. I can’t keep expecting him to always pick up the broken pieces for me, and I get the vibe he doesn’t want to anymore either.’ I fiddle with the handle of my mug, unable to keep eye contact while feeling so utterly washed out and deflated inside. This conversation is harder than I thought it would be, but for entirely different reasons.
‘Is that part of your sadness? That you’re losing what you two had? That you maybe miss him.’ Emma frowns softly, her brows framing soft blue eyes in an almost endearingly pleading way. Urging me to keep going.
‘No
. Yes. Maybe? … I don’t know.’ I sit up straight and raise my palms in sheer frustration.
‘It was easier before…. Even after…. After what sperm donor did. I was happy for a while, but then… I don’t know Emma. Something changed inside of me and in the last couple of years, it has just kept growing.’ The words flood out in a rapid flow of relief, just pouring out because I need them too. Because I am sick of mulling this over alone and I trust that she will never judge me; and because this is what she does to me, always has. Effortlessly gets me to talk, even when I don’t want too. She was the first person I ever admitted too that I had run from violence and sexual abuse, back when I didn’t even know her. It set the barr for how we became.
‘Is it the past coming back to haunt you once more?’ Emma sooths. Watching and retaining everything I say so she can analyse it all with that fast brain.
‘I don’t know. It’s like there’s a deep hole in here.’ I pat my heart childishly.
‘It started off small and it grows and grows, darker and wider and makes me feel like I’m suffocating. I don’t know why it’s there, or how to fix it Em’s. It just shadows me all the time, and at first, getting trashed and partying, helped me ignore it.’ The heavy ball of anxiety has expanded to a heavy weight through my entire torso, aching and groaning internally with the effort of being contained. I just feel like I can no longer breathe again and I am suddenly overwhelmed with the need to cry. Emma chews on her lip thoughtfully.
‘How long have you felt this way? More specifically, when did you first notice it?’ Her voice is soft and even, regarding me seriously and now back to lifting her own mug to take a calm sip. She is in therapist mode and I know the drill. They ask a question and you should pour out as much as you can. I have been to enough sessions to fall into this mode seamlessly.
‘I don’t know, a while. I can’t pin point it. I don’t remember feeling this way until after I went on that skiing trip with Arrick and his friends a couple years back. That is the last real memory I have of feeling completely still in here.’ I tap my heart again, frustrated with whatever this is. Glad that I have someone who can maybe help me figure out the root cause, and that maybe, finally, there is something I can do about it.
‘After that, it was just was there, and it got worse and worse until I couldn’t breathe anymore. I can’t think straight anymore, because I don’t even know what it is. I am so sick of the nothing it makes me feel in life…. Like that movie, you know? The never-ending story? When the huge black nothing sweeps through and clears everything into chaos and oblivion until there is nothing left. That’s how this feels inside.’ I realise tears have made their way down my cheeks, without even noticing, and Emma has found her way to holding my hand on the table. I don’t even know how both of these things happened when I was so consumed in trying to describe the pit that is always within me.
‘Did something happen after that trip? Something that could trigger an old scar or memory maybe?’ Emma squeezes my fingers, pulling over a box of tissues on the table and pushing them to me. I take one with my free hand and wipe my face, not really crying properly, more of a leaking of fluid from my eyes, while I still feel pretty wiped out inside.
‘No, not that I can think of. Just life. Just school starting, parents making me feel pressured to choose a career path. Arrick moved to the city to take his fighting career more seriously and nothing….. Nothing that could do this!’ I feel my anxiety rise; my voice has pitched too and my breathing shallower. Anxiety and emotion manifesting in the first throws of an anxiety attack and take the automatic slow steady breaths to curb them, like she has always shown me. I stopped having full blown panic attacks years before, but sometimes, like now, they start to hit me again.
‘When you were seeing James, your counsellor, did he ever suggest any type of meds?’ Emma regards my expression, but the mere mention of medication hits me in the chest violently.
‘I don’t want meds, I’m not crazy and I managed without them before. You know how I feel about pills Emma.’ I jut my chin up defiantly. Anger spiking out of nowhere as the memory of my mum pushing her drugs and pills, to get through life, hit me hard in the brain. I despise that memory as much as I despise her, she was a functioning junkie on prescribed meds and partly the reason she had been a shit excuse of a mother who never stopped what was happening to me.
‘We need to get you back into a regular session, work you through this and pin point what it is that’s making you feel this way.’ Emma’s still gripping my hand securely, more squeals from the happy children outside just seem to agitate me, highlight how crappy my existence has become, when everyone else sounds like they’re happily loving life.
‘You think I don’t know that? You think I want to be this way?’ I snap, losing my shit with her in just sheer outpouring of pain. Anger brimming to the surface as a chaos of thoughts and feelings consume me.
‘I’m lost Emma…. Life means nothing to me anymore and the people I thought had my back left me alone. The person who I thought would always be there for me, while everyone else had someone of their own… He left me.’ It comes out in a whoosh of tears and rambling, my pain formulating sentences that my brain doesn’t have time to edit.
Emma frowns, I know she wants to correct me on who exactly had up and run off, but she isn’t that type of person. She is instead looking at me so very pointedly, as though some tiny light bulb has gone off. She smooths her thumb over my hand to soothe me.
‘You said … He left you?’ Emma watches me, her expression calm and waiting patiently.
‘What do you mean? What?’ I recall everything I blurted out and try to piece it all back in so I can replay what I said.
‘Arrick, I guess….’ I shrug, sniffing back the flood that has erupted over my face and giving up with wiping the mess away. It isn’t the first time I have cried in front of Emma and she doesn’t exactly make me feel shy about it anyway.
‘You started hitting the booze and reckless behaviour only weeks after Arrick moved to the city Sophie? We all know how close you were. Do you think that maybe it was the dependency on him that has left you feeling this way?’ She seems intent on her line of thought, that serious look on that beautiful face and that slight eyebrow furrow that hints she’s onto something
‘What? You think I’m some sad cling on who can only be happy with Arrick glued to my side? He was my best friend, of course I got upset that he moved away and we didn’t see each other as much, or act the same way anymore. I do not think his going has given me a serious bout of two years of black hole depression though. Why would it?’ I snap again, angry that she is trying to make this out to be something it’s not. Trying to make me see that somehow, I am a weak pathetic child who can’t survive life without dependency on my best friend. It’s abnormal and unhealthy, and is not is what is wrong with me.
‘I think you have always had very confused emotions concerning him, that what you think is a healthy friendship, is something more to you. He left and you fell to pieces Sophie, I think you’re nursing a very real broken heart and you have experienced your first real break up of sorts. I think this consuming black hole is not as complicated as you think…. I don’t think you just love Arrick, Sophie, I think you’re IN love with him.’
I inhale quickly, looking at her as though she has popped out horns on her head, or grown a second one; complete disbelief and stunned into silence with such a ridiculous statement. My tears stop almost as quickly, frowning hard and looking at her like she has completely lost her mind. I am torn between shocked outrage, and hysterical giggling, at just how preposterous she is being.
‘You think I’m in love with Arrick?’ I start laughing manically, purely out of some weird psychotic break I seem to be suffering from. Maybe that, or Emma is having it, especially with that statement.
‘You have obviously been drinking your own cool aid Emma. This is fucking stupid.’ I make a move to get up angrily, but Emma raises a palm calmly.
‘Sit d
own.’ That domineering, no nonsense tone, makes me hesitate. Emma rarely raises any harsh tone to anyone, let alone me. She has never needed too, and I sit down obediently, a knee jerk reaction and snap my mouth shut.
‘Now tell me why that statement makes you react so angrily Sophie?’ She frowns intensely, focusing fully on my eyes and the sheer seriousness of her expression makes me break out in sweats.
‘Don’t okay.’ I slump back angrily.
‘Don’t hit me with your professional psychobabble, therapy tone, and backwards questioning, Emma. I don’t need it from you right now. Hell, yes, it makes me angry… It’s Arrick. He’s like a brother to me. He’s been through everything with me. Seen everything, been everything. I wouldn’t have gotten through anything without him.’ I bite on my bottom lip to control the wobble in my voice, and turn to gaze meaninglessly across the kitchen, in a bid to control my outburst.
‘Ben, Adam, Rylanne, and Adrian are your brothers, but you didn’t fall to pieces when they upped and moved away.’ Emma is still calm, her tone soft and low as she sits very still. Unemotional and completely calm, masked in all ways and fully turned onto Doctor mode.
‘None of them were my best friends Emma. None of them were as close to me as he was. None of them got on the other side of the wall with me and held my hand.‘ I blurt out impulsively.
‘So this is about Arrick, you agree?’ Emma responds gently, pushing me, coaxing but I know what she’s doing.
‘No…. Maybe a little, but no, wholly. He’s just a small part of the problem. He is not THE problem.’ I shrug defensively, sighing loudly and slumping back angrily.
The Carrero Heart - Beginning: Arrick and Sophie. (The Carrero Series Book 4) Page 15