by Blythe Stone
“I know Avery. I just want to put you at ease if I can.”
“Good luck,” I scoffed. I didn’t mean to sound like a bitch. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way. It’s just, I’ve never put much stock in this kind of stuff. I’m trying. I really am. I guess I should tell you that I don’t remember most of what you were saying when you talked about coping skills.”
“That’s okay. I didn’t expect you to,” she said.
Her eyes were kind. She did seem like she at least understood that this was hard for me. I just knew it wasn’t enough.
“I’ve got a sheet for you to take with you that has all the information that I told you on it.”
“Oh, okay,” I said. My eyes strayed to the window so I didn’t have to look at her.
“I think we should stop for the day,” she said. “I know this is a stressful process and, for some, baby steps can be more efficient. I just really wanted to meet you as soon as I could.”
I was twisting my hands around one another until I looked back at her and realized what I was doing. Her eyes darted from my hands to my eyes. I stuffed my hands in my hoodie and licked my lips.
“Sounds good,” I said.
“Well,” she said, standing up. “It was nice to meet you and I hope you come back. We can talk through some of the things that you’ve been through.”
“Yeah,” I told her, reaching out to take the hand she offered again.
What was it with this chick and handshakes? Did anyone actually shake hands in situations like this?
“This is for you.” She handed me a sheet of paper out of the stack she’d been holding.
“Uh, thanks,” I said, not even looking at it.
She let me out of the room and back down the hall toward the reception area. There was another person waiting now. The white cat was now pacing by the door and it ran up to us getting all over my legs.
“Hi,” I said.
I bent down and picked the cat up and then turned back, petting her head.
“What?” The receptionist and Vivianne were both looking at me weird.
“She doesn’t let people pick her up normally,” Vivianne marveled. “Funny, she actually followed Olivia back and sat in her lap. You two must have some kind of similar cat voodoo.”
I laughed and set the cat back down when she obviously was tired of me holding her.
“Well, thanks,” I said, giving an awkward wave. I didn’t look back as I left. Olivia was right. The cat was cute. I looked down at the sheet and sighed. I could do this. These were good things, these tools she had offered me.
Every single point on the bulleted sheet highlighted things that I knew I did the opposite of when I was having an episode. Quick shallow breaths, dissociation, rigid and tension filled body, each one of them ticked a box for me.
I trotted out to my car and got in, grabbing my phone out of my pocket. I was eager to tell Olivia that I was coming home. Maybe she would be waiting for me.
Avery: On my way home. Session went fine. I definitely need to go back though. See you soon.
I started up the car and drove out of the lot, winding my way back around to the interstate so I could drive the twenty minutes back home.
When I got there Olivia’s car was gone and she hadn’t answered my text message. It was weird. She always answered really quickly but she could still be out with her mom. They could be anywhere.
At a loss for what to do, I went inside and looked around. I wasn’t hungry after that session. Though I should really eat I just laid down on the couch. I didn’t want to watch anything and I didn’t want to swim. I’d had two practices today.
Really, I was tired, bone tired. We’d only managed about four or five hours of sleep and I felt dead. I pulled the little throw pillow under my head and closed my eyes. At least I hadn’t had any bad dreams recently.
I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep until I was waking up. There was a light pressure on my face and I wiggled my nose, trying to get it to go away but it didn’t. There was a sound too and it was close.
I shook my head and blinked my eyes open to find Olivia sitting on the couch in front of my torso. Her body was turned so that she could look down at me and her hand was on my cheek.
“Oh, hey,” I muttered.
“Hey,” she said. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said and yawned. “I was just sleepy.” I smiled. “Obviously.”
“Mmmhmm,” she hummed. “And how was Vivianne?” She moved a little to survey me. When she saw I was still wearing my shoes, Olivia got up and knelt down on the floor by my feet. Her fingers fiddled with my laces and she took my shoes off one-by-one.
“She was young and very straight forward, I guess. She gave me this sheet of coping stuff but I left it in my car.”
When she was done with my shoes I pulled her up to the couch again. “I missed you,” I said, aching with it.
“Yeah?” She asked, crawling up further and resting her body on mine.
“Yeah, I did.” I leaned up so I could kiss her. “How are you?” I asked. She hadn’t told me virtually anything about her day in the text messages.
“Good now,” she smiled.
“I bet you’re tired though. Where were you so late?”
I didn’t mean to question her but I felt a little whiny after all that therapy.
“Honestly?” She asked.
“Of course,” I said, holding my breath.
“I went to the place where I’m going to marry you…”
I let the breath out and stared at her, eyes wide. “What?”
I hadn’t expected that at all.
“Explain, please.”
I pulled her all the way onto my body so I could listen and feel her against me.
“I told my mom what we wanted. She knew a place so I asked her to take me there.”
“Oh my god, so you found it?” I almost bumped our heads when I scrambled to see her face better. “Where?”
“My mom has friends who own a cliff-side property on Big Sur… You’re going to love it,” Olivia said. “It’s going to happen there, I know it is. I was just standing there on that cliff and I could feel it. It was so overwhelming. I almost couldn’t stand.”
“I want to see it,” I said, energized and awake. “When can we go?”
I’d skip school if we could go tomorrow. I didn’t care. This was more important to me.
“You don’t want to wait?”
“For the wedding?” I was shaking my head.
There was no reason to wait for me. I just wanted to see it and experience it before we were there and our attention was drawn in all different directions.
“If you don’t think it’s a good idea then I guess we can wait.”
“No, babe, it’s fine. I just, didn’t think you’d want to. We can go ask my mom right now if you’re up for a drive. Do you want to stay there tonight? It’s not close.”
“No, we can go tomorrow or this weekend. I just want to see it before the wedding. Check it out with you.”
“I’ll ask my mom,” she said. “She said the owners are living in New York right now. It’ll probably be okay if we go back.”
“Okay, awesome.” I pushed my hand through her hair and moved it away from her face. “But you liked it?”
“Oh, babe… Of course, I loved it. I could feel us there. Future us… That sounds crazy, doesn’t it,” she sighed, resting her head down on my body and hugging me.
“It doesn’t sound crazy.” I put my other arm around her and closed my eyes, breathing her in. “It sounds awesome. Anything else interesting happen?” I was trying to keep the spotlight off of my therapy session. It was all still processing.
“It’s hard to say,” Olivia said. “Talking to my mom so much was kind of intense. She told me things about my dad that made me think. And she told me truthfully that she didn’t understand until now how sensitive I really was.” She paused a second. “She was sad about that, apologetic. I think I hurt her feelings…
Okay, I know I did.”
“Is that why you thought you were an ass?”
I tried to remember what she said exactly in her text but my approximation seemed good enough. She was forever feeling guilty about things and I understood that. I felt it too.
“I am an ass,” she said. “All I’ve ever done, since I was seven, is make them feel guilty.”
“I don’t think that’s true at all,” I said. “I know she didn’t say that to you.”
“She said, it’s not the child’s job to care for the parent.”
“They made some mistakes when you were growing up. That’s something she knows. This isn’t your fault. Your dad can be kind of an ass.”
“You don’t understand,” Olivia said. “I kept myself hidden baby. And it hurt all of us. They couldn’t figure me out. It was me.”
“It wasn’t just you. They could have tried more. She was right. It’s not your job as the child to know these things. It’s a parent's job to care for their kid. Just because neither of us has had the best relationship with our parents…. It doesn’t mean that you’re to blame. That’s all I’m saying.”
“What more could they have done, Avery? My mom told me all those things she kept pushing me into doing, those camps and those classes, she said she was trying to figure out what I wanted, and failing because I just said okay. I just kept saying okay. Like a fucking idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot,” I said. “You thought she wanted you to do those things. Your parents have dictated things to you and even though your mom may not have meant to- that’s how it felt to you. You’ve told me that pretty much. You haven’t communicated all that well with her but where do people learn to communicate? From people around them. From their environment.”
I really didn’t want to try and convince her of this. I knew how stubborn she was and I was getting tired again. We really couldn’t go a day without some kind of upheaval it seemed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Just because my day was complicated doesn't mean yours has to be…. Tell me about therapy. We don’t need to talk about this. It’s just my mess. I feel responsible. I really do.”
“I wish I could help you see that you aren’t responsible but I guess I shouldn’t try so hard. I’m not you and I’m not your mom. I just love you and I know what things you’ve told me and how things were when we first met.”
I took a deep cleansing, breath and tried to just feel her body weight on top of me.
“The white cat came up to me and it shocked the hell out of the receptionist and Vivianne. They nearly fell over. I picked her up and pet her for awhile. Vivianne said that you and I must have cat voodoo.”
“Atlas,” Olivia said.
“Oh, good name. Very classic,” I laughed.
“We should steal her… Teach them a lesson,” she posed.
“We should. She loves us more. It’s obvious. The whole time I was waiting for her to come get me, Atlas sat in the corner across the room sleeping. Wasn’t till I came out that she was waiting for me. Like she knew.”
I narrowed my eyes and let my fingers dance down Olivia’s sides.
“Cat voodoo,” I whispered.
She jumped a little before letting out a breath and settling back into me semi-embarrassed at how easy it was for me to get to her.
“Every time I feel like shit you make me feel better,” she said. I felt her teeth biting down on my neck and tugging. “How do you fucking do that?” She play-growled, angry and low.
“Mmm, Olivia voodoo,” I said, quite proudly.
She was my Vi. That person I could never refrain from trying for.
“And I love you so, that makes it a little easier.”
I pulled my legs apart so she would sink into me a little more.
“And I’m charming as hell.”
“You are a bit addicting,” she said, her hand coming up into my hair as she licked up my neck and teased me openly. “So tell me,” she whispered. “What’d you think of that Doctor? You sounded a bit flustered via text.”
“I didn’t expect her to be hot and to look like she wasn’t that much older than us. It threw me off. I didn’t really think about it when you told me what she was like. I guess I just always expect someone different when I think of therapists.”
“So… She distracted you then?” Olivia asked, licking my earlobe into her mouth and sucking. “Should I be jealous?” She asked. I felt her hand under my shirt, pushing into my stomach and my skin.
It took the words out of me but I just tried to breathe as she continued to attack my ear.
“Um.”
I cleared my throat and tried again but her hand kept moving and her lips were over my ear now, making me shiver.
“You have nothing to worry about ever,” I groaned. “She’s not my type anyway.”
“Oh,” she said. “So now you have a type?” Olivia raised her head and looked down on me almost shocked.
“My type is very specific. In fact, it’s just you.” I blinked, still not over her mouth on me and her hand under my shirt. “I can see when people are attractive but that’s different than thinking any farther beyond that. In short, sure, she was attractive but she’s not you.”
I moved her mouth over mine and kissed her hard. There were a lot of hot people in the world but I didn’t want them. I had who I wanted, who I was meant to be with.
“I’m not a type,” Olivia said, pulling back from me and witnessing me. She pushed herself up on me and looked down. “Are you trying to reduce me Ms. Lockhart? I’m not sure I like that. The Avery I fell in love with would never see me as an archetype. What am I then, anyway? Just a design?”
“Always so literal,” I shook my head. “You’re a living, breathing person who happens to have captured me. I love you and your craziness.”
“Mhmm, right, right, right,” she teased.
I didn't want her to feel like this. Her parent’s relationship with her was complicated. Things were rarely as simple as not letting someone in. There were reasons.
It was true that parents had a responsibility to make sure that their children thrived but there were so many different definitions of that. Olivia’s mom and dad had their own ideas, which were very different from Olivia’s on what made her thrive.
It would all work out. That's what I had to believe to get through this life.
Chapter 14
Olivia
Cryptic Avery was very cryptic.
Trying to get information she didn’t want to give was impossible and it was almost beginning to feel a bit unfair.
I was forthcoming with her. I kept things sometimes but not for too long. Mostly though, I felt I said too much.
Ever since Napa I was rightly worried about all the important things she kept inside. They were painful things it seemed, hurtful things.
She’d confided in me the knowledge of not knowing herself and that frightened me. There wasn’t much one could do about that.
I tried to think of all the things I kept from her over the course of our relationship. Everything I kept was something that could hurt her but hopefully wouldn’t. The things she kept were different. The things she kept hurt herself and me by proxy.
I dunno, maybe I just wasn’t being fair. We were both secretive sometimes. I just didn’t like that I knew she wasn’t telling me everything about therapy. There was obviously some undercurrent there, some vibration I was picking up on. She wasn’t okay, basically, and that scared me because I couldn’t help if she wouldn’t let me in.
We got an early start in the morning. My mom laughed at us about Big Sur but she quickly handed over the keys and told us we should take pictures for all the wedding planning.
“It’s smart,” she said. But then she and Avery talked for a while alone while I went to my room and packed up my thoroughly neglected camera supplies. Just holding my camera brought me back. I instantly started to daze.
I let Avery drive the boring stretch. I was getting kind of used to being her
passenger. It was so much different than being anyone else’s. When she drove, it was fun to watch her and play with things, mainly her. I turned in my chair and took to drawing her for a good deal of the drive.
She just kept singing and looking over at me with that happy look she gets when she’s thinking her good thoughts.
During one part of the stretch she was trying to learn the entire intro song to Hamilton. I’d teased her a bit since I already knew it. She laughed and said there was no way. I turned it up and sang it all. She looked about ready to pounce after that. She must’ve restarted that song a good 100 times and that’s no exaggeration.