by Claire Adams
“What do you think I should do?”
He smiled gently. “I can’t tell you what to do, Daisy.”
“You’re the professional, though, aren’t you? Isn’t that what people pay you for? Isn’t that why you’re writing this book?”
“I’m writing this book because this is a phenomenon that interests me. This is the first time this sort of thing is happening, in this magnitude, and I admit, I find it fascinating. But so far as telling people what to do—I think the best I can do is to say keep a clear head, listen to your thoughts and feelings, and don’t lose hope.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“I can tell you’re a smart girl. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. That doesn’t mean you’re not going to make mistakes, or things won’t be difficult for you sometimes, but I think you will ultimately find what it is that you’re looking for, even if you yourself don’t know exactly what it is at this moment.”
“Well, I appreciate that,” I said. “Thank you for letting me talk about all of this.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll leave my address,” I continued. “Or do you just want to use my email?”
“For what?” he asked, tilting his head.
“Um, for the bill. You know, for talking to me.”
“Daisy,” he said, smiling. “I’m not going to bill you. If this helped you, then I’m thrilled to hear it. You also helped me. I’d very much like to include significant portions of what we’ve talked about in the section of my book that goes over feelings, and how learning to trust our feelings is a crucial part of overcoming the quarter-life crisis. Any crisis, really.”
“Of course,” I said, feeling silly. “And . . . thank you. For talking to me. It really did help.”
I left his office, went home to change, and then headed down to the gym to meet Jonathan, feeling as though maybe I should just trust my feelings after all.
Jonathan had a big smile on his face when I showed up at the gym. I felt a little intimidated, as most of the people there were guys and they were all in stunningly good physical shape. “Hey,” he said with a smile. “Glad you could make it.”
I tried to ignore the looks of the other guys as I followed him through the gym, which was located in a converted warehouse, with an exposed ceiling. We went into a room near the back, which had a mirrored wall and a floor covered in green mats.
“I think it’s great that you’re interested in learning some self-defense techniques,” he said. “I think it’s a good thing for any woman to learn. But are you interested in it because of that guy? Is he bothering you?”
“He’s . . . been around. He hasn’t done anything yet, but it’s getting pretty creepy. I mean, I would’ve thought that he’d get it through his head by now that nothing was going to happen, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. So I was thinking that it wouldn’t be a bad idea if I learned how to protect myself.”
“Absolutely,” Jonathan said. “And you’re right—it has been a pretty long time for him to be dogging you like that. You know, I’m thinking . . . maybe we should have a few guys watch out for you.”
“A few guys? You mean from work?”
“Yeah.”
“No, that’s okay,” I said. “It’s not that bad yet. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it.”
“I know you don’t, but this guy doesn’t seem to be getting the hint.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I appreciate the offer. Why don’t you just teach me what you know about self-defense.”
“All right,” he said. “But if you change your mind, let me know.”
“I will.”
“Great,” he said. “Let’s get started, then.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon going through various self-defense techniques. At first, I felt completely uncoordinated and unable to get the timing down for anything, even though he was obviously slowing things down, talking me through each step. He showed me what to do if someone tried to grab me from behind, how to break a hold if someone had my arm, how to pull an attacker’s head down so I could knee him in the face.
The last thing we worked on was how to break away if someone came up behind you and grabbed you in a bear hug. For each of the holds we’d previously done, Jonathan had pretended he was the attacker, and this one was no different, but now he was standing behind me, with his arms wrapped around me.
“First,” he said, “you’re going to shift your body to the side, enough so you can get your inside leg behind—yeah, just like that—and you’re going to jerk your own leg forward into the back of my knee. Do it with enough force behind it so it buckles the knee and then you’ll have the person off-balance. He’ll fall forward, and as he does so, use an elbow, right to the face. Just like that. Okay, let’s try it again.”
He positioned his arms back around me, and again, I wondered why it was that I couldn’t be interested in someone like him. I doubted that he had ever slept with anyone at the office, not because he wasn’t necessarily attracted to any of the girls that had ever worked there but because he just wasn’t like that. But there was no feeling there, for me anyway, other than a person who had his arms around me; it was nothing like the way it was with Ian, whose touch was electrifying, as though every cell in my body could feel it and was clamoring for his attention.
I took a deep breath, trying to remember the sequence of motions that Jonathan had just told me. It was a little bit halting, and not perfectly executed, but I managed to do it, and when he told me how good of a job I’d done, for a moment, I felt as though I’d gained a bit of control back over my life.
After the gym, I went back home and took a shower and then changed. I didn’t feel like staying in though; it was Saturday night, after all, so I went down to Failte. I left a message for Caroline and told her that I was going to be there if she wanted to meet up. I was just sipping my first beer when she texted back and said that she was on deadline and had been working all day and she had to stay at the office but she’d try to get down there if she could. I sighed and slid my phone back into my purse. I figured that I was supposed to feel a little better now that I’d had a talk with Carl, and gotten all that off of my chest. Not that it was a therapy appointment, but wasn’t that the whole point of talk therapy anyway? That you were supposed to feel better once you were able to vocalize what it was that was bothering you?
And the thing was, I had felt better after I’d left his office, but now I felt more confused than ever, having this time to just sit here with my thoughts. Because there wasn’t going to be any epiphany, there wasn’t going to be any clear sign of what I was supposed to do. My feelings were entangled in a hopeless knot that I knew I had no hope of unraveling. I knew I could ask Caroline, or my mom, what they thought I should do and they’d have a definitive answer, but I also knew this was something I had to come to on my own. Hadn’t Carl been implying that I should trust my feelings? That what I was feeling was not inherently wrong? I tried to recall exactly how he phrased it, but now I couldn’t. The only thing I could really remember from that whole thing was the feeling I had after I left, that everything was going to be okay, even though now I wasn’t so sure.
I finished my first beer and got another. My face was already starting to get warm. I sat there and listened to the chatter all around me. People talking and laughing and generally having a good time. I couldn’t make out any specific conversations, just bits and snippets and it seemed like everyone there was with a group or a part of a couple, and I was the only one sitting alone, feeling completely sorry for myself. It would’ve been easy enough to strike up a conversation with someone, but everyone seemed so involved with the other people they were talking to, and I felt like such an outsider, which was strange because I’d been coming to Failte ever since I turned twenty-one. It was like my home away from home.
I was on my third beer when someone came over and sat next to me, their elbow brushing mine. I took another sip of my beer before I glanced over to see w
ho it was.
It was Billy McAllister.
He was waiting for me to look at him, a smile on his face. “Well fancy meeting you here,” he said. He tapped his beer bottle against my almost-empty pint glass. “Waiting for anyone special?”
“No,” I said. My cheeks felt flushed, and I was suddenly very glad that he was here. “You, I guess. Just someone to talk to.”
“I’m so happy to hear that! And I’m told I’m a great talker. I can also be a good listener, too. You look a little down in the dumps. Everything all right?”
I took a swig of beer. “Yeah,” I said. “I think I’m just tired.”
“Your boyfriend’s not here?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Ever?”
“Well . . . I’ve had a boyfriend before, but no, I don’t have one.”
“Not even a pretend one?”
He was ribbing me a little, I could tell, just trying to get me to crack a smile. So I did—a tiny one—because I did appreciate his efforts. And just by sitting down next to me and starting a conversation, he had banished that lonely feeling that had descended upon me when I first sat down at the bar. So for that, I was grateful.
“Believe it or not, I’ve had a boyfriend before,” I said. If he asked more questions, I would tell him about Emmett; I wasn’t going to utter a word about Ian. It might be better if I just didn’t talk about that.
“Oh, I believe it. But have you ever had a boyfriend who knew how to treat you right? The way you deserved to be treated?”
“Uh . . .” It felt like the room was starting to spin, though not in an entirely unpleasant way. “That’s debatable.” I patted his knee. “You know,” I said. “You seem like you’d be a very good boyfriend. You’re probably married though, aren’t you? You probably have a wife at home.” I giggled.
“Oh ha ha, you’re a bit of a funny one, too, aren’t you? No wife at home. That I know of, anyway.”
“You should find a wife.”
“Should I?”
“Yeah. Me, though—I don’t want to be a wife.” Was I really slurring my words this badly or had my ears just stopped working properly?
He clutched at his chest. “Don’t want to be a wife? You’re breaking my heart.”
I laughed and finished the last of my beer, thinking that it felt pretty good to be sitting here, laughing with someone. When Billy signaled the bartender to bring me over another beer, I didn’t object.
But when I finished that one, I knew I had most definitely reached my limit, and if I didn’t stop now, I’d probably start doing something stupid, like trying to climb onto the bar and dance. Or throw up everywhere. Or both.
“I should be going,” I said. “I think I had four beers. Maybe five. That’s a lot. I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.”
“On a Sunday?”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday?”
“Last time I checked.”
“Oh. Then, no. I don’t have to go to work on a Sunday. I didn’t know what day it was.”
Billy smiled. “Do you know who you are? What year it is? Who the president is? I’m just joking. Let me walk you home, at least. It’s the gentlemanly thing to do.”
And so we left the bar, and I felt his hand touch the small of my back as we went out the door, but it was more like it was just guiding me out, making sure that I didn’t trip. When we started to walk down the sidewalk, we were close to each other, but not so close that someone might think we were a couple or anything. We were just two friends, going for a walk.
The fresh air made me a little more alert, even though the ground still felt like it was tilting underneath my feet.
“Take my arm,” he said, holding his forearm out to me. “You’re a little tipsy. Or I could give you a piggy back ride.” He stopped walking and bent at the knees a little, nodding toward his back. “Hop on.”
I laughed. “I’m not going to get on your back.”
“Why not? You don’t think I’d be able to carry you?”
“No, I just . . .”
“You want to fall over and scrape your knees?”
“No.”
“Then, hop on!”
“Well . . . okay.” I jumped up and felt him slip his arms underneath my knees as he straightened up. I let my arms dangle over the front of his shoulders, but I could feel myself slipping.
“You want to help a guy out and hold on a little more tightly there?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck.
He coughed. “Too tight,” he said. I loosened my arms a little. “Ah, just right,” he said.
“Okay there, Goldilocks.”
We both laughed.
“Thank you for fulfilling this fantasy of mine. Getting to walk down the street with a lovely lady on my back.”
“Happy to oblige,” I said. He walked easily, didn’t seem to be that burdened by the fact that he was carrying me like this. When was the last time anyone had given me a piggyback? I honestly couldn’t remember.
“Well, thanks,” I said when we got to the doorstep and I hopped down. I looked around. “I don’t see my stalker. I have a stalker, you know.”
“Do you, now? I don’t see anyone out here.”
“I guess he’s not here at the moment. But he hangs around sometimes. He hasn’t done anything bad yet, but it’s still creepy.”
“I’m not entirely surprised though, a girl like you. I could take care of it for you, if you wanted.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “Oh, you know. That could mean several things. But I certainly don’t want someone following you around when you don’t want them to be following you around.” He chuckled. “But wait a second—don’t you work for a security company? Isn’t this something your boss should be taking care of?”
“I can actually take care of myself.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“Well, thank you for walking me home.”
“Anytime. Thanks for hanging out with me. I’ve really enjoyed these times that we’ve run into each other.”
“Me too,” I said. I could feel a gigantic yawn getting ready to stretch across my face. I was suddenly exhausted and wanted nothing more than to be crawling into my bed, about to fall asleep for ten, maybe eleven hours. I covered my mouth with my hand as though that might somehow keep the yawn at bay. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It just hit me all of a sudden, how tired I am. I really don’t usually drink that much beer.”
“Kind of a lightweight?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, then I will bid you adieu and sweet dreams. We’ll have to plan on doing something at some point, okay? But after you get some rest first.”
I smiled and unlocked the door. “Yeah sure,” I said, waving goodbye, “That sounds nice.” I was barely able to kick my shoes off and make it to my bed before I fell on top of the covers, sound asleep before my head even hit the pillow.
I woke up the next morning with an awful taste in my mouth and a pounding headache. I was still wearing the same clothes that I’d worn the day before. The bright sun streaming through the windows hurt my eyes and told me that it was pretty late in the morning, perhaps already afternoon.
I pushed myself up and stumbled into the bathroom where I drank water directly from the faucet. That made me feel a little better, but when I straightened up, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. My hair was plastered down on one side of my head and sticking up all harried and crazy on the other side. There was an indent across the side of my face where I must’ve been sleeping on the seam of the comforter.
The doorbell rang.
I jumped, startled. I rubbed sleep from my eyes and went over to the intercom.
“Who is it?” I said.
“It’s Ian.”
Shit. “Um . . . hold on one second.”
I tried to smooth my hair down and straighten my clothes out, which had twisted arou
nd me as I slept last night. Why was he here? My head throbbed as I found a pair of flip flops and slipped them on so I could go out and let him in.
I squinted against the harsh light that came pouring in behind him when I opened the door.
“Hey,” he said. “Am I . . . waking you up?”
“I slept in,” I said. “So, yeah. I should be getting up now anyway, though. What time is it?”
“It’s ten till one.”
“In the afternoon?”
He smiled. “Yeah. Hence the sunlight. Listen, I was out running a few errands and I happened to be in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d stop by. And give you these.” It was only then that I realized he’d been holding one of his arms behind his back. He brought them arm forward, presenting me with a small bouquet of brightly colored flowers. Not roses, but something that looked like daisies, except instead of white they were brilliant shades of red, pink, and yellow.
“Oh,” I said, smiling. “Those are beautiful.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I saw them and I thought of you. I know I said I’d give you time to think about everything, and I’m still doing that—I just wanted to stop by and give these to you.”
I took the flowers from him, our fingertips brushing. “You can come in,” I said. “Just . . . give me a minute; I did just wake up.”
He followed me back into my apartment, and I was acutely aware of how disheveled and terrible I must look, but he didn’t seem bothered by it at all.
“I’ll be right back,” I said. “I should . . . go change.”
“You don’t have to,” he said. “You look beautiful just like that. And look, if you still need time to think about things, just tell me and I’ll go. I’m not trying to rush you or anything.” “I can’t ignore what I feel for you,” I said. “I don’t want to ignore it. I like this feeling. I like the way you make me feel, I like being around you, and I don’t want to have to stop that. Even though you having a baby with someone else wasn’t what I was really envisioning.”
A look of relief crossed his face. “Daisy,” he said. “You have no idea how happy I am to hear that. I know it’s asking a whole lot, too, to expect someone to get involved with you even when you’re going to have a kid with someone else. But I want you to know that Annie and I have talked about things, and yeah, eventually there will be a kid around some of the time, but that is not going to change the way I feel toward you.”