Driving Me Mad

by Lindsay Paige

  “Well, it’s over and done with. How are you and Amy?” I don’t have the patience to hear him berate me for a failed marriage that ended years ago.

  “We’re good. A little upset that you can find the time to go to Las Vegas, but can’t visit us, but we’re good.”

  I pinch the bridge of my nose. Something in me just snaps. “Maybe if you’d get off my fucking back and quit being condescending and irritating every damn time I talked to you, you’d hear and see me more often. While we’re at it, Faith has moved on. I’ve moved on. We’re as over as can be. Let it go! Is that really too much to ask?”

  “Trace!”

  I ignore Brittany and wait for my father to say something. There’s only silence on the other end. I’m not taking it back, I’m not apologizing, so I sure as hell hope he isn’t waiting for that.

  “Fine,” he eventually says. “I’ll make this easy for you. If you want to talk, you can call. Otherwise, I won’t bother you.” He hangs up without another word.

  I pull the phone away from my ear and stare at it in disbelief.

  “Aren’t you going to call back?” Brittany asks softly, gathering that he hung up.

  “No.” I toss it onto the couch. “I’ll save that for another day. Breakfast ready?”

  She wants to say more, but instead, she nods. I’m not hungry, but I get up to eat anyway. Just another day of going through the motions.

  Somehow, seeing Brittany standing next to her parents, holding her wrist, and searching for me relaxes me. She relaxes a little in turn when she sees me walking toward them, her lips breaking out into a smile. I’m surprised, though, when she walks briskly over to me. Her arms slip around my waist.

  “Hey,” I laugh.

  Her eyes seem bright from the nearby lights of the restaurant. “Hey. You’re here.”

  “Did you think I wasn’t coming?”

  “No, but I’ve still been waiting to see you. C’mon.” She grabs my hand and leads me over to her parents. “Mom, Dad, you remember Trace.”

  I stick my hand out to shake their hands. “Nice to see you again, Mr. and Mrs. Roberts.” Her dad’s handshake seems more firm than I remember.

  “Please call us Jane and Ray,” her mother says, and I nod.

  “Well, let’s go inside,” Ray says. He holds the door open for everyone and it feels weird to step inside before him. Manners dictate I should be last.

  We don’t have to wait long for a table. As we get settled in our seats, Jane says, “Can you believe after all the times we’ve had to hear about the fried pickles at this place, Brittany has never brought us here?”

  I chuckle. “No, I can’t.”

  “It’s true. How have you been doing, Trace? Are you enjoying your new position?” she asks.

  “Yes, ma’am. I really like it, and I like living here so far. It was a good decision to move.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  The waiter stops by to take our drink orders. Ray has been staring me down, and I won’t lie. I want to fidget in my seat. Who cares if I have nearly a foot on him height-wise. He’s the father of my girlfriend and he’s doing a damn good job of intimidating me.

  “Can you tell me why you’re good for my daughter?” he asks as soon as the waiter leaves.

  “Dad!” Brittany gasps.

  He holds up a hand to stop more of her protests. “Let’s just get it out of the way,” he tells her before landing his gaze on me again. “We do like what we know about you, Trace. We’re still cautious about some things, but only because we’re thinking of our daughter. We know that we didn’t have a clue about what was happening with Brittany, and at times, had a difficult time understanding it, even now. Brittany told us that you deal with some of the same things. Our main concern has been how your bad times will affect our daughter and her mental health. That’s all I want you to explain to me.”

  The words to respond to him seem to appear out of nowhere. “When your wife comes home after a rough day, how much does that affect your relationship when you’ve also had a rough day?” I don’t wait for an answer. “Maybe we’re a little more fragile and complicated, but it’s basically the same thing. Your worry is understandable, because I’ve worried about it too. What I’ve come to realize is maybe we get carried away in the heat of the moment, but I don’t make it worse for her and she doesn’t make it worse for me. Having her there helps, even if we can’t manage to help each other by doing more than just being there.”

  I feel Brittany’s hand on my thigh. Her father nods, accepting my answer, and changes the subject, asking me more general details about my life. Dinner is smooth sailing after that. Brittany was right. I didn’t have anything to worry about. Her parents seem eager to know me on a personal level, especially since it wasn’t like that before. Then, they only knew me as the man who helped their daughter tackle and manage her anxiety. Now, I’m their daughter’s new boyfriend, and they want to learn more about me.

  Later, Brittany hugs her parents, promises to see them tomorrow before they leave, and then she turns to me. She’s grinning like she couldn’t be happier.

  “Can I say it now?” she asks as we walk to my car.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I told you so!”

  “Yes, you did.”

  Surprisingly, we’re both in a good mood tonight. It’s been forever, it feels like. Brittany’s energy is contagious. She leans up to kiss me before sliding into the car. The good of the day starts to fade away, dimming so fast it’s like it was never there. I refuse to let it take over so soon. I need more good. I need more of this brightness, so when the negative inevitably comes, I can have something good still on my mind.

  When we get home, Brittany is still smiling. I manage to lift my lips, hoping it looks genuine. She must buy it because she snakes her arms around me, which gives me the perfect opportunity to lean down and kiss her neck. Sex is a good temporary distraction that will prolong the bad from crashing down on me.

  “Let’s go to bed,” I say, lifting my head to look at her.

  Am I imagining things or does her smile falter just the tiniest bit? It doesn’t matter because she nods and tugs on my shirt to start leading the way. Maybe she’s telling the truth and I can’t hide it as well as I think. That could be why I think I’m seeing things with her smile. But it doesn’t matter tonight. She’s still giving me what I want right now. I’m tempted to say what I need, but who the hell knows what I need.

  I take that back. I only know of one thing I need.

  Brittany.

  And as she sheds her clothes and helps me get rid of mine, she gives me all of herself as she can when I could really use it. Damn, I’m lucky.

  Sometimes when I get really bad off, every little thing pisses me off. Cuss words fly from my mouth like they are the only words that exist. My temper is quick to react to the simplest things that wouldn’t normally be a big deal. I’m irritable with all caps. These are the kinds of days when I should come with a warning label.

  This is how I am when I wake up. I realize it when I’m annoyed simply because Brittany rolls over, accidentally elbowing me in her sleep. I don’t want to be angry with her all day. I don’t want her to have to deal with this me. With a glance at the clock, I realize she should be getting up anyway if she wants to have breakfast with her parents.

  “Brittany,” I say as I poke her shoulder. She stirs awake and blinks sleepily at me. Her hair is all over the place, one strand thrown across her forehead. She’s beautiful and I love her, and I’m a dick for what I’m going to do, but I need to do it for myself, and for her. “You need to get ready to see your parents.”

  She takes a deep breath and sits up to get out of bed. I chicken out of telling her now, deciding it will be best to tell her later before she leaves. While she showers, I get up to let Lily outside. The temperatures have been better than they were as spring starts to emerge. I take deep breaths of the outside air, but still find myself tapping my fingers against my leg as Lily seems
to take her sweet time.

  My mind is only thinking hurry up, hurry up, hurry up! Eventually, she makes her way back inside. I walk to the kitchen next to decide what I want for breakfast. Nothing looks good, so I settle on toast slathered with grape jelly. Brittany eyes me when she comes into the room to see me munching on it.

  “That’s what you’re eating for breakfast? Do you want me to fix something before I go? Or you could come with me,” she suggests, coming over to me and resting a hand on my shoulder.

  I shake my head. “I’m fine.”

  “Okay. Do you want me to bring lunch back?”

  I clear my throat and keep my eyes on my toast. “No, and, um, maybe you should go to campus instead of coming here.”

  Brittany is quiet for a beat too long. “Okay.” She leaves the room and a moment later, she has her bags on her shoulders. “I’ll talk to you later,” she says from the threshold of the room.

  I look at her and nod. “Have fun.”

  She gives me a small smile, and then she’s gone. Lily makes a small whining noise.

  I lean down to rub her head. “She’ll be back another day,” I reassure her.

  For now, though, it’s good that she’s not returning today. I finish off my toast and plop down in my recliner. I have two things I need to do. Let Lily out when she needs to go and sit in my recliner. That’s all I intend to do, too. Or maybe I’ll sleep as well. The TV can’t seem to find a happy medium with the volume. Lily can’t get still as she moves from each end of the couch, my lap, to the floor, and repeat all over again. I can’t get comfortable either. I can’t decide if I’m hot or cold, snatching the cover on and off my lap. And it all pisses me off. Why can’t just one damn thing go my way? Or be easy? Or simple? Or good?

  Why?

  ***

  My thumbs hover over the screen of my phone. What happened with Trace this morning is still bothering me. I understand that sometimes we need time to ourselves, but how he went about it is what unsettles me. Wouldn’t it have been better had he looked at me and said, “Britt, I just need to be alone today.” Instead, he refused to look at me and suggested I not come back.

  Right now, I’m debating whether I should make sure he’s okay. I don’t want to check in on him if he doesn’t want me to, but I don’t know where his head is at because instead of talking to me, or giving me something to go on, he shut me out and told me not to come back. So I’m not sure what I should do. I make an impulsive decision. Not wanting to make things worse, I set my phone aside. If Trace needs me, he knows how to get in contact with me. I should trust that he will do that.

  I should probably focus on myself. I’ve never wanted to be at home with my parents more than after they left me today. The dorm has never felt lonelier. Bec has gone out somewhere, so it’s just me. I pull out my textbooks and alternate between studying and working on homework. One and a half months left. That’s it. I’m not sure if I can make it, though. It seems like such a long time, even longer when adding how I feel.

  My anxiety hasn’t been too bad today, but depression is making up for it. Everything seems massively overwhelming and like so much work. It’s like everything has been bundled together to build this gigantic wall that towers over me in the most intimidating manner and my task is to climb over it. To make it worse, it’s a flat, solid wall with no footholds and zero materials are nearby to help me climb it. Thinking about everything, big or small, simply stresses me out and seems impossible.

  What I want most is to lie in Trace’s recliner with him. I don’t know why it’s so comforting, but it is. What did I do before he moved here? What did I do to get some relief? I frown when I realize that before, I texted or called Trace. He’s always been the person I’ve leaned on. He’s always been my source of comfort in some way. I’m at an utter loss as to what to do since he seems to need distance.

  Tired of my homework, I set it aside, crawl under the sheets of my bed, and try to sleep. My mind is oddly blank, but I’m grateful for it. I need a new thing to calm me. I guess I can bring that up in therapy tomorrow. Maybe it is a bad thing to depend too much on Trace. The thought saddens me. I close my eyes, hoping that one action will help me sleep.

  “What’s bothering you today?” Mrs. Potter asks.

  “You know, that’s a crappy way to start a session. Do you start them like that with all of your clients?” I pick at an imaginary spot on my sweatpants. It was not a good morning, so I went with a bra, hoodie, and sweatpants.

  “Just you.” She smiles, and I force a chuckle.

  “Lucky me.” I refrain from rolling my eyes.

  “I’ve come to learn you always have something bothering you, but you always pretend nothing is at first,” she adds.

  “I don’t pretend,” I grumble. Mrs. Potter leans back in her chair and waits me out. “I think I depend on my boyfriend too much.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I always turn to him to make me feel better, but I can’t turn to him all the time. What am I supposed to do? I don’t,” I pause to search for the right word. “I don’t know how to cope otherwise. That’s bad, right?”

  “How does he help you cope?”

  “What?” I ask, confused.

  “You said you don’t know how to cope if you can’t turn to him. How does he help you cope then?”

  How do I describe it to her? “He’s there,” I eventually say. “He can talk me through it, he listens to me, or he’s simply there. It’s not necessarily what he does to make me feel better. It’s that it’s him. I couldn’t get up with him yesterday, so I was left on my own. I ended up sleeping because I didn’t know what to do and I couldn’t take it anymore.” And I still haven’t heard from him today.

  “What do you like to do? What makes you happy?”

  I shrug. Nothing comes to mind. God, is that where I am now? Where I can’t even think of one thing that makes me happy?

  “There must be something.”

  “I can’t think of anything.”

  “Okay, that’s fine. My suggestion is that you try to do something else that makes you happy that may comfort you when he’s out of reach. You can’t solely rely on him to help you or be your happiness. That is a disaster waiting to happen. You need to find more things that can do that, and I think that’ll help.”

  I nod, and my session moves on to other topics. Usually, I leave sessions feeling better, like I got everything off my chest, solved what needed solving, and was reminded on how to keep improving. This session hasn’t affected me at all. I still feel as crabby and sulky as I did before. Regardless, I force myself to attend my classes, do my best to pay attention, and suffer through it. Who would’ve thought that suffering through stuff would be an accomplishment?

  Once my classes are over for the day, I head back to the dorm to get my homework done and out of the way. At this point, I don’t care what my grade will be. As long as it’s a passing grade, then I’ll be happy. I just want to get it done and over with for good.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Rebecca asks when she enters our room to find me lying in bed on my back, staring at at the ceiling.

  “Nothing.”

  “Bad day?” She sits down on her bed.

  “When isn’t it?”

  “Super bad day, then.”

  I roll toward the wall with my back facing her. “I’m calling the grinch.”

  She’s quiet for a moment. “Okay. Before I leave you alone, do you want me to go get you something to eat?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Okay.”

  I pull the covers up over my head, leaving a hole for easy breathing, and close my eyes. It’s like all of my senses disappear at the same time. I don’t hear Rebecca moving around. I don’t see anything. I don’t smell the scent of my sheets. I don’t feel anything. Not the warmth from my comforter, not the worry that I haven’t heard from Trace today, not the voice in the back of my mind that I should still be working on homework, not even the bad, heavy weight t
hat seemed to be sitting on my chest all day.

  There’s nothing.

  As if I was injected with a shot to make my entire body, senses, and mind go numb.

  I learned two things today.

  One, I do depend on Trace too much, and it is a bad thing.

  Two, numbness isn’t half bad.

  Unlike recently, sleep doesn’t come easily. It’s late when my phone buzzes. I don’t check to see who it is. I don’t care. Somehow, I’m able to manage drifting in and out of a fitful sleep, but I’m awake more often than not. In the morning when I’m prolonging the act of getting out of bed, I check my messages.

  Trace: Too late to ask you to come over?

  Guilt takes shape in the form of air and fills my being. I should’ve checked. As quickly as it appeared, it disappears. There’s nothing I can do about it now. I close that and open the calendar app. I think I’ve only missed one, maybe two, days of school. If that is for sure the case, I’m skipping today. I’m still in grinch-mode, and I have no desire to fake life today.

  Rebecca is very quiet as she gets ready. I’m thankful that she doesn’t talk to me. I thought some sense of relief would come once she leaves, but I feel the exact same way. Numb. Tired. Empty. Maybe I should be trying to do something that would make me happy or find another source of comfort, but I don’t even feel like calling Trace.

  I don’t feel like doing anything at all.

  My day is spent in bed, only getting up to use the restroom, and ignoring all the buzzes my phone makes with notifications of messages. I don’t want to deal with anyone. This cocoon I’ve made myself with my blankets is my safe place, my source of comfort today. That’s all I need.

  At some point, I hear the door open, but I don’t roll over. My twenty-four hours isn’t up yet, so I know Bec will leave me alone for a while longer. But something’s not quite right. She does bother me. She pulls the blankets away from my face, and when I roll over, annoyed that she’s not leaving me alone, I find out it’s not Rebecca at all.

  It’s Trace.

  Rebecca gives me a weak smile as she sits down on her bed.