‘Okay… Maybe he’s a large part of the problem. When he’s around me, I feel saner, I feel safer, and less fucked up. He has a way of just cutting through my bullshit and making me see sense. But you’re wrong… I don’t love him in that way, I do love him, of course I do. But I’m not IN love with him, that would just be plain weird, and it would be wrong on like a million levels. It’s practically incest.’
Emma sighs, her brows knitting for a moment as she thinks this through.
‘I know you don’t want to hear this, but I think you’re in love with him Sophie. I think you’re hurting and you’re acting out, because you don’t know why you feel this way, that it’s all a mess inside of you. A complicated mess of guilt, shame, confusion and naivety. It’s not incest…. There’s no blood tie, not even marriage. There is no shame in falling in love with the man who became your safety net and your rock. In fact, I think it was probably inevitable, and I’m surprised you didn’t come to this conclusion alone, a long time ago.’ Emma doesn’t react when I swipe my chair back and jump to my feet, shaking my head as I pace the floor. Head reeling, emotions gone to shit once more, and lungs trying really hard to just keep expanding. I feel like I am suffocating suddenly and the room is getting way too hot.
‘No! Nope! If I am in love with him then I would know. I would see it. I wouldn’t date other men!’ I turn on her with a sort of ‘SEE’ look on my face as though I am trying to convince both of us. Breathing heavily, struggling to calm the internal fear, shame, whatever the fuck this is, that’s consuming me.
‘You’re broken hearted and you’re doing what every young girl does when she’s hurt this way. I’m not concerned with how you’re behaving, because I really do think that this is what’s wrong right here. The reckless lifestyle is not the issue, it’s a result of an issue, and will end when you overcome it. Not your past coming to bite you again…….. I think you’re trying to replace a love that you are in no way over, and doing it in a reckless and immature desperate way, because you don’t know how else to navigate it. I think you are harbouring a lot of confusion, because your gut tells you that it’s wrong to feel this way about him, and you don’t want to face it.’ Emma sits back, overlaying her hands delicately on the table and motions for me to sit with an eyebrow gesture. I just stare at her blankly, numb from the amount of crap that has just left her mouth and unsure how I should even react. Right now, all I can focus on is getting oxygen into my body, before I pass out.
‘Take it from someone who knows how all-encompassing heart break caused by a Carrero can be Sophie. How easily someone who you think is your best friend can become the man you are hopeless for. Need.’ Emma’s frowning still, nothing but compassion on her loving face as I shake my head violently. A million emotions crashing inwards, like a sand castle that has been hit by a wave. I feel that all-consuming tightening of my lungs and the overwhelming pain consumes me, confusion makes my brain ache, lung tighten further.
‘I’m not…. I can’t be. He’s Arrick…he’s……..’ I trail off hopelessly as his face runs through my mind a hundred times.
His perfect smile, his hazel eyes and the way one look from him could always shut me down. That body I have scoped out on the fly so many times, knowing he’s hot, already knowing his body and muscles were a perfect ten to go with that perfect ten face, and loving how all my school friends envied the closeness I had to him. That familiarness, that has always felt like home; his smell, his touch and just his sheer presence, which has always had the ability to make everything seem better; seem right. Everything about him just always felt right, my safe haven, the calm to my storm and the shining light in the dark when I couldn’t find my way home. The past twenty fours just prove that he still is, that he’s the only thing that can make this ache subside…. Because this ache is for him, and him alone.
I break down in devastated tears.
‘I can’t be…. He’s in love with Natasha…. He’s taken, he’s not in love with me.’ I wail brokenly, something inside of me snapping into place and realising that Emma is maybe onto something after all.
All I can think of is the years of memories with him, the trust and bond we share. The happy times and shared moments, the bad ones and how he wiped away my tears. The pain I felt when I found out he was leaving, and the hatred I felt when I met Natasha for the first time, and realised this one was different for him. The over whelming pettiness and dislike for a girl I assumed just annoyed me endlessly, while all the while, it’s been heart breaking jealousy, because she had him in a way I never could. The past eighteen months of simultaneously pushing him away with my behaviour, yet clinging to him with need. I have spent the entirety of his relationship with her, trying to regain my hold on him, smug when it works, devastated when it doesn’t, punishing him for it, and it’s all becoming painfully crystal clear to me in this face slapping moment of clarity.
The way everything turned upside down in my life slowly after he was gone, and trips to see him were less frequent as his life got in the way and I started pulling away from him. How my own life lost any sense of purpose, and I slowly drifted into obliviousness without him as my grounding force. I cannot deny what is hitting me square in the face with resounding force right now.
I am in love with my best friend.
And I never even knew it.
‘We take this from another angle … We don’t deal with the past issues again, we deal with how you feel about him and give you tools to cope.’ Emma is moving into counsellor mode, mentally working out a route of therapy needed, dealing with the problem like a check list of things to do. Cutting out the emotional side and just focusing on this as a problem to overcome, like she does with her charity kids. Her noise is almost non-existent to me.
All I can do is keep running over and over in my head, all the reasons I cannot be in love with him and meeting all the blinding obvious answers that I am, and probably have been for a long time and have been too stupidly blind and immature to even realise it. It’s all too much. As she carries on acting and talking like this is some simple problem that a few therapy sessions can fix, and not the absolute worst tragedy of my entire god damn life.
I shake my head violently, standing so fast, unaware of when I had even sat back down. I scrape the chair across the marble floor loudly. Words failing me, as tears fall fast and my head becomes a blurry mess, that is too much to handle.
‘I can’t…. I just need…. Space.’ I try and breath, gulping air as a full-blown panic attack hits me like a punch in the gut, it has been building up and now consumes me with all the aggressive violence of having a plastic zip tied bag over my head. I try and gulp in oxygen, fear gripping me so tight my stomach tenses and I struggle to get anything at all. My lungs feel like they are about to collapse with the effort, and I could be trying to breathe in sand right now. Everything starts to darken, arms out and desperately trying to catch onto something in terror, as it hits me hard.
I feel Emma’s touch on my wrist and then on my arm, her heat by my side, but all I can see is panicking darkness as the room closes in on me.
‘Take slow breaths Sophie. Slow and easy…. Try and calm your breaths, to breathe through the attack… Lean down, head lower for me, like a good girl.’ Her voice is distant and faint, like she’s so very far away in the darkness. I try and cling to her voice in the haze, sure I am going to die as I just cannot inflate my lungs at all. The burning pain that I am suffocating slowly. Emma’s arms are around me, pulling me down to my knees on a cold surface and then my forehead is on the cold flat too, and I lose any sort of orientation about how my body is right now. For all I know I could be hanging upside down by my legs, dizziness and blinding fear have consumed me, so that my senses do not know what’s up or down, or even where I am right now.
‘Sloooow. In and out …Don’t try and fight against yourself. Stop gasping and try and aim for one longer inhale. Listen to my voice, just focus on me and not everything going on inside your head.’
&nb
sp; Emma’s voice is coming around me, sheer concern crying out in every word. Emma has dealt with my attacks in the past and hasn’t seen one in a long time, neither have I, and I seem to have lost the ability to get through it myself. I cling to her voice, her directions and the calm sense she is being around me. Slowly managing to get a few quick gulps of air and then a few more. The blackness pushing back as I start to gasp in enough to be able to speak.
‘Can’t … Love.’ I struggle to formulate what I feel coming out of me, reverting to another bout of struggling gasps to fill my lungs again.
‘Don’t talk… Just breathe and try and calm yourself. It’s going to be okay Sophie. You’re going to be okay.’ Her serene and grounding voice is all that is holding me steady as I come out of the haze with more air in my lungs, I realise I am kneeling forward with my face on the floor and her body is half wrapped around me protectively. Seeing the grey marble come into close view and getting my bearings once more. I notice the pools of water by my nose, small little puddles of tears, and it seems so ridiculous for a second that I giggle. I don’t even know why, other than relief that I can inhale once more, and I no longer think I may black out.
‘Keep breathing, slow and steady. Good girl… That’s right.’ Emma is still soothing, while I just stare numbly at the floor and feel nothing but emotional exhaustion consume me, too tired to sit back up and yet I know I cannot stay face down on her kitchen floor like this. I move to sit up weakly, she helps me slowly and surely and nestles my head against the curve of her breasts, against her throat. Arms around me tight and stroking my hair back off my face. I feel the tears still running down my cheeks as heat floods my skin.
‘You’re okay, I got you Soph’s. I got you. We’re okay.’ Emma soothes while rocking me back and forth in her arms, like she would Mia, gentle soothing words and I have no energy to do anything but cry. Lost in this motherly embrace and start to cry hopeless silent tears.
‘You don’t get it….. It’s him… It’s Arry.’ I whisper brokenly, burying my face in her neck and not wanting to go anywhere else, but stay right here right now. Clinging to her desperately.
‘I do get it. I’ve been here. I know what this is like.’ She still rocks me to and fro, soothing motion of a momma rocking her child and it’s lulling me into submission, despite the torrent of chaos inside of me.
‘Jake was crazy in love with you too, when you figured it out; he was all for being the one. Arrick walked away from me this morning. He left me again. He’s in love with someone else and I’m supposed to do what?’ I burst into heartfelt sobs, pain overtaking where panic has been and wrapping my arms around her bump securely, inhaling the perfume and smell that is uniquely Emma. My second mom, my saviour, my hero.
‘It’s okay, we will get you through this, we will find a way. You’re strong and you are surrounded by love. We will find a way my precious girl.’ Emma’s trying to keep me here, console me, but already I am unravelling. That inner wall that protected me from years of pain is slowly growing inside and the urge to push her away starting to expand. I hate that I am this way, but I can’t help it. That inner me is taking control and even clawing onto her with my fingertips cannot stop that younger me from pulling out of her arms and scooting away towards the kitchen unit, to be alone with myself and my raw pain. Emma lets me go, knowing me, knowing my needs, and stays seated on her own slumped seat on the floor. Watching me with genuine heartbreak in her eyes.
‘How can it be okay?’ I ask her pleadingly. ‘How can it ever be okay again? You don’t get it…. If I am, then what chance do I have of every getting over him?..... Arrick isn’t some stupid teen crush, or boy I dated who hurt me. He’s been my everything, my world, and my support. He’s my best friend, and he would never do anything to make me want to stop loving him, he isn’t capable of doing anything to me that would make me do anything but love him!…… I’m doomed. There’s no way out of this and I cannot see how I’ll be able to get past this.’ I cry out, in both rage and sadness. A crazy mix of desperation.
I am in love with Arrick.
Not a childish, teen crush that involves butterflies and flowers and silly girl fantasies. But a real, complete dependency, and inability to exist without the other half of me, kind of love. The kind of love that is ripping me apart into tiny pieces and sending me down a long dark tunnel into hopeless oblivion with the absence of him. This isn’t some empty hole of nothing that has been eating me away, it is the all-consuming ache of knowing the one I want to be with, is never going to be within my grasp. Even if I only just realised it.
Emma slides across the floor towards me awkwardly, considering her bump, as I crumble once more, tears and overwhelming pain hitting me from every direction and I cannot fight it. I don’t stop her arms from coming around me, I don’t fight when she pulls my head into her lap and strokes my hair soothingly. She sits silently and lets me sob, every single piece of heartbreak I have been carrying around for as long as I can remember, now that I can put a label on exactly what it is.
Maybe it was better when I didn’t know.
Chapter 8
I walk into my family home late in the evening, quietly, I slide in unseen and make for the stairs in the hopes of getting to my room before anyone knows I’m back. I’m exhausted, mentally and physically, and just need to go lie down and get my head together. I’m a complete mess, exhausted, fragile and generally just spent. I came away with so much in my head that I think my mind has shut down and gone into reboot mode in a bid to protect me from having a mental breakdown.
I wept in Emma’s arms for what seemed like an eternity, before we moved to the cosy off the playroom for more privacy. We talked for hours and always just going around and around in circles. Emma hit the hammer on the nail. The more we talked it out and I came to terms with it, the more I could see she was right.
I’ve been living like a crazy heartbroken maniac for months. Flitting from meaningless man to man, unbroken over being cheated on, badly treated or used, because my heart is already fully invested elsewhere and the pain it is causing is drowning everything else out. I have been grasping for love wherever I can find it, in a bid to rid myself of the torment of him inside my soul. I just feel so stupid and blind and confused.
I’m only halfway up the stairs when the worried voice of my mom floats up behind me. Halting me in my tracks and that sense of sinking dread hits me, I am so not ready for another heart to heart. I heavily breath out, body stopping in a slump.
‘Sophie?’ I stand stone still, unable to turn around and let her see the swollen emotional mess my face is in after hours of crying into Emma’s lap. She will only question me endlessly and get more hurt with my inability to tell her what’s wrong with me. I cannot bear to even talk about it anymore, until I, get my head around this mess that used to be my life.
I am so fucked right now.
‘I’m tired momma, I’m going to bed early.’ I revert into my youthful term for her, aware that a part of me is feeling fragile and childlike once more. I know I owe her something more, to talk to her, explain, but all this is so fresh and painful, that I don’t even know where to start. She sighs heavily, still hovering by the base of the stair, despite staying silent.
‘I’ll come down early for breakfast with you. We can talk then if you like. I just need a little time to sleep off the trip here and all the stuff Emma made me talk about Mom.’ My voice is breaking once more, a new fresh wave of tears building up inside, and I curse myself for this inability to stop. Curse the human heart for being so god damn weak and cruel.
‘Oh? You went and talked to Emma? That makes me so happy, I mean, that you’re talking about things. Not clamming up and you know…. Running off. I would like that so much my darling.’ My mother’s soft voice, absolutely loaded with emotion ruins me. The guilt I have been carrying for so long just seems a hundred times heavier with opening my eyes to what my problem has been all along. She didn’t deserve this, none of them did, and all I have done is p
unish everyone who loves me for my inability to recognise I was in love with Arrick. I feel the overwhelming wave of wracking pain wash over and the tears hit me again hard, unable to reel them in while feeling this messed up.
‘I’m sorry Momma.’ I blurt it out as tears stream down my face.
‘I’m sorry for everything. I love you, I do….. I’m just …Sorry!’ I sob through the last part of my sentence and run for my bedroom, before she can follow. I know she’ll be crying too, because of me, and it just pushes me further into this hysterical, nose running mess of hysteria pouring out of me. I get to my room and close the door fast behind me, locking it so no one can invade my space. Slumping down against the wood in a heap so that I can just offload another bought of pointless tears, until my tear ducts shrivel and dehydrate and mercilessly make crying impossible again, for the rest of my life.
I’m pretty sure that would be a good thing right now.
* * *
The blinding sunlight hitting my face is followed by a harsh, stinging like hell, smack on my ass, as I lay face down sleeping in bed. Shocked awake by the brutality of my awakening and yelping like a wounded puppy, blinking blearily at the assault, and the not so sweet tones of one irate, and very fucking loud, sister.
‘Get up right now.!’ Leila’s marching around my bedroom like god damn commander and chief on a rampage, dragging open the drapes to epic sunshine levels and obviously in a hostile mood, not that it’s new for her. I groan, leaning up to catch a glimpse of the alarm on my night table and groan harder at the early hour. I have become a night owl living in the city, sleeping by day to get over nights of partying, and this is almost torture.
‘I’m sleeping.’ I mumble as another harsh slap catches my backside, this time my sheets are yanked back and the palm hits with scantily clad flesh that is only being shielded by lace panties. I literally whelp at the slap that I know will leave a mark this time. Turning harshly to glare at one dickhead that thinks she has a right to bloody hit me.
The Carrero Heart_Beginning_Arrick and Sophie Page 16