by Chloe Liese
Anxiety isn’t always debilitating, and for me, more often than not, it doesn’t spiral into depression, because my meds seem to help with that aspect. But anxiety doesn’t leave, fully. It’s never out of the building. It lurks. It reminds you it’s there. Biding its time. At least, for me it does.
It took me a long time—and lots of therapy hours—to accept that my anxiety makes life harder, but it doesn’t make me wrong or damaged or…well, anything bad. It just…is. And sometimes it’s quiet and sometimes it’s loud, and no matter what, I’ve learned to cope. I’m tough. I push through a lot. And some days, I spend a lot of time wishing there was some silver bullet that would make anxiety vanish from my life for good.
My therapist has encouraged me to be compassionate with myself, instead of wanting to fix myself or change how I am. And listen, I like her. She’s good. Shit, I can even admit she’s right. But that doesn’t mean I like it. Acceptance is not a solution. And I want solutions. I want to be able to fix it.
Because I love fixing shit. I love fixing people up—my brother-in-law Ryder and his steady girlfriend, Willa, can tell you that, since I matchmade them expertly. My students will tell you I love applying math to fix their business-management challenges so they can plan for success. Freya knows more than anyone else, I love fixing broken objects, putting furniture together, patching our roof, turning messes into tidiness. I get a fucking high from it.
Besides slapping my hand when I have occasionally overreached on my matchmaking endeavors, and that one time I was a little too attached to trying to reglue a total lost cause of a chair, Freya’s always made me feel like my fixer impulses that shape our life are something she admires about me. She’s never made me doubt she loves me for who I am. And I love her for it.
But even though she’s accepting, empathic—so, so empathic—there’s a limit to what I’m willing to place on her shoulders. She doesn’t know that my anxiety, which is sometimes high but generally managed with a generous dose of Prozac and periodic therapy sessions, is borderline debilitating right now. I’ve made sure of it.
Yeah, I know. Not talking is a big no-no. But here’s the thing. Freya feels for me and other people too much as it is. I know more than anyone how it weighs her down, how when the burden becomes too much, she cries in the shower and sings sad songs when she’s working in the yard. How she crawls into my arms at night and sobs silently until her sadness bleeds into her sleep and her dreams are fitful. I know how she hums to the cats and holds them hard after a rough day with patients. Freya holds the world in her heart. All I’m doing is shielding her from the worst of it, compartmentalizing, so she has someone to lean into when we’re together.
I thought I was doing a good job.
But I’m starting to wonder, since she drew a line in the proverbial sand, if I’ve been worse at hiding my struggles than I thought, if I’m not as good at shielding her as I wanted to be. I’m wondering if it’s blown up in my face, and I’ve been wondering that since I came home from work and she literally had a bag packed for me with a round-trip ticket sitting on top of it.
I tried to focus on the fact that it wasn’t one-way. That was a good sign, right?
I had to hope so.
Pocketing my phone and bracing myself for the explosion of echoing sound, I step back inside this modern art gallery, a warehouse-style space in the artsy, eclectic LA neighborhood of Fairfax, which is showing my brother-in-law Axel’s art. Before the door even shuts behind me, my eyes find Freya, and my system grinds to a halt. There’s a guy, grinning at her with unmasked interest. A fiery burst of fear and worry and possessiveness burns through me.
I’m not a jealous man. Freya’s my partner, not my possession. That said, when an asshole is staring down the neckline of my wife’s dress, and my wife is not—as the past would dictate—either “accidentally” dumping her drink on his expensive-looking boots or giving him her Mrs. Freeze eyes, I feel justified in my response. And I feel my legs moving fast, taking me straight toward her.
I cut through the crowd milling around the gallery, my eyes locked on her. White-blonde waves cut just past her jaw, luminous skin, and mouth-watering curves. Her black dress flutters around her knees, swaying rhythmically because Freya can’t help but move when she hears music. She tips her head and sips from her straw as he smiles at her. Shit, is she flirting?
Not that I’m not angry with her. No, this is my fault. We’re here because I fucked up. Well, I’m lucky we’re here in the same space tonight, period. Freya didn’t express delight when I invited myself to come to Axel’s art show, desperate for any time with her, to show her I’m here, committed to us, even when I hate noisy, chaotic spaces like this. She barely spoke to me on the drive over or when we arrived, instead chatting with her brothers and Rooney, Willa’s best friend from college who’s been around so much she’s now an honorary Bergman.
But I’m not letting that deter me. I’m going to fix the shit out of this. And my wife needs to see that—that I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.
“Freya.” I set a hand on her back, sighing with relief when she doesn’t arch away from it. In fact, I could swear she even leans in. Just a little. It feels monumental.
“Aiden, this is George Harper. He’s showing here as well. George, this is my husband, Aiden MacCormack.”
Hah. So there, George. I’m her husband.
I extend my hand and accept the guy’s grip, reminding myself that squeezing his fingers to a pulp is unreasonable. Freya’s a beautiful woman. He’d have to be senseless not to be dazzled. So I let him pass with a slightly too-strong clasp.
“Congratulations,” I tell him. “Hell of a show.”
“Thank you. It is,” he says. “And you’re here for whom, again?”
“Axel Bergman.” Freya nods toward her brother’s corner of the gallery. Ax stands with his back to us, tall and narrow, hands in his pockets, staring at one of his paintings. “Which are yours?” she asks.
Answering her, George gestures over his shoulder, my gaze, then my focus wandering from their conversation to the room around us. First to Freya’s brother Ren, a forward for the LA Kings, who’s clearly being accosted by a hockey fan while getting us drinks at the gallery bar. Then I spot Rooney as she wanders Axel’s section of the gallery.
Axel. Ren. Rooney. Freya. Ren’s girlfriend, Frankie, isn’t coming. None of Freya’s other siblings are coming, so I don’t have to look out for them. Ryder and his girlfriend, Willa, are still up in Washington State. Ziggy, the baby of the family, doesn’t do crowded spaces like this. Oliver and Viggo, the man cubs, can’t be trusted around breakable things. And their parents are, in Axel’s words, “not allowed to come” because this show is “too graphic.”
They’ll visit the gallery and see his work after Axel’s flown back to Seattle, where he lives. He makes up an excuse every art show for why they can’t come, and they never fight him, because of some kind of unspoken Bergman shit I don’t get. Then they visit later when he won’t know. That’s what they always do.
Locating my people lowers the volume of my brain’s calculating buzz to a steady baseline hum. Everyone’s accounted for. I take a deep breath and refocus on Freya and George’s conversation. I’ve lost track of who said what, but I’m going to take a wild guess it was mostly George talking about himself.
“…So that’s my approach in a nutshell,” he says.
Nailed it.
Freya glances between George’s work and her brother’s. “That’s interesting. Very different from Axel’s.”
“You can say that again.” George glances over his shoulder at Axel who’s being tapped on the shoulder by someone with a camera around their neck and a nervous smile. His stern profile as he stares down at them is so Axel I could laugh. The poor man hates publicity more than I hate messy closets.
“Axel’s...” George scrubs the back of his neck and shrugs. “Well…he’s prolific. I’ll give him that.”
Freya’s eyes turn icy. “Meani
ng what?” The oldest of her siblings, Freya loves them fiercely, protectively. The moment she catches a whiff of shit thrown their way, she’s in mama-bear mode.
George’s nervous laughter fades as quickly as it arrived, when he registers her anger. “Well…” he says carefully, tiptoeing through a verbal minefield, “meaning he’s managed to paint a lot.”
“I actually know what the word prolific means,” Freya says acidly as she clamps the straw between her teeth.
George tugs at his collar, starting to sweat. “I’ll be honest. His stuff weirds me out. He weirds me out, too.”
Freya grips her glass so hard I’m waiting for it to shatter in her grip. “Some of the art world’s most revered creators—their eccentricities and their visionary work—were misunderstood in their time. Van Gogh being a personal favorite.”
George blinks at her, speechless.
“Perhaps you might question your unease about my brother and his art and consider that, when yours and all these other paltry attempts at art are long forgotten, Axel and his work will be immortalized. Good day, sir!”
Freya at her mama-bear finest. She spins, grabs me by the arm, and marches us past him, toward her brother.
“Did you just throw Willie Wonka at him?” I ask.
Her mouth quirks, and my heart skips a beat. Freya just almost-smiled for me. It feels like the first drop of rain in a drought.
“He’s lucky I didn’t throw him a Frankie curse.”
Ren’s girlfriend, Frankie, has a witchy vibe and a colorful penchant for pointing her cane like a wand at offending parties and tossing hexes their way. I was more expecting Freya to toss her glass of whatever she’s drinking right in his face.
“He would have deserved it,” I tell her.
“That’s the truth. Ax!” Freya says, moving past me.
Axel turns and locks eyes with Freya, wordlessly greeting her. Those two have something I’m ashamed to say I envy—an unspoken understanding. I’d never seen two people bicker in three words and stony glares until them, but then I’ve seen moments like this, too—silent, pure connection. Freya stands close to him, squeezing his hand once, as she stares at the painting in front of them. Lots of red against a stark white canvas, in a pattern that makes me feel slightly woozy. Shit, now I sound like that asshole George.
“So much emotion, right?” Rooney joins me at one of the narrow bar-height tables placed strategically around the space. Her blue-green eyes drift across the wall where Axel’s art is mounted. “Visual art like his says so much, without a single word. I feel like all I do is talk and yet I never convey a smidge of what his art expresses.”
Her eyes dance between Freya and Axel, the same envy I feel tightening her expression. I’ve had a hunch about those two, Ax and Rooney. I have a good sense for chemistry, which is, of course, why I’m a good matchmaker. That’s how Ryder and Willa got their start together—I made them project partners when they were students in my business mathematics class. I may have gone a little overboard on that, but the point stands. I have good intuition about these things.
“That’s what you get with a Bergman,” I tell her. “They’re pretty economical with their feelings, except for Freya and her dad—”
“And me,” Ren says.
I startle and clasp my pounding heart. “You’re freakishly stealthy.”
I’m also jumpy as hell.
“Stealth is the name of the game,” he says, raising a ridiculously coordinated collection of cocktails in his big hands. “Take yours and pray they don’t fall.”
Rooney laughs as she extricates her gin and tonic. I grab my Diet Coke as well as what Ren indicates is Freya’s drink, which splashes on my hand. I lap it up, expecting the tang of vodka, but it’s…just club soda.
Club soda. I nearly drop the glass.
No alcohol. Why? Why no alcohol? The other night, when I came home, she was tipsy. But what if since then she’s realized…
The room rocks beneath me as my gaze lands on Freya and my heart begins to pound. I wrack my brain. When’s the last time I picked up tampons and pads when I ran errands? When’s the last time she complained of cramps and needed the heating pad? My breathing ratchets up.
Shit.
Shit.
The past few months flash before my eyes, nailing me with stunning, convicting clarity. I’ve been distracted with work, hustling for the app’s funding, revising our presentation for potential investors, doing everything I can to make the future feel financially secure, ever since we decided she would go off birth control and we’d stop preventing pregnancy…
Six months ago.
It’s been six fucking months, and I can’t remember the last time we talked about it, the last time I noticed if she’d gotten her period or missed it. I felt the weight of our lives double with the impending promise of a baby—a baby that I want, yes, but that I feel an enormous responsibility to make sure doesn’t have the childhood I had—and I’ve been consumed with what that entails ever since.
Oh, God. I have no clue how far along she is, how she feels. Why wouldn’t she tell me?
Because you haven’t asked, dickhead.
Fucking hell. No wonder she kicked my ass out.
There’s more to it than that, and you know it.
I jam that disturbing thought deep into the corners of my mind just as Ren sets a hand on my shoulder. I glance over at my brother-in-law, a gentle ginger giant, his hockey hair floppy, his beard trimmed to a neat auburn scruff now that playoffs are over. He has Freya’s striking pale eyes, which scan me with concern. “You okay, Aiden? You look upset.”
Ren’s the emotionally conversant one. He’s the one I spilled my guts to when Freya kicked me out. Granted, he wasn’t his most empathic—he and Frankie were struggling to find their footing, which is now solid—but he knows more than the rest of the siblings about what’s going on.
“I’m okay,” I manage, dabbing my sweaty forehead with the cool condensation dripping down Freya’s glass. “I’m uh…contemplating breaking up the sibling lovefest and giving Freya her drink.”
Ren smiles. “Good luck. But I’d recommend you wait until it’s over.”
Rooney sips her cocktail. “I wish I had siblings.”
“Not going to lie,” Ren says, taking a drink of his own, “I don’t know what I’d do without a big family. And I’m really glad Frankie wants a houseful.”
I open my mouth to say something cautious like, You’ve only been together for a few months. Should you already be planning like that? Aren’t you terrified that it could fall apart? But then I remember how I felt two months into being with Freya, like she was air and sunlight, water and life, like if I lost her, I’d just stop existing. And I’ve never stopped seeing her that way. I just got better at worrying about losing her—so worried, it started robbing me of the hours I used to devote to soaking her up, basking in her joy, her passion and laughter and kisses.
Sighing, I chug my Diet Coke and, not for the first time, wish I wasn’t so uptight about my alcohol policy. I could use a mind-numbing buzz right now. Holy shit, could I.
Rooney grins at Ren. “When you and Frankie have babies, they’re going to be so cute. With her big, pretty hazel eyes and your hair. Gah. Have lots so I can snuggle them.”
“Have your own!” Ren says playfully. “I’ll be hoarding them, inhaling that—”
“New baby smell,” they say in unison.
My stomach double knots. A baby.
“How is Frankie?” Rooney asks.
Ren smiles a lovesick grin. “She’s great. She just felt like tonight would be too much.”
Frankie, like the youngest Bergman, Ziggy, is on the autism spectrum—bright, unfiltered, and quickly overwhelmed by busy, loud spaces like the Bergman house or a bustling art gallery.
My anxiety’s not a huge fan of those spaces, either.
“Smart lady,” I mutter.
Ren nods. “Yep. So she’s having a quiet night in at home.”
Roone
y smooths back her dark-blonde hair and smiles gently. “Well, I’m glad she felt comfortable doing what she needed, but I miss seeing her. I really like her, Ren.”
Ren grins again. “Yeah. She’s the best.”
“Who me?” Freya says, inserting herself and sweeping up her drink. “Aw, brother. You’re too sweet.”
Ren shakes his head and smiles.
“Who’s sweet?” Axel says, eyes on Rooney.
“This one, duh,” Freya says, looping an arm around Rooney’s waist. Rooney smiles, her cheeks pinking as Freya pulls her into a conversation.
When Axel’s sharp green eyes finally leave Rooney, they swivel my way, boring into me. It makes me wonder if Freya spilled the dirt while they had their backs to us.
“Aiden,” he says, his voice deep and even. It isn’t his friendliest expression, but then again, Axel often has a smooth, unreadable look on his face.
I nod. “Ax.”
“Thanks for coming.” Ax rarely hugs, and when he’s up for hugging he makes that clear. He doesn’t this time. So we shake hands.
“As always, well done,” I say, gesturing with my glass to his wall of the gallery. “This is incredible.”
His eyes are back on Rooney. “Mhmm.”
I pause, waiting for him to give me his attention. He doesn’t. He watches Rooney as she laughs with Freya, as they turn and smile for someone from the gallery asking to take their photo.
“Ax, you’re not subtle,” I whisper.
“True,” he says, still staring at her. “No one’s ever called my work subtle.”
Freya and Rooney are being photographed. Ren’s on his phone, probably texting Frankie. It’s just us. So I take a risk and say, “You could let the matchmaker try his hand—”
“Aiden,” Ax cuts me off as his eyes meet mine again. There’s the tiniest bit of red on his cheekbones.
I fight a grin. “Yes, Axel?”
“Isn’t there a proverb along the lines of ‘people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’? Deal with your own life before you start trying to orchestrate mine.”
My smile fades. She has told him.