My heart felt like it was going to have no trouble clawing its way out of my chest at this rate. It was torn between running to him and giving up. Running to him was too hard and too painful. It was just going to give up, play dead, and hope no one bothered it for a while.
“I don’t…” I took a deep breath. “What do you want me to do with this?” I asked.
He shrugged. I had never seen him look so defeated. I had never seen him look so unsure of anything. “I don’t know. I’m no good for you, but I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that, Roman! A few months ago, I would have agreed with you. I would have said you were no good for me. Now, I’m not so sure.”
“How can you stand there and say that? You know me better than anyone. How can you believe that?”
“What were we doing, Roman? We hung out, we got along, you were there for me every single time I needed you, and we slept together. Apart from the whole monogamy thing, what we had seemed like a pretty good relationship to me.”
“Monogamy?”
“Yeah. Nifty concept. I assumed you’d heard of it.”
“Of course I’ve fucking heard of it, Piper,” he spat. “And for your information, I wasn’t with anyone else between that first Saturday in the holidays and last Saturday when I saw you and Carter…out.”
I somehow knew ‘out’ was not the word he was thinking of. What had he seen? Me kissing Mason? What else–
Wait…
“What?” I barely breathed; it was barely a sound. I sucked in a breath. “You what?”
“Wow. So that’s what you think of me? I’m so fucking shit that I was off sleeping around? You think that little of me?”
“No.” I shook my head. “No. No, I think that little of me…”
“How– What do you mean?”
I don’t know why I pointed to myself. “I just assumed I wasn’t enough. I didn’t have any reason to think you were with other people. But, I never told myself you weren’t. There wasn’t a reason for you not to be.”
He took a step towards me. “How could you think…?” He ran a hand through his hair and turned around. “Fuck! This isn’t happening…”
“What’s not happening?”
He whirled around and laughed humourlessly. “You’re telling me we may as well have been dating? We may as well have… Fuck! It’s all my fault. I had everything I never knew I wanted and I just stupidly let you go.”
I crossed my arms. “Roman, what do you want from me?”
“Short of turning back time? Nothing,” he scoffed, and I knew he was more pissed with himself than he was with me.
I sighed and blinked back tears. My heart had decided the floor was a perfectly good place to just lie down for a while, so it was going to stay there. “Honestly, Roman?”
“Always, Piper. You know that.”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, we may as well have been dating. I don’t know if it was all your fault. I suspect I’m as much to blame as you. I can’t say if you had everything. But, I was there, Roman. Right there and you did just let me go. And, now I don’t know what to do.” I shrugged. “I don’t even know where Mason and I stand. I don’t know if we’re actually dating – if he’s my boyfriend – or if we’re not quite there yet. It’s confusing and hard and it’s not supposed to be. Then, you tell me all this and I don’t know what to do with it! Am I supposed to dump Mason? I don’t know what you want from me, Roman!”
“I don’t want anything from you, Piper. I just… Whatever we were, we were always honest and I couldn’t not be honest with you. Don’t break up with Carter. I’ve got nothing to offer you. Nothing’s changed.”
“Nothing’s changed?” I yelled. “Oh, so you just selfishly decided to drop this bomb on me and tell me it ultimately changes nothing?”
“Selfishly?” he spat.
“Yes. If you’re not asking me to dump Mason for you then this whole thing was for you. I get we do honesty, Roman. And, I appreciate the fact that that extends to everything uncomfortable. But, this? This is beyond uncomfortable. You think telling me I’m in your heart isn’t going to change anything? Fuck, Roman! I thought friends put the other one first. This is anything but putting me first.”
I whirled, angry and wanting to hit something. Instead, I looked back at him. “God knows I fucking love you Roman. But I’d managed to stop myself falling completely in love with you because we all knew where that would lead. You can’t come here and tell me you can’t get me out of your heart and expect me to be unaffected by that! It just doesn’t work that way.”
I could have kept yelling at him for hours – days probably – but it wasn’t going to get us to any better a place. It wasn’t going to fix anything.
“Piper–”
“You’ve just ruined everything, Roman! I can’t–” My breath hitched and I fought back tears. “Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone? Why couldn’t we both go on as we were? I can’t live in denial when I know the truth. I can’t be friends with you knowing we both want more and can’t give it. What the hell makes naïve little Piper Barlow so special that the aloof Roman Lombardi just can’t help himself to feelings for once? Where is that typical Roman Steel? The brush-off? The cavalier nonchalance? I just don’t–”
I stopped, realising I was doing exactly what I’d accused him of doing; I wasn’t putting him first, I was putting my anger first. And that wasn’t any more fair than I thought he’d been. I took a deep breath.
“That’s not fair. I shouldn’t have…”
He shook his head. “No, you’re right to be angry. I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry, Piper–”
Tears choked my throat and I held up a hand. “Don’t apologise, Roman. Please.”
The dynamic hadn’t just shifted; it was broken. We were broken now, but I was going to hang onto something.
His honesty might have made me angry, but that was only because it made me acknowledge a truth I’d stoically refused to admit until now. It was a truth that had the power to hurt me. It was a truth that I felt keenly. And, it had to happen at some point. But, no matter how much I hurt – how angry I was – it gave me no right to invalidate his acknowledgement. Maybe I was angrier at the fact he’d acknowledged it before me but too late for either of us.
“You don’t have to apologise for being you, let alone being honest. Neither of us went about this the right way, any of it. But, we are who we are. You know I’ll never judge you and I’ll always like you for you, Roman. I don’t expect you to be anything other than who you are.” I took a deep breath. “That’s the guy I love. But, I can’t do this right now. I… I need some space. We need some space.”
I wanted nothing more than to walk forward and have him put his arms around me. And, when he reached out to me, I thought he would. His embrace had always been welcoming, it had been comforting. But in it, I’d found far more than I’d expected and I had to learn not to lean on him; it wasn’t fair for either of us, or for Mason.
A single step had never felt more wrong, but a step away from Roman was necessary.
His arm fell and I knew that one step symbolised more to either of us than a mere action.
“No,” he said slowly, “you’re right. I’ll, uh… I’ll see you later, Barlow…”
He turned on his heel and walked away. I didn’t move. I just stared into the space he’d occupied like it could bring him back, bring us back. But he didn’t come back and I didn’t know when I’d actually see him again, let alone what that would be like.
h
“Are you sure about this, honey?” Mum asked, her arm around my shoulders.
I nodded. “Yeah. It’s time I faced things head on. No more pretending.”
Mum gave a weird strangled breath and I looked at her in exasperated adoration. “Sorry, honey.”
I rolled my eyes and smiled at her. “Mum, we’v
e talked about this.”
And, we had. After talking to Roman on Monday night, I’d sat my parents down and I’d told them everything. Well…almost everything. All the emotional stuff, anyway.
It had been difficult and draining, but they were there for me and they listened and they still loved me even when I wasn’t perfect. It made me realise I could have trusted them earlier and I wished I had.
Mum nodded. “I know. I know.” She waved her hand at me, holding back tears. “I’m amazing. I reared perfection and I’m amazing,” she said as though it was her new mantra.
I chuckled and hugged her. “Not perfection.”
“You’re perfection to me, honey.”
“Okay! Stop, or I will be sick.”
Mum took hold of my shoulders and steered me inside. So really, I had no choice about how ready I was or not anymore. But, I felt ready.
After I’d explained everything, Mum, Dad and I had spent hours talking about it and I knew it was the right choice.
“Piper Barlow for Dr Freeman,” I said as I walked up to the front desk.
The woman behind the desk smiled. “Hi. We’ve got a few bits of paper for you to fill in. Just bring them back when you’re done.”
I nodded, took the clipboard she passed me, and Mum and I found a seat.
“How are you feeling?” Mum asked.
I smiled as I started filling in the paperwork. “Fine. Little nervous I guess. But, there’s nothing she can tell me that I don’t already tell myself. It can only be good news.”
Mum hugged me to her one-handedly and I shrugged her off kindly as I finished the paperwork.
Once it was back with the receptionist, we sat and waited. A few minutes passed and a woman in maybe her mid-forties came into the waiting room. She had dark blonde hair and clear-framed glasses perched on her nose.
“Piper?”
I nodded and stood up.
“I’ll be right here, honey,” Mum said with a pat to my back.
I nodded again and followed Dr Freeman to her office.
“Have a seat, wherever you’re comfortable,” she said and I sat on the edge of the couch. “It’s nice to meet you Piper.”
“Uh, you too, Dr Freeman.”
She smiled and sat daintily on the chair across from me, picking up a tablet from the table beside her. “I understand it was your idea to come and see me, Piper?”
I nodded. “Uh, yes.”
“Why do you think you need therapy?”
I looked down at my hands and found them interlaced in my lap. “I don’t really know how to put it.”
“That’s okay. How about we start with what brought you here? What made you decide?”
I didn’t want to admit it. But, I knew I had to. “Roman.”
“Roman?” she asked, writing something down.
I nodded. “Roman.”
“And, who is Roman to you?”
I sighed. “Uh, that’s the problem. I don’t know…”
Somehow, I found myself telling her everything. I started something like three months earlier when Roman moved in next door, to the day Hadley and I were sitting on the bleachers in Mason’s PE lesson, I went through my relationship with Mason, Hadley, Mum, Dad, Roman, even Celeste. I stumbled in some parts. But, I knew overall that I wasn’t going to get anything out of it if I wasn’t completely honest.
“…so, when I turned around and realised I only had one person in my life that I was truly honest with… And, I couldn’t talk to him anymore… Well, I figured it was time for a change.”
I finally looked up and saw her watching me thoughtfully. “Thank you, Piper.”
I blinked. “For what?”
“For sharing all that. I see you’ve been dealing with a lot of…new things lately.”
I shrugged. “I guess.”
“Piper, have you ever self-diagnosed?”
“No. I don’t think so?” Should I have?
Dr Freeman nodded, a smile widening on her face. “Good. You know, that is one problem with the internet these days. Everything is so readily available to us. We can type in a bunch of symptoms and get a whole bunch of things back. You said sometimes you feel…funky?”
I nodded. “Roman and I…” I cleared my throat. “It’s what we called it. If I felt down or antsy or uncomfortable, he’d say I was in a funk.”
“And, what did you call it before?”
I shrugged. “Nothing really. Issues, I guess.”
“Issues? And, the negative connotations of that never made you feel worse?”
“No. I guess it was a bit tongue-in-cheek, you know. Sort of downplay how I was feeling because I knew I’d look stupid to other people if they knew. I kind of labelled things the way I thought other people would relate to them better.” I shrugged again.
“Why do you think you’d look stupid to other people?”
“Because what does Piper Barlow have to worry about? Really? I live in a nice house. I have great parents. I have wonderful friends. I get good grades. I’m healthy. I’m lucky. And, feeling any other way is…” I slowed to a stop.
“Is what, Piper?”
“Selfish,” I said around the lump in my throat.
“Why selfish?”
“There are people dying of starvation, of illness, people alone, homeless. The world is full of horrors. And, then I look at my life and there’s none of that.”
“You think because other people have what you believe is a worse time that you should be happy all the time?”
I huffed a humourless laugh, thinking I knew where she was going with that question. “Roman would say something much the same.”
“Those nancy wanker words?”
I looked up at her and smiled. “Yeah.”
She smiled back. “We don’t have a lot more time for today, Piper. But, I want to ask you this; when you’re feeling…funky can you just think of these other people – of their problems – and feel better about your life?”
I shook my head, feeling guilty. “No.”
“Piper, no one expects you to,” she said kindly. “Anxiety isn’t something we just turn on and off. It’s real. Sometimes, we feel like it makes no sense. We make excuses for it or for ourselves. We pretend we’re okay.” Here she looked at me intently and I knew when I was being given a message. “But, we don’t have to. Everyone’s experiences and emotions are different. What you’re going through isn’t less difficult for you just because there are people in poverty elsewhere in the world. We are a sum of our experiences – good and bad – and our brains don’t work the way we want them to just because we will it.
“I think it would be good if we could catch up again in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I want you to think about what makes you unhappy and what you need to be happy. It can be people, things, songs, books, movies…John Cusack.” We shared a smile. “But, I want you to think about what makes you happy and what you can do to surround yourself with positives.”
I nodded. “I think I can do that.”
She gave me an encouraging look. “Good.”
“It’ll be hard, won’t it?”
Dr Freeman smiled sympathetically. “Sometimes, the way we can find our happiest selves can also be the most painful to acknowledge.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
To Be or Not To Be [Friends].
Okay, things that made me unhappy and things I needed to be happy. That was easy, right?
Right.
Mum. Dad. John Cusack movies. My friends; Hadley, Celeste, Tucker, Craig…
Mason?
Roman?
Why did my brain insist on making the two of them mutually exclusive?
I had Mason. I chose Mason. Mason made me happy.
But, Roman’s friendship meant the world to me. Nothing compared to sitting in the comfortable, comforting silence next to him and knowing he was comfortable too.
Mason was my John Cusack.
&
nbsp; Roman was my… Carter from A Cinderella Story! He’s the best friend. Sure, there was a little bit of a banter that could be seen as flirtation. But, we were just meant to be friends. Nothing more.
Yeah, Roman was my Carter.
And, I needed a Carter.
So, I’d won the boy.
Now, I needed to fight for my friend.
And, that was exactly was I was going to do.
So I ran out my front door on Wednesday, riddled with nervous excitement. Piper wasn’t hiding anything anymore. She was being truthful and honest and herself. Friends with Roman was doable. It had to be.
I was in the process of heading for his ute to wait for him when he walked out his back door. We both paused then he stalked forward, looking at me like he dared me to come any closer.
God, if only the brooding thing didn’t suit him so well…
I cleared my throat. “Roman, I know I said–”
I stopped when he winced as though he’d actually thought we’d been going to get through this without speaking. “Space, Barlow. I thought we were having space?”
“Yeah, I know, Roman. I said I needed space–”
“We needed space.”
“Roman… Please, just talk to me.”
“About what Piper?” he asked, flinging his arms out. “What could there possibly be left to talk about?”
“Everything? Anything–”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing is good.”
He glared at me. “Barlow, what do you want?”
“I want us to be friends.”
“Friends?” he scoffed, looking completely taken aback. “Barlow… Fuck…” He chuckled and sucked his teeth. “Friends? Barlow, what makes you think we can do friends? Last I recall, we both realised we may as well have been accidentally dating and we needed space to work ourselves out.”
“Last I recall you had nothing to offer me. But, I don’t believe you.”
“Piper, we’ve been through this. I will never be that guy.”
“I’m not asking you to be!” I yelled. “I’m not asking you to be anyone but you, and you’re my friend–”
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