“Alright.” Nash glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “My shift starts at seven, so?—”
“Three,” I told him. “I can be done at three.”
“I’ll be here with bells on.”
Rolling my eyes, I offered a laugh, though it sounded more tense than amused, but Nash was being very understanding and didn’t call me out on it. When I reached for the door handle, I felt a warm touch on my wrist, and I froze, almost afraid to look back.
“Forest.”
“Mm?”
“It’s going to be okay.”
My breath left my lungs with a slight shudder, and I turned my wrist so my palm met his. His fingers were thicker than mine, but they slotted perfectly between the gaps, and he held on tight. “I know.”
His thumb stroked the side of mine. “Do you?” His question might have sounded antagonistic coming from anyone else, but from Nash, I could tell he was just worried.
“I do. This has been a lot, and I’m still processing, but…” I hesitated, then let the door handle go and twisted around to face him properly. “I’m sorry about the doctor’s office.”
His brows dipped. “Sorry about what?”
“Falling apart.”
Nash scoffed. “Are you serious? Forest?—”
“Really,” I said, cutting him off. “I think I was mostly relieved that it wasn’t something worse, but after spending weeks researching everything, it was a lot to process.I’m not usually so…weak.”
He looked angry for a moment, then his shoulders sagged and he gently squeezed my hand. “Getting upset over a serious diagnosis doesn’t make you weak.And neither does feeling relief that it wasn’t one of the things you were most afraid of.”
I rolled my eyes. Technically, I knew that. Technically, he was right. But that was not the way it felt to me right then. “I just mean I’m usually in better control. And I know it’s to be expected. I think right now what I really need is the ability to compartmentalize. I can’t do my job if I’m busy panicking about what the rest of my life is going to look like.”
His mouth softened into a small smile, and he nodded. “Okay. I get that. And I will help however I can.”
“Then right now, I need you to just let me be an emotionless robot so I can get through the day. I promise to vent my feelings later.”
“To a therapist?” he pressed.
I rolled my eyes again. “Yes, to a therapist. Creek and I might have the same genetics, but I’m not as stubborn as he is.”
Nash gave me a slow up-and-down. “You two are very different.” There was weight to his words, but I was in no place to try and figure out what he wasn’t saying. “Call me if you get done early, okay?”
He let me go, and I took a minute to adjust to not holding his hand before grabbing my messenger bag and opening the car door.
The stress was already affecting my legs. It took twice as much effort to get them to take a step as it would have before all of this. But I was steady and moving. I wasn’t having an aura,so I likely wasn’t going to have a seizure, and my hands were opening and closing the way they should.
If this was all I had to deal with today, I could handle it.
“See you in a bit,” I told him, then shut the door and glanced down the path leading to the administration building. The weight on my chest felt heavier, but the only path left for me was forward. I took a step, then another, and walking became easier.
I would compromise today by not even trying to take the stairs, and I would do my best to stay focused in the meeting so maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t be able to see what a mess my brain was. It wasn’t ideal. It wasn’t what I would have chosen.
But this was the only battle I had left in me to fight.
My ears were ringing as I stared at the woman in front of me. What was her name again? Nancy? No…Nina? I glanced to the left at her little nameplate, which was also a pencil holder. It looked like one of those cheap gifts my grandma used to get us from the airport catalog when we were little, if those things still existed.
Duty Free, I think it was called?
She always snuck a magazine home for me to page through. I’d loved it. God, I was such a weird kid.
