“Miles is being Miles.” Lily rolled her eyes, reached across the table for Avery’s empty glass, stood, and walked back to the kitchen. “I think we all need a refresh.”
“Lily,” Avery called after her. “I should get your frosé.”
“You’ll have plenty of opportunities”—Lily paused for a beat and sang out—“at my wedding.”
Avery filled in Anna Catherine until Lily returned with a tray of drinks and tissues.
“Just in case,” she said as she put the tissue box between them.
Once they were all seated, Avery shrugged. “So, what do y’all think?”
“When Hayes and I reached this point, we had a bump in the road too,” Anna Catherine said. “He thought loving me somehow diluted his love for his mom. Like love was finite.”
Avery felt her heart flutter. Poor Hayes and Miles shared a sadness,but she wasn’t sure Miles had the same misconceptions about love. She’d seen fear in his eyes when he rubbed his chest. Still, Anna Catherine might have an idea how to coax the issue out of him.
“So what did you do?” Avery asked.
“I told him he didn’t have to love me, but I loved him and planned to stick by him. It was slow going for a while, but worth it. He lined up a therapist who could do telehealth while he was on location. I think being apart for work helped us. He had the space to work through his issues away on set, and so did I. By the time we came back, we knew what we wanted and thankfully, it was the same thing.”
Avery hoped she and Miles regarded their pause the same way.
“These guys.” Anna swirled her straw in her frosé. “They lost their moms, and their hearts got jumbled. Give him time. He’ll talk.”
“It seems natural for Hayes and Miles to have issues with intimacy,” Lily said. “Moms love unconditionally. Losing that so young must alter your sense of what forever means.”
Uncertainty about whether love could last a lifetime might explain why Miles had avoided a relationship ten years earlier. She wished their second chance hadn’t come with the risk of suffering heartbreak again. But that was how relationships worked.
“Maybe.” Avery mixed the melted and frozen frosé in her glass into a slushier slush. “I can tell he keeps things from me. Whenever our future comes up, he turns white as a ghost, grabs his chest, and freezes. Then he flees. Like he did that day in the parking lot when having children came up. He couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”
Anna Catherine covered her eyes with her hand. “I feel so bad about that.”
“Don’t. It was a natural thing to say. Most people would’ve let it slide, but he got so worked up, I worried about his well-being. And when I said I loved him this weekend, it happened again.”
Avery carefully placed her glass back in the water ring it had left onthe coaster. If Miles needed space, she could wait a little while, but not another ten years.
“Hang on.” Lily leaned her elbows on the table. “Describe what he does again.”
“Goes pale, grabs at his chest,” Avery said. “His breathing gets uneven.”
“He broke out in a sweat too,” Anna Catherine added.
“That sounds like a panic attack.” Lily snapped her fingers. “Some of my students have them. One told me she grabs her chest so she can count her heartbeats. I have another who takes his pulse.”
Avery closed her eyes and asked herself how she hadn’t seen it before. Her chest sank like a rock in water. She’d made the moments about her. Miles was hurting, and regardless of whether he loved her, she loved him. It made sense for him to be wary of love. Love had made him suffer the unimaginable. Whatever he needed, she’d do.
She glanced out the window, hoping to stop the expanding lump in her throat.
“How do I help him?” she asked, tears stinging her eyes.
“Accept you can’t fix it. He can’t make it go away either,” Anna Catherine said. “Maybe gently ask if he knows what a panic attack is. From there, see if he’s willing to get professional help.”
When middle school friendships got hard, Avery’s mother used to take her for long drives. She’d always felt safer pouring her heart out in the car, when she could focus on the road instead of her mother. Perhaps if Miles didn’t have to look her in the eye, he’d feel safe enough to open up. Nighttime might work. They were good at having deep conversations in the dark, like when they’d stargazed or searched for Casper.
“Develop some sort of code so he can alert you he’s having one, without other people catching on,” Lily said. “I have a deal with my students. There’s a quiet corner in my classroom, with curtains you can pull shut. It was the best I could come up with. If they ask me if they can studyquietly, I let them. One said they do deep breathing exercises there.”
“My brother uses repetition to get through them,” Anna Catherine said. “Like counting or playing an app on his phone called Bubble Wrap. It’s designed to mimic popping bubble wrap. He finds it soothing.”
Avery imagined Miles popping bubble wrap on his phone. “I can’t wait to suggest to the founder of the CashCache that he download an app called Bubble Wrap.”
