Callan let me cry for a while. Got me another drink of water. Just sat with me. Our food was cold. My phone kept beeping, so he silenced it because he probably saw the panic flare in my eyes every time it did.
“No matter how much I try to rationalize it,” I suddenly said, “I feel like I failed her. And that feeling kind of infiltrated every part of my life. I had to begin uni grieving Amanda. Anytime I struggled with a class or an essay, I’d get so anxious. So I went to my doctor, and they prescribed anti-anxiety meds and mindfulness. They also suggested I talk to someone, but I was afraid to. And the other stuff seemed to help, so I got on with it. And I thought I had it handled. But then I launched SocialQueens, and I could feel all those fears of failure beginning to creep in, to magnify … I started catastrophizing.”
“So you began taking the anti-anxiety meds again?”
I nodded. “And they were helping.”
“Until me?” He frowned, shifting uncomfortably.
“I think … I think being with you brought stuff back up about Amanda. I started thinking about her more, started having dreams … last week, I didn’t leave your place because of my period. I had a nightmare about Amanda. And I woke up in a full-blown panic attack.”
Callan sighed heavily. “I wish you’d woken me up.”
That wasn’t what we were, though. Right?
“You feel guilty for being with me … even after all this time?”
“I don’t know. I know that doesn’t make sense … I just miss her. I haven’t let myself be close to anyone like that again. I go on and on about finding the fucking one, and I can’t even let myself have a best friend. I put up this wall …”
“And your parents don’t even know about this?” He seemed shocked.
I shook my head.
“Beth … you need to tell them. You need to let the people who love you know what’s going on with you. You can’t carry all of this. Or you’ll never come to terms or make peace with it.” He cupped my face in both hands now. “You are not to blame for what happened to Amanda. You didn’t fail her. Ever. And you need people in your life reminding you of that every single day. Especially because … life is going to throw curveballs at you all the time. One day you’ll be up, the next down, and it’s a never-ending roller coaster of peaks and troughs. That’s life. It’s not because you’re a failure.”
Gratitude eased the constriction in my throat and chest as we stared into each other’s eyes. At that moment, I felt closer to Callan than anyone I’d ever known.
“Believe it or not, part of me gets it. I understand grief. I understand the surprising ways it affects you.”
I wrapped a comforting hand around his wrist. “I know.”
“And I understand what feeling like a failure can do to you, too, because …” He shook his head with an unhappy laugh. “When I’m doing great at my sport, the fans, the media, they fucking love me. But one misstep, one tiny misstep, and they yell atrocious abuse at me while I’m on that pitch.”
Hating that for him, I pressed a soft kiss to his lips. “I’m sorry.”
“It can fuck with your head,” he whispered, “that’s all I’m saying. So I get it. And you’re not alone.”
I kissed him again, a little longer, deeper. Then I broke it, but only to burrow deeper into his arms, my head resting on his shoulder.
“Thank you,” I whispered eventually.
Callan turned to press a kiss to my forehead, and we sat there a little longer, not saying anything, just holding each other.
And he was right.
For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel so alone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CALLAN
We started our drill for the day after a warm-up. The coaches laid out cones across the pitch for us to do the fartlek drill.Fartlekwas a Swedish term for when you constantly change speed when running. It mimicked the way our speed changes during a match. They had us run it with and without the ball, and it took up most of our training session. We wore the performance-measuring packs on our vests as we worked on our endurance and quality of control over the ball.
Every other day, we focused on one particular drill, with a day in between for recovery time. I was used to pushing my body to its limit, and honestly, I couldn’t imagine ever not being at this level of fitness. Walking onto the pitch, playing with my team to dominate a match, wasn’t the only high I got from the sport. It was the strict dedication to my training. The feeling of being physically strong. I didn’t think that was something I’d lose when retirement knocked on my door.
I truly believed my team and my fitness had been the best thing for my mental health since I was a teenager. The team were my family, especially Baird and John, and while they couldn’t entirely fill the emptiness left behind from the loss of myparents, they were a balm. Moreover, anytime I had shit eating me up inside, I could expel it physically out on the pitch, whether during training or during a match.
I didn’t just push myself to my limit during training that day because I wanted to annihilate Ardarroch on Saturday. I did it because having Beth break down in my arms the other night had shaken me. To realize I hadn’t known her as well as I thought I did. To have any past bitterness I still harbored toward her disappear entirely. To feel too much at the sight of her in pain.
