I want to call out, and I want to swallow the sound.Both urges arrive at once and fight in my throat until nothing gets past.
Footsteps in the hall.Two sets.One even, practiced.One restless, skittering.I know which is which.I know them like weather.
Eddie knocks once and then does not come in.Barret does not knock at all.He stops on the threshold like a tide that chose mercy.
“Cleo?”Eddie’s voice is low.Frayed at the edges.“I’m here for you.”
I want to shake my head and nod, and I want to scream and crawl out of my skin all at once.
“Can I—?”Barret clears his throat.“May we come in?”
I nod because speech feels like a far shore, and I cannot swim that deep yet.
They step in.Eddie stays near the dresser, hands visible, body angled away so I don’t feel cornered.I notice and hate that he had to learn how to move like that for my sake.Barret lowers himself to the rug, back to the glass wall, long legs folding in a way that looks like it will hurt.He does it anyway, so our eyes meet at the same level.
“It was a bad one,” Barret says without asking.His voice is sanded down, careful.“Do you want the window open?”
My throat works.“A little,” I manage.
He stands and cracks the latch.The first line of cold air finds me and slices the room into then and now.I inhale until the fresh, sharp air fills my lungs and finally, finally, I can breathe.
Eddie doesn’t fill the space with advice or offer the list of things the therapists told us.He looks at the teapot and says, “I’ll bring more hot water.”
He leaves and comes back with a kettle that sighs and a plate of toast cut into neat halves.My stomach flips.I think of red circles on a tray.He sees something in my face and puts the plate down without pushing it toward me.
Barret sits again, digs in his pocket, and brings out a guitar pick, turning it over with the side of his thumb.There’s no guitar, but he lets the motion ground him.Or me.I can’t tell.“When I can’t get out of a song,” he says, “I change the instrument.Same melody, different body.Helps me remember I can make choices.”
It’s not a metaphor for everything.Still, it threads through me as if it might be.
“I dreamed of doors,” I manage.The words come raw, scratched on the way out.“Ones that looked open but weren’t.”
Barret nods once.“Yeah.Those.”
Eddie pours water.Steam curls between us, softening the corners the nightmare left.“We can take the door off,” he says, gentle, almost dry.“Literally.If you want.”
It’s absurd.It helps.I huff out a breath that could pass for a laugh if you were generous.
“I don’t want to be a project,” I say, and the room goes still in a way that doesn’t choke.“I don’t want to be ...managed.”
“You won’t be,” Eddie says.“You say how this goes.”
“Even if I say ...it doesn’t?”My voice thins.“Even if I can’t do tea, or windows, or ...us?”
Barret answers before Eddie can.“Even then,” he says.“Especially then—we’re here for you at your own accord.”
The kettle ticks as it cools.The ocean keeps doing what oceans do, pulling itself at the shore until even the sky looks tired of holding it.I pull the sweater tighter and tuck my knees up so I can be smaller without vanishing entirely.
“Tell me something stupid,” I say, surprising the three of us with how calm my voice sounds.
Barret blinks.“Like what?”
“Something that didn’t matter.Before.”I gesture at the air as if time is a pile of things we can sort.“Something ordinary.”
He thinks, thumb turning the guitar pick until it flashes.“I once set a pan on fire trying to flambé bananas,” he says.“I poured some booze I found downstairs and prayed.The curtains survived.The eyebrows did not.”
A strange sound leaves me, close to a laugh and near a sob.“You had eyebrows to spare,” I tell him.
Eddie’s mouth lifts.He makes a soft, careful joke, the kind that arrives like a promise.“He didn’t lose anything vital, but I don’t let him near the kitchen anymore.Hence, the chef and the help.”
