“Huh?” she responds, making me smirk and shake my head.
“Movie?” I ask again.
“Oh, yeah,” she says absentmindedly, following me into the living room. She immediately gets comfy in her corner, with Gigi using her little steps to settle onto her lap.
“Rom-com?” I ask her.
Finally, she turns her eyes to me with a smile on her face as she nods her head.
Cute is never how I’ve described a woman I was interested in, and it’s never a word I thought I’d ever use to describe a woman I want to sleep with, but damn is she cute as hell, sitting there in my old crewneck, curled up under a blanket with her dog, waiting for me to put a movie on. It’s easy to picture this as a regular occurrence. Me cooking her a meal as she relaxes, then watching a movie cuddled on the couch.
With that thought in mind, I push the ottoman closer to her and take a seat right beside her so she’s plastered to my side. She doesn’t say a word or even look at me as I get comfortable beside her and place my legs on the ottoman to relax my injured leg. All she does is lean in and place some of her blanket on my lap before leaning her head on my shoulder, making my heart warm.
Settling into this domestic bliss, I cue upHow to Lose a Guy in Ten Days—a classic—on TV. Who doesn’t like a little Matthew McConaughey? Even I can admit that the guy is just all around great.
It doesn’t take long for Sloane to fall asleep against me. She really needed a day to do nothing I guess, which doesn’t really surprise me. The woman never stops. If she’s not at school working, she’s learning. And at home, she’seither doing some school work, taking care of her plants, taking care of Gigi, or cleaning. I’ve come to realize that she’s somewhat of a clean freak. She only seems to chill out on Sundays, and even then she says she’s relaxing but she’s always doing something. With exams coming, I’m happy she took a day to do nothing.
All too soon, the movie ends, and I’m sitting on the couch with a snoring Gigi and sleeping Sloane. A calmly sleeping Sloane that I’m going to have to wake because I can’t bring her to bed like I should be able to. Pain radiates down my left leg, from hip to toe.
Fuck.
Why is this still happening? I’ve done all the stretches. The exercises. The water rehab. The meds. The massages. The therapies. But the pain is still there. It shouldn’t still be there. I shouldn’t even be using this stupid fucken cane anymore. I should be back to normal. I should be able to carry Sloane to bed; I shouldn’t have to wake her up. She shouldn’t have to walk to bed herself.
Fuck.
This needs to be over. I can’t keep being half of myself.
“Stop,” I tell myself out loud like my therapist told me to do the next time these thoughts take over. Shaking my shoulders, I take three deep, calming breaths. The more I relax, the more my pain subsides. He may not have been completely wrong when he said the pain correlates with my mindset sometimes. I take another three breaths, just to be safe, before pointing my toes to the sky and back down toward the wall in front of me. After doing that a couple of times, I dig my fingers into my thigh, tryingto massage the last of the tension out of my leg like Will instructed when I told him about the random spikes in pain. Slowly, the pain disappears completely.
With another deep exhale, I lean my head against the back of the couch, staring at the ceiling. Fuck, what if it’s all in my head? That the pain is psychological and not real? Does that mean it never goes away? What if it never goes away? What if I’m stuck like this forever? What if I have to use a cane for the next fifty years? Fuck. I can’t be stuck like this forever.
I feel the panic start to sink in, my blood pressure rise, and my breathing shallow at the questions flooding my mind. But I can’t stop my breath from quickening, or my pulse from speeding up. I ball my hands to stop them from shaking as my vision is flooded with black spots.
Breathe, I try to tell myself to no avail. My body isn’t my own anymore. I try counting backwards, but visions of me with a cane at every important future event—Sloane getting married to some blond guy, Sloane pregnant with someone else’s ring on her finger . . .
I’m brought back to reality by something wet that smells like garbage—Gigi.
She keeps licking at my face and neck as my breathing slows down to a normal pace, and my hands unclench as my mind grounds itself. I take another couple of deep, intentional breaths, like my therapist showed me, before sliding my fingers along Gigi’s back. Not only to show her that I’m okay, but to thank her.
Once I’ve completely calmed down, I chance a peak at Sloane. Thankfully, she’s still sleeping peacefully, as ifnothing happened. Thanking the stars above, I shakily stand up to make my way to the bathroom sink. I need to throw some cold water on my face. My forehead is still splattered with sweat, or it would be if Gigi hadn’t taken care of it for me.
After splashing some cold water on my face and on the back of my neck, I lean my hands on the counter and take a good look at myself in the mirror. My pupils are still blown and I look exhausted. I haven’t had a panic attack in weeks. Not since moving in with Sloane. Everything seemed to get better after moving in with her, but maybe it hasn’t really gotten better. Maybe I was just distracted but now things are getting real again. I want a future with Sloane, one that she deserves, which is bringing all my shortcomings to the forefront of my mind until there’s nothing left to distract me from my reality. I’m forever going to be scared. My leg will forever be a weak link for me. I’ll never be the man I was before the accident.
But you can try, I hear my therapist say in my mind. I brought all this up to her during our first session. It’s like the moment I opened my mouth, everything came out. I swear I lost my breath at one point, but I told her everything. From meeting Sloane as a baby, to her kissing me as a fresh eighteen year old, to missing her and writing her notes, to the accident and moving in with her. I told her that part of me came to the realization that I’m happy the accident happened because it inadvertently brought her back into my life. I told her about how I screamed at her and kicked her out after we made love. I held nothing back. It felt great to get everything off mychest, but that only lasted moments because after thanking me for putting all of that out there, she asked me if I was ready to put in the work.
I’ve never been afraid of hard work. I run—or, ran marathons for fun, but I’ve never had to put in the mental work. I’ve never had to look at my shortcomings—my faults, my weaknesses—head on and decide if I wanted to change, to grow, or if I was okay with how things were going.
I told her that, for Sloane, I will put in the work, at which shetsked. She very seriously told me that the only person I could do the work for was me.
Looking in the mirror now, I understand what she meant when she said those words. I don’t recognize the man in the mirror, and this is the first time I’ve made that realization. But it’s also the first time I want to change what I see. All I see right now, is a shell of who I was before. I don’t have hobbies anymore, and if Ronan wasn’t the one to call or text, I wouldn’t talk to him. I haven’t checked in with Levi in months, even though I know he’s going through his own personal hell—he’s texted but I’ve yet to reply. The only person I’ve interacted with—that can distract me—is Sloane. But it’s not her job to distract me, or make me happy. I need to do that for myself. That’s the kind of man she deserves.
With that resolve, I hear Summer’s voice.Have you asked her what she wants?
My therapist asked me the same thing during our second session. She said that it sounded to her that Sloane has shown me over and over that I am what she wants, whetherI think I’m broken or not. That my problem, as she poetically put it, is that I believe that I’m broken.
Hence, why I need to put in the work for me and only me. I can’t expect Sloane’s presence in my life to heal me; it’s not her job.
I give myself one last glance in the mirror before quietly walking back to the couch to a still-sleeping Sloane and Gigi—the little mutt hasn’t taken her eyes off of me. I take the spot I vacated not long ago, and softly run my fingers along her forehead, brushing back the little hairs that escaped her loose braid. How I ever thought I could burden this sweet girl with my happiness is beyond me.
