He complies, then his long fingers tighten around mine when I move to pull away.
“Wait, can you—just for a minute?”He tries to breathe, but it ends up sounding more like a gasp.
“Is this helping?”I ask, tipping my head toward our clasped hands.
More often than not, I feel like I end up making situations like this worse because I misread things.But if I can help for once, I’m willing to ignore my usual reflex to get back to the level of physical distance I maintain with everyone.
He nods.“Sorry, I know you don’t—”
“It’s okay,” I interrupt, finding myself meaning it.
“Are you sure?”he asks, his voice thready.
I nod, and before I can overthink it, I extend my other hand.He takes it, and although his body is still curled in on itself, the anxious lines on his face smooth out.Progress.
I wait for a minute until his shoulders relax.“Now talk to me.”
“My grades came out today,” he says.
I glance at the fridge, at the calendar where we both keep our schedules.Sure enough, on today’s date, in red it reads “grades out.”
Fuck.
Of course.I’m such an idiot.
I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me that this might happen.I may not always understand other people’s emotions, but I’m good at pattern recognition.If the stress of taking final exams was a trigger for him, then of course it makes sense that finding out the results of said exams would also be a trigger.Plus, I remember I was a nervous wreck when I was awaiting the evaluation of my thesis for my Master of Library Sciences.Waiting for final exam results isn’t all that different.I should have been able to connect the dots.
When he decided to go back to school, his sister pulled me aside at work and made me promise to keep an eye on him.I should have checked in with him.But I can’t beat myself up for it when he needs my help.
“How did you do?”I ask, needing more information before I can even begin to come up with a plan for helping him.
The untethered look on his face returns, so I squeeze his hands.“I’ve got you.Just breathe and tell me what’s going on in your brain right now.”
He tries again, inhaling slowly this time, holding it for a few seconds, then letting it out.“I don’t know,” he admits.
“You don’t know what’s going on in your brain?”
“No, the grades.”
“You haven’t checked them?”I ask, then wince at how blunt it came out.
He doesn’t seem to be offended by my tone, though, if he even noticed.He just shakes his head.“I can’t fail if I never check them.”
Logically, that’s not true.The grades exist even if you don’t look at them.Just like a treedoesstill make a sound when it falls in a forest because sound is just airwaves and those exist regardless of whether there’s a person there to observe them.But I don’t think saying that would be considered helpful right now.The problem is I don’t know what else would be helpful to say.
Thankfully, he continues before I have to come up with something.“I know I still need to check them because if I failed, then I’m going to have to re-take the course.And I tried.But I sat down at my laptop, and I couldn’t even get myself to log in.I froze, and I was all alone in the apartment.Then the thoughts started spiraling, and I saw a smudge on my laptop screen, and…”
“You got stuck in a loop?”I finish for him.
“Yeah,” he says with a sigh.
“Would you like me to sit with you while you check them?”
“You wouldn’t mind?”he asks.
“I wouldn’t have offered if I minded,” I say matter-of-factly.
Finally, his body unfurls, the tension dissipating.He lets out a heavy sigh, as if he’s been holding it this entire time.“Thank you.”
