“Then you learn,” she says calmly.
I shake my head. “It feels fragile.”
“It is fragile,” she agrees. “But avoiding intimacy doesn’t protect the relationship. It slowly starves it.”
She clocks my fears yet again.
“I don’t want it to die before it really begins,” I whisper.
“Then you need to separate grief from guilt,” she replies.
I breathe slowly before asking, “How?”
“Start by naming what you actually want.”
I hesitate but finally say it plainly. “I want him.”
Her eyebrow lifts slightly.
“All of him. I want to feel close to him. I need to be desired. I have to stop flinching every time I’m happy.”
There it is. My raw truth.
“And what would it mean,” she asks carefully, “to see intimacy not as a betrayal… but as a continuation of the love Lena wanted for you?”
My heart feels like it’s palpitating. “She told us not to let her death be in vain,” I whisper.
“And do you believe she meant that sexually too?”
I almost laugh through tears. “Probably.”
Dr. Manning smiles faintly.
“Your body isn’t betraying Lena,” she says gently. “It’s trying to feel alive.”
I sit with the fact that I’ve been doing the opposite of what I promised Lena.
“When you clam up,” she continues, “what if instead of shutting down completely, you slow it down? Tell him you’re scared. Let him hold you. Let the first moment back be about closeness, not performance.”
I nod slowly. “I don’t want to lose him,” I admit.
“Then don’t punish him for surviving with you.”
I exhale long and shaky. “I think I’ve been waiting for permission.”
“From who?”
I swallow. “From Lena.”
Dr. Manning holds my gaze.
“You already have it.” The idea of touching the man who holds my heart doesn’t feel like an ending. It feels like a scary step forward filled with tenderness.
Dr. Manning lets the silence settle before speaking again.
“Is there anything else weighing on you?” she asks gently.
I almost say no. But my phone buzzed three times this week. From a number I haven’t blocked but should have.
