“I’m kidding, Hope.”
My cheeks burned anyway, and I pretended to focus on the show.
“You gonna shower?” I asked.
“Maybe in a minute.”
A few more minutes passed, and a few more channels were changed.
When about twenty minutes of charged silence had gone by, he pressed another button on the remote and shut the TV off completely.
“Hey,” I protested weakly.
He smiled. “You weren’t watching.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it. “Okay. Maybe not.”
We sat in the quiet for a moment, and then he cleared his throat. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” I looked down at my lap, tucking a damp strand of hair behind my ear.
“Seeing Dr. Pike… was that the first time since you left?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, Hope.”
“It’s okay.”
“We don’t have to go tomorrow. If you don’t want to risk running into him again.”
“No, it’s okay. I can’t live in fear my whole life, worrying I’ll run into him.”
He was quiet for another moment. “You sure?”
“I just need to teach my body not to freak out,” I said. “I think it was mainly the shock. I wasn’t expecting to see him here. Maybe if I’d been mentally prepared, it wouldn’t have affected me so badly.”
“Have you ever gone to see anyone?” he asked tentatively. “About your panic attacks?”
“I tried once,” I admitted. “It didn’t go too well.”
He nodded as if he understood. I hoped he wasn’t judging me. But honestly, I wouldn’t have blamed him if he was. I was judging myself. I knew I needed to figure out what was going on with me. But facing reality wasn’t always easy.
“I didn’t believe in it at first,” he said. “But a few years after my mother passed, Margaret convinced me to go. I was surprised how much talking about it helped.”
“Do you still go?” I asked quietly.
“A few times a month, yeah,” Jay said, then after a brief pause, he added, “Going to therapy doesn’t make you weak, Hope.”
“I know,” I mumbled, though I didn’t exactly believe myself as I said it. Was that why I was fighting it? BecauseI didn’t want to need help? “I just feel like talking sometimes makes it worse,” I whispered.
“It’s because it brings it to the surface,” he said, “where we have to face it.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “That’s the part I don’t like. The facing part.”
He nodded. “I know some really good people you could reach out to if you ever want to give it another go.”
“Thank you,” I said. And I meant it.
