“Yeah.” My throat feels tight. “I was… not doing great.”
Her gaze softens. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
Not really.
But I pick at a loose thread on my sleeve and start anyway. “It was a lot. The away game, coming back to campus late, my dad calling as soon as I got to my room… classes, misplacing my paper, forgetting to eat. Just—” I make a vague gesture in the air. “Everything.”
“What did your dad say?”
I stare at the pattern in the rug, she knows my dad is one big trigger for me. “Same old shit. Did you meet any girls? Don’t isolate yourself. Don’t let Miguel drag you down.” My mouth twists around the last part. “He thinks I’m regressing.”
I watch as she scribbles something down. “How did that make you feel?”
It’s such a textbook question I almost laugh. Instead, I sigh and shrug. “Like I’m broken and wasting everyone’s time. Nothing new.”
Her brow creases, just slightly. “Do you think you’re regressing?”
I think of the way I cried into Miguel’s chest last night. The way I couldn’t get my lungs to work. The way I realized halfway through the day that I hadn’t eaten, my body had been running on nothing and my mind was paying for it.
“Yes” is what I should say.
I shrug instead. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a setback. You said progress isn’t linear.”
She watches me and I can tell she hears what I’m not saying, but she doesn’t push at that angle. “Tell me about last night,” she says. “What was the aftermath?”
My chest tightens, then loosens when I hear his name. “I texted Miguel because I felt like I couldn’t breathe. My brain was… loud. Dad’s texts, school, the game. I kept trying to work. Clean. Do something to feel normal. And it just got worse.”
“What made you reach out?”
I swallow the lump forming in my throat. “I didn’t want to be alone with myself anymore.”
She nods slowly. “That sounds like progress to me.”
“Falling apart on him isn’t progress.”
“Not the falling apart,” she says quietly. “The part where you let someone see it.”
I pick at the couch seam, jaw tight. “Doesn’t feel like letting. Feels like I’m… dumping everything on him.”
“Is that what he said?”
“No.”
“What did he do?”
The images flash in my mind: his hand cradling my head, his voice in my ear, “You’re okay, I’ve got you,” the food he brought, the way he sat on the toilet lid and talked to me while I stood under the water, his hands in my hair, and the way he curled around me in that tiny bed.
“He came over. Brought food. Made me eat. Sat with me. Washed my hair. Stayed the night.”
“How did that feel?”
Like the only safe place I’ve ever had.
Like I’m a burden he keeps choosing to carry.
I swallow. “Safe,” I admit, then quickly add, “Which is stupid because I’m not five anymore. I shouldn’t need?—”
“Stop,” she says gently. “Needing connection isn’t childish, Caleb. Needing comfort isn’t juvenile. You went through a kind of neglect and abuse that rewired your nervous system. It makes sense that in moments of stress, your body wants proof you won’t be abandoned or hurt again.”
