“I’m listening.”
“You introduced me as the help right in front of me, and I spent the rest of the night being exactly that. I smiled through it. I worked the room. I brought your mother cake. She’s so sweet. She squeezed my hand and called me sweetheart, right after her son introduced me to his boss as the hired staff. I cleaned up so Sheila wouldn’t have to do it. Then I packed my bag and I left. I sat in the parking lot and the smile I’d been holding for hours finally came off and I cried. I’m not exaggerating by saying I’ve never felt that small in my adult life. Not since my father walked out the door and didn’t look back at us.”
“Benji, I’m so sorry.” I tighten my arms around him. I’m terrified he might still leave me. And I would deserve it.
“I know you are. I believe you. But sorry isn’t enough this time. Sorry is what you say when you step on someone’s foot. What you did — that’s not a mistake, Mickey. That’sa habit. The bar, the candy store, the party. You did the same thing several times and you didn’t stop it because you’d convinced yourself it was protection.”
“Yeah,” I say. “It is. I should’ve talked to you about it instead of screwing everything up.”
“That’s what scares me. You’re a cop. You’re trained to read rooms and scan for threats. That training saved my life in this bar.” He pauses. “But it’s also the thing that’s erasing me. You can’t use the same brain that counts exits to decide whether I get to be your boyfriend in public. Those are two different things and you’ve got them so tangled up you can’t tell which one is running the show.”
I don’t have an answer for that. He’s right. The worst part is I didn’t see it until he said it out loud. The scanning and the hiding — I don’t know where one stops and the other starts. They’re the same thing in my head.
“How are you going to fix this going forward?” he asks.
“After the shooting,” I say, “the department offered me counseling. It’s standard after a critical incident. They set it up. All I had to do was accept it and go.”
“You never mentioned this to me,” he says.
“I didn’t think it was important. Obviously, I never went. Didn’t have time and I didn’t see the point in rehashing the shooting over and over. I was worried about the physical, not the mental. I’m fine. Or I thought I was.”
His hand goes still against my chest. “You got shot. You lost the use of your legs. That’s traumatic. You should’ve talked to someone.”
“I talked to you. I talked to Tex.”
“That’s not the same thing. Tex hands you a drink and tells you a long-winded story. I talk non-stop about wedding drama. Neither of us is a therapist. You’re having anxiety responses to retired plumbers and you didn’t think you needed to talk to someone professionally?”
“I thought I could handle it.”
“You’re not handling it. That’s what I’m telling you. You handled it by making me disappear.”
“I’ll do it,” I say. “I’ll call the department tomorrow and set it up. I’ll go this week.”
“Don’t do this for me,” he says. “Do it for yourself. What’s happening in your head isn’t normal. Are you going to run a threat assessment on every person who looks at us for the rest of our lives?”
The truth is, I don’t know if I can stop.
“You need help,” he continues. “From a professional who understands what happens to a person after they take a bullet and then can’t stand up anymore.”
“I know. I promise I’ll make the call.”
He stops talking. His body shifts on my lap, settling deeper, like he’s decided to stay at least long enough to finish this.
“I need you to stand beside me,” he says. “Not step in front of me. Beside me. You stepped in front of me twice in this bar. Once to take a bullet. The second to hide me. They both hurt. I need you to stand beside me, Mickey. In public. Atthe bar. At the station. When we run into your neighbor at the candy store. I can’t change who I am.”
“I would never want you to change one thing about yourself.”
“Being seen is who I am,” he says. “If you love me, you love that. People look at me. They always have. I’m used to it. Let them look.”
“I do love that. I’m damn lucky to have you in my life. The fact that I’m terrified of something happening to you isn’t your problem to solve. It’s mine. And I’m going to work on it. Starting tomorrow. The therapist and the photo — both.”
“If you introduce me again as the help or pull your hand away or go quiet when someone asks who I am — I will leave,” he says quietly against my neck. “And I won’t go somewhere close where you can find me. I’ll go back to Miami and you’ll never see me again. I was devastated when I thought you were ashamed of me. I can’t go through that again. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“I love you, Mickey. More than anything. I’ve always adored you. I love you enough to sit on a bathroom floor and hold your feet and cry when your leg moved. I love you enough to come back after you broke my heart. But I can’t let you make me invisible.”
“Nobody should be invisible,” I say. “Least of all you.”
