Page 157 of The Song We Lost

He didn’t push, he sat and waited for me to expand. Eventually I lifted my eyes to meet his.

“I… I ruined the best thing to ever happen to me and I didn’t want to face that.”

He hummed to himself before responding, “You are still young Luke, twenty six. How do you know that the life you were living was the best thing that would ever happen to you.”

That pissed me off. I sat up a little straighter, dropping my foot down to the ground, resting my arms on the sides and digging my fingers into the edge of the chair. “Because I had her. Because being with her, having her in my life… she made everything better. She…” I blew out a breath trying to figure out a way to explainher, to explain how I felt. “Have you evermet someone and knew instantly that they were it for you? That being in their presence felt like a gift…”

“No, Luke I can’t say that I have.”

The silence felt thick, I was working through the feeling bubbling up within me, when he said, “Then answer something for me.” My eyes snapped up to his as he continued, “If being with Bailey was that good, if it was a gift… Why did you throw that away?”

I huffed, my anger growing, “Isn’t that what I am here to figure out? Isn’t that your job?”

He didn’t react to my outburst, Dr Stevens steepled his fingers in his lap and waited.

I looked away, my eyes trailing the scenery, the mountains… Wondering if she was looking at them too.

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do, Luke.” His voice was kind, but firm.

“I…” I felt a tear slip down my cheek. “I… never felt good enough.”

“Keep going,” he urged.

“You haven’t met her and seeing her on stage doesn’t even come close to who she is in person. The warmth and love… just who she is at her core. And beyond being this incredibly kind, generous, loving person… She is also insanely talented. She could do anything... Be with anyone… and I….” I grabbed a tissue from the table beside me and wiped my tears. “She grew up with nothing. Very few people know how hard her and Sadie actually had it. My parents helped when they could, but we weren’t all that much better off at times. But she never let it dim her. Even before her parents died, they were absent at best. It was almost always just Sadie and Bailey… and then they became part of my family… and then it was me and Bailey.”

I crumbled the tissue in my hand squeezing it. “Even in high school the guys would tease me telling me not to hitch my horseto someone when we were so young and I sampled what else was out there. But I never saw anyone but her… even with all this shit that the media stirred up, the lies... The manipulation of their version of the truth… I have never seen anyone but her, not like that.”

I took a deep breath and squeezed my eyes shut thinking of all the things she must have been told, must have seen. What she must think of me.

“Keep going, Luke. You are doing great.”

“Bailey was always bigger than life, this ray of sunshine. I wasn’t good enough even when we were no ones and had nothing… and then when she got that contract. I thought I would have time to catch up, but she took off so fast… and even then… even when… even then she kept coming back to me, kept begging me to let her help. To be with her in what she was doing… How do you live up to someone like that?”

He studied me for a moment and then said, “You need to stop putting her on a pedestal.”

“What? Why… what are you…” It felt like my words were tangled up.

“You heard me,” he said with a raised eyebrow. “Luke, no one is perfect. And yes I know what you are talking about. In life there are people who just seem to have something intangible about them. Who seems to have it all, who could do anything. But what do you think those people think of themselves?”

“I don’t understand.” I was trying to tamp down my frustration. My fingers digging into the chair.

“Do you think Bailey sees herself as this perfect person who walks on water and does no wrong?” he asked.

“No.” I huffed.

“Ok. And what do you think Bailey would say about you in your relationship… before everything happened.” He asked.

“I… I don’t know.”

He gave me that eyebrow again, “What did she get from your relationship? What did she want from you, need from you?”

The tears started all over again, how could I say out loud that all she wanted was me. To be with her, to share our lives together. Bailey didn’t ask for a lot, she gave… she gave without even considering what it took from her and all she wanted was… “She wanted me to be her partner, to be there with her. She always said that it didn’t matter what was going on in her life, just being with me, being in my arms, talking to me… That it could make anything better. That her world only felt right when I was with her.”

We sat in silence for a while, the therapist allowing me time to absorb what I had just said.

“It sounds to me like she needed you as much as you needed her. We will dig more into that in later sessions and more around the importance of finding happiness within yourself instead of relying on someone else to do that for you.”