“You got it.”
CHAPTER 3
SHAY
“Shay!” Andy’s voice wraps me in a hug, my shoulders immediately softening. “There you are.”
Standing from the table I got for us, I embrace him. “Hey. How’s it going?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.” When he pulls back from the hug, he smiles. “We’re starting with you.”
A sigh, louder than I intended, leaves my parted lips as I plop back down in the wooden chair. “Nothing new to report.”
He starts scanning the menu as if he’s not going to get the biscuits and gravy like he always does when we meet here. “Nothing at all? Really? I find that hard to believe.”
Typically, when we meet up, I avoid digging anywhere beneath the surface. But deep inside, it’s desperate to come to light, to be spoken into truth.
He’s always been nothing but honest with me, and I’ve been hiding such genuine parts of myself because I’m scared it’s going to be too much.
“It’s true. Same weekly physical therapy appointments. Same bimonthly neurology appointments. Same biweekly therapy appointments. That’s all I do now.”
My words leave me a little more somber than I want to portray, and when I glance up from the menu at him, his eyebrows are upturned, his glistening light-blue eyes full of concern.
“I’m doing just fine. Don’t stress. Please …” My words fall by the wayside as I see the wheels spinning behind his eyes.
He clicks his tongue. “Well, now I’m definitely going to stress.”
A beat of silence passes between us, and a hand feels like it’s slowly wrapping around my throat.
Is he disappointed in me? That I haven’t done more? That I’m just attending appointments and not striving to escape my cave?
“Look, I?—”
He cuts me off, “I’m proud of you.”
My eyes roll to the back of my head, another excuse forming on my tongue.
“Shay, I’m serious. Look how far you’ve come.” He tries to console me, and my skin starts crawling.
I love Andy so much. He’s been a mentor, a friend, a confidant, and he’s become practically family over the years. I feel more vulnerable with him around, and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that right now because I feel like I’m sitting here, completely naked.
“I haven’t been to the rink,” I confess, the embarrassment eating me alive. “It’s pathetic.”
His eyes close, eyebrows pinching sharply before he meets my stare again. “Shay … it’s not pathetic. What you went through was traumatic as hell. I’d probably be in the same boat as you. Anyone would be.”
I scoff and huff. “I doubt it. You need to be on the ice to breathe. I’ve been doing just fine without it.”
“Have you?” His voice is but a whisper, cutting straight through my chest.
“Yes,” I answer immediately, not a millisecond of thought behind it. “Maybe.” Eventually, my lie wavers. “No.”
His lips fold inward. “I know. But that’s okay.”
“Is it?” I laugh humorlessly, the backs of my eyes burning. “Ugh, this is not what this lunch is supposed to be.”
And then he asks a question that tears my walls down. “Why? We’re friends. Why isn’t this lunch allowed to be about how you’re feeling? Would you say the same if I were confessing some struggles I’d been having?”
“No, of course not.” I throw my hands up like that’s the most obvious answer in the world.
