Chapter 12
Other than one text saying he’d be gone for a while, I didn’t hear from Gavin the rest of the week. He canceled tutoring on Wednesday, and I gradually accepted the fact he probably thought I was some curiosity to sniff-out before tossing me away, returning to one of his model ex-girlfriends or finding his next prey.
I know, not very good self-talk, and I sounded like a jilted lover, which was hilarious considering I had only kissed him. It’s not like he owed me anything. I had to think of ways to move on and not revert to crappy coping mechanisms of the past.
Part of me encountered relief I didn’t have to confirm the end of our non-relationship. I pretended the relationship persisted, although based on his silence, he decided we were over.
When he didn’t show up for composition on Friday, something was up. Maybe he flew back to California to be with this person? All sorts of crazy iterations were flinging pellets at the happily ever after I had devised and tucked safely away in my fantasy world.
Matt was officially pissed at Gavin, while Emmy and Sierra thought I should at least have the opportunity to talk to him before I officially ended whatever weird understanding we had.
Nick remained surprisingly mum, despite the flared-up level of drama.
“He’s your friend, Nick. What the fuck’s his deal?” Matt’s patience with Gavin dwindled. “I thought you said he would never fuck a girl like Louie and leave.”
“Look, no one fucked anyone, okay?” I interjected.
Nick finally sat down at the kitchen table and scratched his forehead.
“I think you should call him. I’m almost one hundred percent certain he’s not seeing anyone else, and he genuinely digs you. My guess is some emergency came up, and he can’t connect right now,” Nick said.
“He could at least call or text.” What was I, in third grade?
Nick called me out. “So, could you.”
Dang. He was right. I could contact him, but my stubbornness bore deep. I felt it his place to contact me, since he had abruptly dropped off the face of the earth.
Monday night had passed, and I still hadn’t contacted him. In the morning I made my way toward my closet, selecting a black tank top and some army green shorts. My mirror witnessed a stream of tears escape, and I shook my head and ripped off my clothes.
I yanked a sundress off the hanger and hauled it on. It was cream colored with daisies. Another pause in front of the mirror, and I vowed to never wear white again because I swore it made me look wider than tall.
I chucked it off and dressed in some Capri navy pants and a fairly fitted white V-neck, but the sides of my stomach rolled over the waist of the Capri's. I tore the pants off and tried my jean shorts. After seeing my thighs in the mirror, I convinced myself each thigh had gained a couple of inches since last summer.
I threw the shorts on the floor and ripped my top off because the white color offended, questioning why I even bought it in the first place.
Another navy spaghetti strap sundress landed on the floor as wetness surged past the lining of my eyes, because my arms and shoulders bulged, and I could be mistaken for a beached cow in a muumuu.
Sweat made the clothes difficult to remove, and I heard fabric rip near my armpit as I removed the nasty article of clothing. My hands shook as I threw all my shorts on the ground and reached for the skirts, pulling them off their hangers.
I paused, and then snatched the brown linen skirt, clenched it, and held it up to my chest as if it were my only pillar of support. Exhaustion took over. I was done. Done with my ugly self, and stupid clothes that would never drape my body like they did in the false advertising in catalogs.
I collapsed onto the pile of clothes. My body heaved, because nothing would look good on me today. Breathing took a back seat to tears when I realized nothing ever would look good on me because I felt huge and ugly.
Fat isn’t a feeling. Dr. Liz’s voice punctured through all the garble in my brain. I internally yelled at myself, what the hell are you doing, Louie? Because I lied on the ground, aware of the pain churning in my stomach. A gnawing sensation I always got when the guilt and shame of feeling unwanted descended. The walls closed in on me, and I tried to catch my breath, but only attained short gasps, sharp intakes.
But an image of Ann from the hospital emerged from the corner of my temporal lobe and demanded I stop freaking out. After twenty-three years of anorexia, her appearance was forty-two going on seventy. She passed away the following week, which fucked with me the most. My mortality wasn’t guaranteed, if I could die before forty-five.
After her death, something snapped. I was tired of the pain, tired of the fear, and tired of being tired. I didn’t want the OCD anymore, or the anxiety of constantly worrying if people thought I was fat and ugly. I wanted the better life Ann said could be ours.
I bit my bottom lip and stifled my urge to scream. I willed my pathetic ass off the floor, though my stomach wretched as if I swallowed acid. Still, I remembered how breath could help me calm down.
Remembering Dr. Liz’s instructions, I controlled air in through my nose, and out my mouth. I had to stand up but my brain refused to transmit the message to my legs. I closed my eyelids until they burned and tightened all the muscles I could think of, held them tight for a few seconds and then released.
I took another deep breath and sat up, opting for the black tank top I threw to the ground after the first round of outfits. I wiped the dampness from my eyes and slapped my face. Glancing at the clock on my wall, I noticed the time and freaked out again because tardiness and Dr. Liz’s office didn’t mix.
While I didn’t make many promises when all this therapy began, I did promise Dr. Liz I would never skip out on her appointments unless I had some shit like mono or the swine flu. I gave myself one more pep-talk and forced my way out of the house, feeling like I swam across the English Channel.
~ ~ ~
“Sounds like you had a moment of OCD, and a bit of an anxiety attack.” Dr. Liz’s voice sounded matter-of-fact, like I had done something as benign as folding laundry.
“I didn’t even realize until about the fourth outfit.” I played with the tissue before attempting to drain the congestion from my sinuses. Crying always made my nasal passages feel like I stuffed wet plaster up my nose and let it solidify. The likelihood of getting stuff to drain by blowing was non-existent.
I tried preventing my cry-fest until I made it to the office but failed miserably.
I winced. “I haven’t had an OCD freak-out since pre-hospitalization.”
“It makes sense, you know. You were stressed about what happened with Gavin and reverted back to what you knew.”
“It’s still fucked up. I didn’t do any of the other techniques you taught me until the very end. Freaked the living shit out of me once I realized what I was doing.”
“I see this as a positive. You did realize what you were doing.” Dr. Liz sat still for a moment. “Pre-inpatient, how long would an episode last?”
I held the pillow tighter to my stomach and slumped back against the chair. I stretched out my legs versus sitting because it eased the squirm in my gut. “I don’t know. I guess one to two hours.”
“And how many outfits would you have tried on?” She placed my file on the end table next to her chair.
“All of them. I’d have done every possible combination.” Beyond embarrassing for me to admit. How pre-hospital, I’d scourge my closet every night, trying on every imaginable combination in my closet.
“And how many did you do this morning before you stopped yourself?”
I blew air out of my mouth, feeling it brush past my nose and forehead. “Five? Six?”
“And would you have been able to stop before?” I swore, the woman never lost her cool. Contrary to Dr. Liz, agitation circled me. My foot shook up and down like a seizure, while my fingers played with the bottom hem of my shirt.
“Hell no.”
“But you did this time.”
“I did this time.”
Dr. Liz folded her hands together, placed them on her lap, and smiled.
“Good. Next week we’ll start EMDR, barring any other emergencies.” Dr. Liz picked up my file and made a few notes I would never see. “And Louise?”
“Yes, Dr. Liz.”
“The phone works both ways, you know. Call him. Next week we can talk about your fear of committing to a relationship.”
I wasn’t about to tell Dr. Liz she’d be sorely disappointed, because there wasn’t going to be any type of relationship to commit to in the first place. Instead, I waved and headed to my class.
~ ~ ~
Wednesday after theory class, I meandered to the tutoring room and waited. Would tutoring be canceled or not? Gavin entered a few minutes later, unshaven with his hair all in a scruff, which somehow made him look even hotter.
“Hey, Lou.” He slung his backpack on the table in front of the room. He went over to the piano and patted the seat again, my cue to sit my butt down next to him. “Let’s work on your play and sing.”
I reached into my canvas navy backpack and found the sight-singing folder. Pulling out the piece of music I shuffled toward the bench.
He leaned into me, snuck a chaste kiss on my cheek. “You actually going to sing this time?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Definitely confused. He didn’t even apologize for this past week but gave me a kiss and pretended like nothing ever happened. I forced a reticent smile after finding my left-hand placement on the keys. My right hand conducted two measures without any music and I launched into the play and sang, my voice keeping the shake in my hands company.
“Nice job.” Gavin pulled a pencil from behind his ear and circled three measures.
“You had a little hiccup here, here, and here. Look at this.” He pointed at the fifth measure in the piece. “This is going to feel weird, but the triplet you’re playing in the baseline is syncopated here and this note here ends at the same time with the last of these sixteenth notes you’re singing. Don’t lose the 2/4 time either, it switches into 5/8 time here, and back to 3/4 time. You want to try it again?”
I shrugged. “Sure, okay.”
True story, I tried. I did. But my heart wasn’t in it. I kept making the same mistake during those two measures. Either I didn’t accent the right note on the piano, or I lost the tempo conducting.
Gavin had the patience of a Buddhist monk, and we worked on two of the three requirements at a time, before putting the piano, singing and conducting all together. After practicing for twenty minutes, he asked me to find some blank staff paper, and he would play a melody with both treble and bass clef lines. I drew the clefs and embellished the treble with a smiley face before giving him a nod. For the next twenty-five minutes we did transcriptions. By the end, I batted about .500. Not bad.
I glanced at my cell and noticed the hour had passed. This prompted me to hand over the last of the transcriptions for him to grade. Once he finished checking the notes, he stood up and leaned over the top of the piano, showing me what I missed and conjecturing why I missed it.
“Thanks,” I said.
This time I ventured a very stealth sniff of his hair, since his head angled down as he wrote on the staff sheet. And no surprise, he smelled awesome. Whatever he used for shampoo, the tropical smells mixed well with the natural oils in his skin. Sierra would have been proud I didn’t get caught.
“You good for now?” he asked, insinuating I didn’t have any other assignments to work on for either music classes.
“I’m good. Thanks again.”
“Good.” He stood up and waited for me as I shoved my folder and notebook into my backpack.
“Hey, Lou?” Dark circles formed under his eyes, and I wondered what took him away.
“Hmm?”
“Walk with me?” He nodded toward the door.
I smiled at him. “Okay.”
“You okay?” He decreased his stride, and I jogged to keep up with him.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked, in between counting the number of colored tiles interspersed on the floor of the hallway.
“You’re a terrible liar, you know.”
I breathed for air because my tears were about to betray me. Before I could say anything else, he seized my hand and pulled me into an empty practice room, shut the door, and trapped me in-between. He crushed his lips against mine, kissing me like I was a drug he’d never have again. I felt my shoulders release some of the insecure tension built up over the last couple days and fell into his kiss.
I fumed he hadn’t the decency to call me all week. Leaving me in the dark about why he left. But when his body pressed against me and his tongue danced with mine, any previous thoughts of abandonment seeped out with his kiss.
“You have no idea how much I missed you.” He drew his mouth up to the sensitive spot where my ear met my jawline. I stuttered air, and my nether regions throbbed. Gavin leaned into me, his body making no secret of how turned on he was. Before I could prevent it, I flinched. Gavin stilled, his eyes searching mine.
“Louie?”
Not wanting to talk about the details of my flinch, I pulled away. “Where were you this week?” I asked.
He stepped back and wiped his forehead, before rustling his hair. He eyed the ceiling, and then concentrated on his feet. He had a secret.
“An emergency.”
“You didn’t call,” I blurted out. Ugh, I probably sounded like a possessive insecure girlfriend, which was comical because nerves prevented me from committing. Remembering Dr. Liz’s reprimand, I relented. “I’m sorry. I could have called.”
Gavin closed the gap between us again and ran his finger down the side of my cheek and through my hair.
Because I was tired of dancing around the topic and being passive aggressive, I cocked my head up at him. “Who is she? An ex? A cousin?” Please say a cousin.
He pulled a few strands of my hair and draped them between his fingers. “She’s a friend.”
Can we say, Sherlock-Holmes-before-he-solves-a-case cryptic? “With benefits?” I clarified.
“Hell no. I swear. She’s a friend. It’s not what you think. Not even close. You’re the only one I want to be with. I told you I’d wait for you to decide, and I never go back on my word.”
I might have been able to believe him more if I didn’t know about his history with women. What was the percent likelihood Gavin concerned himself about a woman he wasn’t sleeping with or had sex with in the past? I didn’t know him well enough to guess.
I watched him for a moment, letting my insecurity take control of this impasse, and homed in on his eyes now glued to mine. They were pleading. I think he told the truth? But why was he being elusive about this friend? A tidal of insecurity rushed over me all over again.
“How come you didn’t call?”
“There was a lot of shit going on with my friend, and when I had free time, I was getting my assignments done.”
“Curious why you couldn’t see me all week?” Son-of-a, I completely sounded like a possessive girlfriend.
“I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t tell me, or you won’t tell me.” My body shifted away from his.
“You gotta trust me. I honestly can’t tell you.” He caressed my cheek and whispered his thumb across my lips.
I sealed my eyes shut. And you know the feeling you get when you’re on a roller coaster and climbing to the top of the first giant drop off? And you feel like you might barf? Like, oh shit, what have I gotten myself into, feeling?
That’s the exact emotion ripping through my body.
My only consolation was in the end, I always felt awesome after being on a good twisting upside down toss your cookies roller coaster. Being with Gavin echoed the same sensation. I only hoped it resulted in me becoming a little braver instead of woozy with motion sickness.
Gavin released my face and explained how he had another tutoring session. I had more than enough homework to keep me up past midnight. I guess I believed him because instead of kneeing him in the balls and telling him to leave me the fuck alone and to never call again, I told him I could try.
His entire demeanor changed, from pleading to a sense of relief, like he made it to the doors of the plane before the gate shut. He kissed me thoroughly again, tongue and all, and then bolted out of the practice room for his next appointment.
We agreed we’d see each other on Friday. The days between seeing him would suck because I constantly daydreamed about the next time we’d be together. Clearly not a recipe for success when two of my classes were already kicking my butt. Regardless, whatever brewed between us, taking it slow was probably a good thing.