~ Nick
Nothing about this feels good…at all. I really don’t want to be here and I most definitely don’t want to be talking to this stranger about all of the fucked up things going on inside my head.
The walls of his office already feel too small, like they’re closing in on me, trapping me and making it hard to breathe. My hands are sweaty and they’d be shaking if I weren’t hanging onto Emma like my life depends on it.
Yet it’s because of her that I’m here at all. I’m scared as hell about all of this, about all the things I know he’s going to ask me, and all the things I know I’m going to have to talk about. I don’t believe this kind of thing works, not after what happened with my sister, but I know I have to try. Which means I’m either batshit crazy or Amy was right.
“What?” I eventually get out, the word lodged in my throat.
Adrian shakes his head slightly. “Not that far back,” he says. “I just want to start with the night that triggered this. Start with why you’ve stopped sleeping, stopped going to work. Why you’ve come to see me at all.”
I glance at Emma, wondering how much she’s told this guy, how he could possibly know about any of this. She meets my stare, defiantly looking back at me as she nods in encouragement. I’m guessing she’s told him some stuff, she must have. The last thing I want to do is answer his questions, but I know I have to suck it up and deal with it because I do not want things to go on like this for us.
I’d do anything to rewind the last two weeks and go back to the way things were in the months after we first met. I’d put up with the crazy work hours and hardly seeing each other. I’d put up with anything if we could just avoid doing this.
But I know that I can’t, just like I can’t go back in time and change all the things that caused this in the first place.
So I turn back and I tell him. I tell him about the fight Emma and I had after she looked up Amy’s file. I tell him about how angry I was and how I needed to get away from her. I tell him how I spent the week at my sister’s best friend’s house, drinking on her couch before she eventually kicked me out. And I tell him how I came back to my apartment, intending to go and see Emma and apologise, only to walk into the bathroom and find Emma asleep in the bathtub.
Then I tell him how I completely freaked out.
Adrian and Emma say nothing as I admit all of this, and by the end of it, I’m so exhausted that all I want to do is go home and sleep, even if that’s what’s been killing me this past week.
I expect him to ask me more, ask me why I freaked out like I did, or what I think it all means, but instead he just nods and says, “Okay, that’s a really good start, Nick. Thank you for telling me all of this, I know it can’t have been easy. We are going to stop now, but I do want to arrange another appointment, so we can continue to talk about everything. Would that be okay?”
I glance at Emma who smiles in encouragement before turning back to Adrian and nodding, not sure what I’m supposed to say.
“Good,” he says, smiling at both of us. “And I’d also like to prescribe you with some sleeping tablets. Just to…”
I’m shaking my head before he’s even finished, knowing there’s not a chance in hell I can take those.
“Nick,” he says, holding up a hand. “It’s not forever, okay? And it’s a really low dose, just so you can get some sleep.”
“I can’t,” I whisper, my voice cracking.
“Try,” he says, handing me the script. “Can we meet again on Monday?”
My hand shakes as I take the script from him. I hear Emma answer, “Yes,” as they arrange a time and then we are standing and walking out of his office.
The second we’re outside; I scrunch up the prescription and shove it in my pocket, at the same time inhaling deeply, sucking in the fresh air as though it’s the first I’ve tasted in months. Emma watches me but says nothing as she links her arm through mine and steers us down the street and into a coffee shop. I’d rather just go home, I’m not in the mood to be out in public, but it seems like I don’t have a choice on this one.
Inside, she’s pushes me towards a table in the back while she goes to order us some coffee. It briefly crosses my mind that I could just get up and walk out, go home so I don’t have to deal with this shit. But before I can even process the thought, Emma is back, taking a seat opposite me.
I look up, wondering whether I could actually walk away from her. She offers me a smile, as though giving me the answer, and it’s all I can do not to reach for her, pull her into my arms and beg her to stay and fix this for me.
But I know it’s not going to be as easy as that and as much as I might hate what she made me do this morning, I know this is the only way she knows how to try and help me. Even if the past tells me it isn’t ever going to help.
“How are you doing?” she asks tentatively.
“Shit,” I say, shrugging.
Emma nods as though it’s what she expected. “Do you hate me for doing that to you this morning?” she asks.
I shake my head. I don’t hate her; I just hate what I have to do.
“Really?” she asks, reaching for my hand.
Her fingers slide through mine, pulling my hand closer to her as she wraps her other hand around it.
“Really,” I say, my eyes on our hands.
“Even…” she stops as our coffees are delivered, mumbling a thanks to whoever drops them off. “Even after what I did?” she continues.
I look up, glance around the coffee shop she’s taken me to. It’s not one I’ve ever been to. Not my regular, which has now become our regular after Emma started staying over at my place. It occurs to me that this might be deliberate. That, in addition to giving me an anonymous face to tell my shit to, she’s also giving me an anonymous place in which to tell it. Or try to anyway.
“Nick?”
I turn back to her. “No,” I say. “I get why you did it, Em.”
“You do?” she asks.
I nod.
“Why?” she continues, surprised. I shake my head, unsure how to explain it. Emma says nothing for a bit, before she adds, “You were so angry with me.” Her words are a whisper, almost as though she’s afraid to say them out loud.
I nod again, knowing the rage I felt a week ago was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. Even though it’s still there, it has diminished a little, because while I might have thought my anger was about what she did, I also know it was partly because of what I was unable to do.
Amy’s right, I’ve never been able to talk about what happened to my sister. Not with her, not with my parents and not with Tony. They are the four people, aside from me, who know everything about it, but still I can’t bring myself to talk to them about it all.
I’m not even sure why, except that maybe it’s because Amy and I are twins, or were anyway, and that somehow, we shared a connection that was greater than anything they ever shared with her.
I saw this thing once that said; twins share one mind, but it’s the shared heart that’s the problem. I didn’t get what it meant at first because even though we always joked we knew exactly what the other was thinking; I never actually thought Amy and I shared a mind. We were always our own person, doing our own thing and living our own lives, regardless of how close we were. I thought maybe this saying was more an identical twin thing.
But then everything happened to her.
And after that, I understood it. I understood because I could literally feel the pain she felt; the pain of her suffering became my pain too.
Only then she got to be free of it, and I had to keep on suffering.
But then there’s the guilt of it all too. The guilt of that night, which is probably the real reason I can’t ever talk about it.
“Nick?” Emma whispers, squeezing my hand.
I offer what I hope is a reassuring smile before saying, “Amy told me I was an idiot for not telling you.”
“Amy?” she asks, confused.
My smile widens a little as I imagine Emma thinks I’ve truly lost my mind and am somehow now communicating with my dead sister. “Amy, her friend. It’s where I was last week.”
“Oh,” she says.
I nod. “She told me I was an idiot, especially after all the confusion with the tattoo and stuff. She couldn’t understand why I hadn’t told you everything.”
Emma nods as though she understands. “Why didn’t you?” she asks carefully.
I take a deep breath, letting it out in a long exhale. “I don’t know,” I tell her, even though deep down, I know exactly why. “It’s just…it’s just not something I ever want to talk about.”
“So why are you okay with this morning?”
I lift our hands, pulling them towards my mouth as I press a kiss to the back of one of hers. I offer her a small smile, kissing her skin again before saying, “And you always thought it would be your job that would ruin this.”
“Nick,” Emma whispers, moving her chair around so she’s sitting beside me. She uncurls one of her hands, sliding it onto my cheek as she turns me to face her. “Nothing is ruined,” she whispers.
“Are you sure about that?” I whisper back, not certain I can believe her.
Emma nods. “I’m sure,” she says, before leaning in to kiss me.