Mirrored Cuts

Chapter 51

My therapist sent me an email. "This is a final notification that you have missed 3-4 sessions. Please notify me as to why, or I will have to give your spot to another student." A surge of jealousy coursed through me. She would give my spot to another student? I felt like a child with a plastic dinosaur: "But it's miiiine."

I shot her a quick response. "I will be at the next session. See you in a week." I hoped she accepted that as enough confirmation that I was still alive.

I hadn't been going because it had not been helping. Her thin questions and inability to make a statement had made me want to pull my hair out, of which there was less and less. The stress of everything was making my hair fall out. I would wake up with it strewn around my pillow every morning. Collecting it and throwing it away always made me sad, like I was throwing away part of myself, which I knew was weird. But it would have been weirder if I had kept it.

My father had been texting me as well, asking how my grades were though, not how I was doing. I ignored the texts as usual, not caring about the consequences at the moment. He'd have to drive out here to do anything to hurt me and that would mean taking off work, which would inconvenience him. Let him be inconvenienced, I thought.

I grabbed my coat, left my dorm and went to go sit on the wall overlooking a cavernous hole that I was sure if I ever wanted to get rid of something, I could throw it down there and not even the government would be able to find it. I admired the buildings around me for how flat their sides were, how perfectly chiseled, always ready to be viewed and admired. I wondered what I would look like if I were a building. Would I be a skyscraper, a ranch house without a basement, an academic building?

John walked over, interrupting my reverie. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"It's mutual," I said.

"Look," he said. "I know you hate me now. I don't know why but I miss you a lot. I thought we had a good thing going."

I tried to tilt my face down, worried that it was betraying me. We sat in silence for a few minutes, looking away when other stragglers walked by the wall, pretending we were having a casual pause.

"Can I take you for a ride? I know the view from this kidnappers wall is beautiful but I think you like the city skyline more."

You know those turning points? This is one of them. I don't know what I should have said. All I know is what I did say. I said yes, I followed him to his car and we drove. His car smelled like leather and musk, a true man's man car. He tried really hard to keep up some chatter in the background. Turned the radio on low so it wouldn't be so smotheringly quiet.

"So, how is everything?" he started.

"Can't complain," I said.

"I've been good too," he said.

"How's Sandy?"

"She's fine. How many times do I have to tell you I'm not interested in her?"

"She's interested in you."

"And six months ago, I would have been overjoyed to hear that. But I'm interested in you now," John said forcefully.

I should have hated that. But instead, I melted. Why was I being so awful? Couldn't I just be with him? He seemed like he cared so much for me and for what I was trying to do. All he needed was honesty. My lie was staring me in the face. Nose to nose, it refused to break eye contact.

"Are you okay?" John said

I couldn't choke it out. I wouldn't. It would ruin everything he had just said. The reason he was saying these things was because he didn't know. But I couldn't say them back unless I first pulled my lie out of the cue.

"I have to tell you something," I said.

"Fire away," he said. When I paused, he said, "Nothing you say can change how I feel about you."

I began to laugh hysterically, uncontrollably in my head. He had no idea that I was actually a horrible person.

"I..." I started. "When..."

"Spit it out, Andi."

I pulled my last dregs of self-control to my head. This certainly wasn't courage. This was pure, ironclad force.

"When we were together," I said. "I was...with someone else during that time. I never told you and I'm sorry."

I covered my face with my hands, expecting my hair to be pulled or a hand to clamp down on my shoulder. I didn't expect the car to speed up.

"Who was it?" he said, anger trickling into his voice the way the courage had trickled into my life.

"It was Flint."

We sped up, John blind to the steepness of the curve we were taking. He scraped the side, the railings trying their very best to hold us in. I held on to the door handle in a futile attempt at control. We hit the wall on my side. The airbags deployed on his. It was the most exciting EMS call of the last decade.