Balancing Act

89

Celeste didn't sleep too well that night, tossing and turning, unable to put Jess' book out of her mind. She wasn't even sure why she felt the way that she did about it - and what she wanted most of all was to wait for her Tuesday morning therapy session to bring it up with her therapist. She felt entangled. But she knew that she was likely going to ask the same thing - did you read it?

Hence despite the drowsiness of the foggy and still pitch dark morning, she heaved herself up from the bed and pulled her laptop to her lap, it's bright screen hurting her eyes for a minute before she got used to it. She owed it to Jess and herself to try.

Jess really had made a number of alterations, clearly drawing character traits from his previous books and other people that they knew, including Rory and Luke as far as she could recognize. The main side character, which was formed after her, was called Annelise and the story itself was Brooklyn-based. The background story of Annelise reminded Celeste a lot more of G's than hers, despite Jess really not knowing a lot about G, but it was again one thing that reminded her of what Finn had told her the other night, making her make a mental note that she still needed to bring it up with Rory.

What she actually liked about the book was the fact that the darkest times depression brought on in the story were never actually described, only picking up from the moment Annelise asked for help. But it did hurt to read his side in this. She knew it had been hard on him, but reading it on black-and-white made it more real somehow, the analogies he used, the hopelessness he too had struggled, the sacrifices he himself had had to make - even if the situations were not exact to what they had been, she could tell where he'd gotten those ideas from. There was the move, putting his own self-realization aside, feeling like he was handling fragile cargo when dealing with her and so on. Thankfully, he hadn't included any mention of a kid. Mostly what she felt was the unfairness her condition put on him and the guilt. Her initial reaction of betrayal she never felt from it, but it still felt personal. It almost felt like after all these compromises Jess had had to make, it would've been completely unfair if she turned it down. And she didn't appreciated being guilted into this, even if it was her mind doing the actual gulting.

Clearly writing it had carried some type of therapeutic purpose for Jess. Still, she wasn't sure that guilt, people knowing how much she'd put him through, was something she could co-exist with. Of course there were people who knew - but it wasn't something she felt particularily proud about. Hence, for a completely different reason than she'd expected, she left the document with a single edit, adding a missing comma at the last paragraph. It indicated that she'd read it, but she wasn't sure what she was going to do about it.

She finally glanced up from the screen at 6.12, having read through the 120 pages in one sitting. There were bits of the book she thought were beautifully painted, which she'd read more than once, but that she had never doubted. But she really didn't have an clear opinion and her therapist's appointment still only sounded like the only reasonable thing she needed to do before making up her mind.

She snuck out of her room, across the hall, to get wash her face. There was no point going back to sleep this late in the morning, despite the night's sleep only being a brief five hours.

As she closed the tap she could hear Rory attempting to fold the pull-out couch downstairs, making an unmistakable sound. Clearly, she was eager to get back to the twins, which was half expected.

Evie was still fast asleep so she headed downstairs, hoping to catch Rory, and she did, just as she was emerging from her study.

"Look at us, two morning people," Celeste exclaimed, knowing that without the kids Rory would really not be up this early.

"I thought you had the morning off," Rory commented, yawningly.

"I just finished reading it," she replied, as they both walked downstairs. Evie was by now loud enough that if she struggled to find Celeste in the morning on their floor, she would just let herself be known, even without a baby monitor. But she really didn't expect her to be up for a few hours.