Rêveries

Chapter 48.

"No! C, we're not doing this again," She shakes her head, and it brings this heaviness to my whole body, making me feel like I'm just sinking through the floor. Now I feel bad for bothering her again. I look down at the black mark on my shoe, fixating on it to distract myself a bit. Why can't this just be easy? I don't know why I won't let myself do this without having second thoughts and anxiety all the time. I don't know why my head is looking for reasons to run. "What happened?" She asks when I don't say anything else.

"I don't know," I say truthfully, because I'm not sure when it welled over. I wasn't freaking out when I left Arthur, I was just pissed, but then somewhere along the road, my mind started playing stupid little tricks on me. "Being with Charles means I can't tell Arthur everything, and I've always told him everything and I want to be able to continue to do that!" I ramble.

"You're adding Arthur to an equation that should only be you and Charles," She says, almost with a warning tone, "You get like this when you add people into an equation that should simply not be in the equation."

"But-"

"No! You're not hurting anyone. If the equation involves people you're not at risk of hurting, you're not going to get an answer. You can't adapt to everyone else because then you'll never feel at ease. There's a reason for shorting down equations in mathematics. If the equation involves you and Charles only and it still feels wrong, then it's time to worry," She motions with her arms while I wonder what the hell kind of book she swallowed this morning.

"Okay, Emily Dickinson," I say when she's finished, making her give me a tired look before she stands up, grabbing my arm to pull me to her before she sits me down on the bed next to her.

"Sit down, you're pacing," She says. Then she looks at me like she's looking for a birthmark on my face, that's how closely she's examining me, then she shakes her head, "You're not worried about Arthur, are you?" She asks.

Of course I'm not worried about Arthur. She saw the way he reacted like it was nothing but good news. There's no way I can be worried about him when he doesn't seem to mind it at all. He's not the problem in the equation. It's totally my fault that the equation isn't adding up. I don't want to be the problem and I want it to make sense, but I don't know how to fix it. I don't know how to just stop caring too much and I don't know how to just let it be and let it happen. All because I can't stand the thought of being too close to him. I don't want to cry because I absolutely don't want to make it a big deal. I want this to be over now. Just walk out of here and pretend like she helped me solve it and it's fine, because she shouldn't be dealing with my problems every time I get insecure.

So I force back the tears that try to escape and I nod with a smile. I can see it on her face that she isn't buying it one bit, but I don't plan on giving her the time to push me on it right now.

"You're right... I shouldn't be thinking about Arthur," I say, knowing I'm not really answering her question, but it buys me time to get up and start moving towards the door, though I should've known she knew exactly what I was going to do and she wraps a hard hand around my wrist to keep me in place.

"C, what's going on? You're not annoying to me, you can tell me," she says with such a sincere look that we could probably both hear something crack inside of me before the tears I didn't want to cry just burst out. And I keep trying to wipe them away, but they just won't stay away, at all. She hushes me as she pulls me into a hug.

"I can't even let him see me without my shirt on and I can't make out with him and I just can't let him get closer and it's not going away... he's going to get so tired of waiting and I just can't see it happening but what the hell is he going to do then?" I just ramble through my violent sobs over her shoulder. When she puts her hands on my shoulders and pushes me up to look at me I get very, very aware of how incredibly pathetic I am. This whole situation. Who the hell cries like this because she can't picture herself having sex with the guy she's seeing, "I'm sorry." I apologize as I wipe my face.