Die for You

Chapter 28

'And I'd give up forever to touch you 'cause I know that you feel me somehow,
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be and I don't want to go home right now.And all I can taste is this moment and all I can breathe is your life,
And sooner or later, it's over. I just don't wanna miss you tonight'

I sat in the car, parked around the corner from Becky's building once again nervously twiddling my fingers waiting for inspiration to strike me, the sound of Goo Goo Dolls bellowing out of the speakers.

Joanna and I had talked for a long time in that room, and I'd been deliberately cagey for most of it. She'd asked about mum and I'd simply told her she'd died, she asked about friends and I'd told her that they were either dead or I had lost touch. She asked me about my best friend and I told her I'd lost him in Afghanistan, she asked me about Jenna and I told her how cool I thought she was, and how helpful she had been to me; and then finally, she asked me about Becky and I told her she was just my package.

Almost inevitably, she hadn't believed me.

---

"What does that mean, Freen? Why do you call her a package?" Joanna asked sitting back into her chair.

"It means she's the thing I have to protect, that's what we called them in the CPU. They're not people, they're packages."

"Why do you call them that? It's a very dehumanizing phrase."

"Exactly!"

"How so?"

"You can't think of them as human, you can't like or dislike them, you just have to keep them alive. It's like moving a parcel. You don't have to like it, you don't have to feel anything for it, you just have to move it from one place to another without dropping it."

"So, is that why it bothers you that you care about Rebecca?"

"Yes, that's why it fucking bothers me..."

She smiled at me as I realized what she'd done and tried to clam up. "Come on, Freen. Remember, this is our safe place. You can talk about anything here. We're going to talk about some of those difficult memories soon, I think it would be useful to start with how you feel now."

I glared at her, not believing how easily she'd got past me. Safe place, indeed. Jesus, it was just as well I didn't go to my fucking 'safe place' during my interrogation training or I'd probably have spilled my guts when they started with the interrogators version of 'hello, how are you'.

"So how do you feel about Rebecca? And please, Freen, for your own good, don't lie to me. These sessions can only work if you tell me the absolute truth that's in your heart."

"Why's that?" I asked trying to deflect again.

"Because it's not about telling me. It's about allowing yourself to tell you. If you won't admit things to yourself, this is all useless. I ask you to tell me the truth because admitting the truth is the first step to understanding how you feel, and when you understand how you feel, we can help you deal with those feelings."

"I don't do feelings," I told her firmly, sitting back and folding my arms.

"That's a lie, Freen. Of course, you do feelings, if you didn't, you wouldn't be with me now. You wouldn't have nightmares. In fact, you wouldn't be able to function normally in society the way you do. You might not like admitting to having feelings, or even to admitting to have certain, very specific, feelings but that's a different thing all together and not unusual in people like you."