Breakaway

Chapter 2 - Breakaway

DANA

Eric didn't say anything the whole way back to his house.

Normally, I didn't mind silence. I had a lot of it. It was comfortable to me lately. I lived alone and I didn't get out much, other than going to work.

Even at work I did most of the talking, not my clients. I was a personal trainer at Love Handles, a gym for women. It was safe for me there—no men. No one to ask me out for drinks after work. No one to smile at me in a way I could misinterpret. No one to trigger a panic attack.

Silence was usually my friend.

This time? Not so much.

This silence allowed my mind to wander too much. Even just thinking about a man touching me could sometimes trigger a panic attack, and the trip from near downtown where all the restaurants were to the older neighborhood where he and a bunch of rich people lived took a good fifteen minutes. That was way too long to think about the fact that I'd just asked Eric to touch me, and so much more. Hell, I hadn't even been able to really get the words out. Stuff? That's what I'd said. I couldn't even properly ask him for what I wanted—what I needed. I couldn't say the word sex to him. Not that I was ready for that—not yet. But I hoped I would be before I had to go back home to Providence, back to my job and my isolation and my life as I knew it.

He was bound to think I wasn't emotionally ready for this, that I wasn't mature enough. He still called me kid more often than not. That was how he thought of me, how he'd always thought of me. As a kid. A little girl. Not nearly ready to handle the emotional implications of even the smallest forms of physical intimacy or, God forbid, sex.

But that was just it. Emotionally, I wanted that connection. I wanted to be able to have a relationship, to have a boyfriend and go on dates and maybe someday get married. I'd been through enough counseling that I knew I was ready for that. I just didn't know if I could get to where my body could handle it.

Panic attacks are crazy beasts. They don't care what you think you're ready for. They don't care what you want. They just take control, and then you suffer.

I'd had enough. I was sick and tired of letting some wacko chemical response in my body determine where I worked or what friends I had or if I could ever allow myself to fall in love—or, maybe more precisely, to allow someone to love me.

This would only work if Eric would help me, though, and he didn't seem all that happy about my asking him, if his silence the whole way to his house was any indication.

By the time he pulled into his garage, I'd been trying to focus on my breathing for a good ten minutes so I wouldn't succumb to another panic attack. He turned off the ignition and got out. I'd barely undone my seatbelt before he had opened my door for me.

Instead of going inside, he opened the back of his SUV and reached in for my suitcases.

"You don't need to bring my bags in. I've got a reservation at—"

"Cancel it. I'll pay if they want to charge a cancellation fee." He moved past me and inside, one bag in each hand.

I had to follow him if I wanted to argue further—which I did. I wanted his help, but I needed it to go at my pace. Staying in his house? Not ready for that. Nowhere close to ready for that. "I don't want you to go—"

"I'm not going out of my way for you, so knock it off. You're Soupy's sister. You're not staying in a hotel when you come to visit me, not when I have five guest bedrooms that almost never get used."

I barely registered the rooms we were going through, the furniture, the things on the walls. It felt like it was all closing in around me, squeezing me through a too-narrow space. He started up a flight of stairs, and I followed because I didn't know what else to do. He had my stuff, my bags.