Page 199 of Spicy Ever After
“I don’t think it’s that you don’t trust Beck,” Gwen says at our next session—one of our last face-to-face sessions. I’m going home in three days. “I think it’s that you aren’t used to trusting. Period.”
I perk up. Probably for the first time since I talked to Beck on Friday. And, boy, am I putting my therapy into practice.
Beck and I have talked and texted since then, but things are strained.
Beck is angry with me. Beck loves me. Two things can be true.
I have to accept that the way I left hurt him. I’ve damaged our relationship, even though I didn’t mean to.
And he’s right.
I didn’t even try to talk to him. Not before I left. Not for weeks after.
“You mean… because of my parents?” I ask Gwen.
She smiles that even, unflappable non-smile. “What do you think? Do you trust your parents?”
I roll my eyes. “We both know the answer to that.”
“Explain it to me anyway.”
“Well… it’s hard to trust someone when they aren’t okay with you… just being you.”
Gwen nods. “And what about your sister?”
I sigh. “With her… it’s more complicated. I can share things with her that I can’t with my parents. And she usually comes to my defense with them or with Grandma Eloise, but…”
“But what, Hattie?”
“She still has a tendency to keep important things from me. Things she thinks would upset me or that I couldn’t handle.” I shrug. “It feels like being managed. I don't like it. I mean, how am I supposed to really trust her when it’s not a two-way street?”
“I think that’s a fair question. And I think it’s something worth exploring with your sister moving forward.” Gwen crosses her legs and sits back in her chair. She couldn’t look more like a therapist if she took lessons. “Now, what about Beck? Is he okay—as you said—with you just being you?”
I practically shoot out of her couch. “Absolutely!”
From the moment we met, Beck took me just as I am. Never once tried to change me. In fact, now that I think about it, he fully rejected anyone else trying.
“He’s only ever accepted everything about me.”
For a moment, a genuine smile softens Gwen’s eyes. “That’s quite a gift, isn’t it?” she asks. “Being with someone like that.”
A knot balls up in my throat. I nod.
She nods too, and her expression sobers. “So, leaving the way you did, it was like rejecting that gift, wasn’t it?”
It’s like my heart becomes a pin cushion. One of those tomato ones with straight pins and sewing needles jabbed into its flesh.
“Oh, fuck, yeah—” I gasp out with the pain of it. I can’t sit still. “I did. But I told him I fucked up. I told him I was sorry. What else can I do?”
“Remember to breathe,” Gwen prompts gently. “Name what you are feeling right now, Hattie.”
I’m stimming hard core, rocking in my seat. I want to bust out of my skin.
“Like… like if I don’t fix this now, I’ll—just?—”
“If isn’t a feeling. Name the feeling.”
I shut my eyes and think of the color-coded emotion charts Gwen gave me. The fire-engine red column.
