#wrining

by. Alex  A.K.A loved-deeply-not-widely

TW: Mentions of Anxiety and the way it feels to have it. Starts immediately below this. 

Whenever I’d leave the house, I’d panic and have to walk back in.

I would start breathing fast and I couldn't speak and I couldn't feel my hands, I was so afraid. I would shake and and cry so hard everything would seem to vibrate and no matter what, I could not breathe.

That was then.

That was fourteen years ago.

And now I’m standing in front of a door. I can hear the music, smell the booze, feel stress levels rise. Cathy is next to me. Cathy wonders why I’m looking at the door and Cathy asks why I haven’t knocked. Cathy doesn't know about who I was fourteen years ago. And if God gives me my way, Cathy will never know a thing. I finally knock and the host, wearing an ugly, ugly sweater tells us to ‘come in! booze?’ I say no thanks and Cathy says ‘load me up’ and suddenly she is gone.  I get a red cup. I find a faucet and fill it. No one will know it’s not vodka. And then I see him.

The water is still running, it flows over my hand in a Helen Keller way and finally I come to enough of my senses to shut it off. I gulp the water. I fight every instinct to flee. My legs ache to run out of that crowded, crowded room.

It’s Will.

Someone who knows it all.

The moment I see him, his chocolate brown eyes lit up with laughter, even though they are slightly dulled by alcohol, it all comes flooding back.

Those young, sleepless nights, the tired sips of coffee, the tentativeness that comes with a first boyfriend (a first anything), the inevitable adrenaline rush of seeing him across the hall, months after it's over and slept on for so many nights.

I haven’t seen him in years. I consider the bathroom, or leaving, but I know I’ll have to drive a drunk Cathy home.

I find Cathy. She is sitting and laughing and forgetting about work tomorrow at eight, 7:45 if we want coffee. Which Cathy will want, because Cathy thinks black coffee can cure almost anything. I am the responsible one anyway, I have always been the one who remembers 7:45.

I am trying to pretend to laugh or be interested in any way, but I really simply cannot be engaged in anything else when I am in the same room as my Will. I find that I have mindlessly drank all the water, as if trying to drown myself. I get up to refill it in that same faucet, risking Will seeing me but I’m becoming more sure that maybe I want that.

He sees me.

I look at him and he looks at me and his face scrunches up in a way I think I used to love but now is a distant memory and he suddenly knows it's me. Then there is a moment when he wonders how I made it here without crying, because he left me in the middle of my mess, and he would never really know the hell I went through and how now I’m okay most of the time.

“Addy” He says as he walks up. There is no emotion, the strong tones of joy on his lips cancel out the sadness and confusion in his eyes, until my name comes out sounding, normal, plain and ugly.

“Will.” I say then I decide, “It’s mostly Adelaide now.” But you would know that if you hadn't left.  

“I can’t believe you're here.” He now just looks more shocked and confused, and that is when I make a horrible choice.

I’m going to build a wall, and make a character to fill in the gaps between the bricks. He doesn’t get to know who I am now.

“Yeah me, neither. I usually go for more classy places.” He looks like he might laugh, but then I keep a straight face and his smile is gone and the wall is up, tall and strong. No one builds walls as well as me.

Acting classes for a girl who couldn’t leave the house a year and a half ago sounded like an awful idea. But it was the ideas of one of my therapists, to get me out of myself and to see other people. She knew I would be good at it because I lied so much and so well when I was sick.  

I was really very good. They told me that there was maybe a future for me in it, and then My teacher found out about how I used to be. I was too unstable, who knows how I would do. So I was told to give up, even though in that class, among all of those ‘Advanced’ actors, I moved them to tears. Tears for extreme laughter, because my delivery was great, or sadness because you feel awful for my character, and you would do anything to take her place so she doesn’t have to feel it anymore.

I played a mean girl with an eating disorder, yet everyone feels for her and the walls she builds. I played a girl with abusive parents, with a look of complete distraught on my face as she tells her friend. I played a woman whose sister is a lost socialite, who she helps. I mix funny and heartfelt flawlessly.  I played someone who is with her friend the night she commits suicide. She feels as though she cannot continue living.

But Will doesn’t know any of that. But he would know that if he hadn't left.  

The air between us gets really thick and and heavy. I have made it awkward.

“I missed you.” He says.

“No you didn’t” I say. My new character brushes men off and is strong and confident.

“Yes I did. And I’m sorry I left you. In the middle. All alone.”

“I’m sorry too.” I sip the pretend-vodka and don’t make a face. I’m the kind of girl who can drink vodka without a face.

“Do you wanna get out of here? I want to hear what happened to you.” His eyes dart with potential, with possibilities.

I want to tell him, I want to leave my responsibilities here. “I don’t think I can leave Cathy. She won’t have a ride if I go.” He smiles because I’ve agreed in some way.

“I think Cathy will be here for the night.” he gestures over with his cup and I see her being led off by Trey from HR. That’s good for them, they’ve been making eyes for weeks.

“I know a good spot.” He says, smiling. “You drive.”

*

I order a black coffee. He fills his with cream and sugar, but I don’t. I just drink it straight. Will looks a little surprised when I do that. When I would send him to Starbucks for me, I would get a decadent, sugary, coffee drink.

“At some point I had to cut out the middle man and drink it straight.” I tell him, in response to his eyes.

He looks at me for a minute. He’s trying to figure me out.

“I don’t really want to talk about the past.” I say. “I got better. I grew up. I left things back with my childhood. . You should have done the same.”  His hair, slightly wavy, longer now than when I knew him, falls in his face. He runs his hand through it and my knees go the tiniest bit weak.

Just like they used to.

“What means something to you, Adelaide?”

“What?” I ask, almost a little bit outraged. Can’t he see the wall I’m building?

There are so many ways I could answer him. The way that I no longer have to take five pills a day. The way I can flawlessly go about daily activities. The way I can act so well. The way I have a roommate who doesn’t even know what happened- Cathy thinks I’m completely normal.

“Something that means something to you- like a movie or book or quote.” I chew on my lip, the way I do when I’m bored. Does he remember that?

“Okay, um, when I was sick my mom made me watch Mary Poppins. She thought it would cheer me up. And I loved it. I loved it so much. So we watched a bunch of other musical movies, first other Julie Andrews ones like Sound of Music, but eventually it was down to the mediocre Newsies movie. I really liked them all, but I never loved any of them as much as I loved Mary Poppins. And there was this line, ‘there’s the whole world at your feet’, and that was when I realized that there is so much for me to do and if I don’t get better, I can’t truly live and do those things. So I got better, and it’s always been a line that stuck with me.”

“Wow.” He says. He’s a little shocked. I consider telling him two things a) that I have that line tattooed in a pretty small font on my back where my bra covers it or b) that those movies and bootlegs of spring awakening are the main reason I agreed to the acting classes he doesn’t know about. 

“What about you?” I ask, drinking the coffee with just a little bit of a face. I hadn’t meant to tell him even as much as I did, but his face, so familiar, it reminds me of so many things I had lost in the fray.

“Okay-so I love Abraham Lincoln.” He says. He swallows, and I make a face, like I’m a little shocked. He laughs, a little boy giggle. I remember that now.

“What?” I ask him, “like what about him?”

“Well, how he was one man that saved our country from a permanent division that would have done so many things to not only us, but the entire world! And he is credited for stopping slavery! Think of all the lives that got and now get to use their free will. He saved so many lives from living hell! He was so important, and we think of him as important, but he was shot. Think of all the things he could have done if he had had another term! He was one man, and honestly Addy, he still astonishes me.

I look at him. His eyes sparkle and he talks with his hands and I forgot the way he used to talk with his hands. I loved that about him. I had loved everything about him. I had once loved him.

I wince a little when he says Addy, and he sees it and I shake my head.

“Addy’s fine. For you.”

He smiles. I have let him in.

And then there is this sudden silence but I think we are mostly looking at each other and thinking. There is nothing awkward about this, but once I have let him in, his eyes soften the tiniest bit more and then the character falls and the cinder blocks I used to build my wall fall down and rain around me, and I escaped unscathed. I realize that I need to be closer to him. I need to hold his hand, to have him walk next to me and keep looking at me like that. I forgot how safe he had made me feel.

“Let’s go for a walk.” He nods and I put some money down and he puts some money down and I like how we each pay for ourselves.

We leave the cafe and now we are walking the streets and he is next to me and he’s walking next to the street.

“I really missed you, Ads. I did. I’ve always felt like apart of me has been off, and I always thought it was that I left you in the middle, without helping you out, even though I knew my being there helped. So when I saw you, I thought that I would finally get to resolve that part of me. But then I apologized and I still felt- incomplete.” He takes my hand, to hold it, but first looks at my face for confirmation. I lace our hands together.

“And then you were talking, and your eyes got big. And you looked so beautiful. And not like you don’t now, but you were excited and your hair was falling into your face and you would fix it and then go right back to the coffee. You were wide-eyed and talking with your hands, and I decided that we should see where this thing goes. You know, if you're up for it.”

I look at him. I smile, and he smiles back.

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I think I’m up for it.” We stop walking and turn to face each other, and we are the only people on this street now.  I tilt my head up, and it’s slow moving to each other, slow and tentative, until finally, our lips meet. It’s careful and slow, but it’s perfect and beautiful and I realize that I missed this. I really missed him. We break apart and I smile up at him.

“I wish you would have stayed.” The smile breaks over my face, taking over all other emotions that might shine through my cracks.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Then we would have had more of this.” And I kiss him again, a little more passionate this time, but still Will. And I decide, this is the real reason I decided to get better. For moments like bringing people to tears. For moments like my Mother finally going back to work. For moments like finally seeing my friends again. For moments like going shopping for a prom dress. For moments like graduating college with honors. For moments when everything has finally seem to resolve itself.

Most of all,

For moments like Will. My Will.

A/N- A little fast paced but important to me. Thanks for reading. 

English (spelling and language errors look to me because my mother tongue is Hungarian)