by J. L. Mac
“Jo.”
I startle and my eyes pop open. On instinct, my hands feel around in the darkness. Why is it so dark in here?
“Jo.”
I hear someone calling me but I can’t see anything; the room is pitch black. I feel around some more and realize I’m in Damon’s bed. How the hell did I get in here? I was on the couch. I reach for the lamp on the nightstand but it isn’t there. I’m starting to panic as I wake a bit more. Someone’s calling me. That isn’t Damon’s voice.
“Hello?” Now I’m fully awake and fully panicking. Who took the lamp away? Where’s Damon? Who’s here?
“Jo, it’s me.” The familiar gruff voice hits me like a hard jab straight to the mouth.
“C-Captain?” I force out. “Captain, is that you?”
“I’m your only Captain, right?”
His witty remark eases my panic but I’m still so confused. Why are the lights out? How did I get in bed? How am I hearing him right now? “I-How… how are you here?”
His signature chuckle warms me from the inside out. This can’t be real. “I’m always here, Jo. I never left.”
His voice is the most tender I’ve heard it and the waterworks kick in full throttle. Maybe it’s what he said or maybe it’s a combination of everything that has happened, but either way I’m a sobbing mess. Finally.
“I want to see you. Turn on the lights.”
“You don’t need to see me to know that I’m here. Always know that. Just because you can’t see me, that doesn’t mean that I’ve left you. I haven’t left you and neither have your mom and dad.”
“Please, I want to see you!” I cry out desperately.
“I know you don’t like being in the dark. No one does.”
“Please!” I feel hands squeeze my shoulders. It scares the shit out of me. I close my eyes tight. “Who is that?! Please turn on the light!”
“Honey, wake up!”
My eyes open and I’m on the couch, staring into the face of one very pale Brian.
“Shit!” I cry, panting to catch my breath.
“Bad dream?” he asks, settling across from me on the other overpriced shit sofa.
I put my hands to my face to scrub my sleepy eyes. My face is wet with tears. With my hands covering my face I draw in a deep breath. The room feels empty and ten times bigger than what it is. Oh shit.
“Damon! Where’s Damon?” I jump from the sofa and begin speed walking through the penthouse, checking rooms as I go. “Damon!”
No answer.
No sign of him.
Shit! Brian’s right behind me checking spaces right along with me. I push open the door to a guest bathroom. Nothing.
“I’ll check the guest rooms,” Brian says, looking just as worried as I feel. He jogs down the hall towards the guest rooms.
Office. My legs carry me to his office door in a blur. The door is shut and I don’t bother knocking. I know he’s in there. I’m so scared to open the door. What if…
I shut off my brain and force myself to go in. The doorknob is cool to the touch as I slowly turn it and push the door open. The door swings open at what seems like snail’s pace. I take one step into the office and there he is.
Zombie Damon is standing in front of a large file cabinet that looks like one of those fancy ass armoires. He must’ve heard me come in, because he slams the door to the cabinet and I jump at the sound. The panic that consumed me just a moment ago is suddenly replaced with elation. He got up and moved around without being forced to! He came to his office! He’s doing something with a fucking cabinet! I’m genuinely ecstatic to see him functioning somewhat like a human.
“Fuck, Damon! You gave me a heart attack.” I lean out into the hall and shout, “Brian! He’s in here!”
Brian comes bounding into the office, clearly relieved. “OMG! I think I’m sweating!” He leans against the door frame and fans his face with manicured hands.
“See, Damon? You even made the perfectly groomed gay man sweat.” I laugh a tiny bit on the inside when Brian purses his lips and draws them to the side in true drama queen fashion.
“Well, now that you’re not having a bad dream, he’s found, and dinner is delivered, I’m going home.” Brian steps over to me and gives me a hug.
“Thanks for dinner.”
He nods and makes a move for the door when Zombie Damon turns from the cabinet to face us. We both freeze in anticipation. Zombie Damon’s eyes come to Brian and relief washes over me when I see a measure of alertness in him. Thank fuck!
“Brian, I need to speak with you. Alone.”
What? Zombie Damon is speaking?!
He doesn’t even look at me when he says the words. I feel completely rejected. Ignored. Unworthy. For the first time in my whole fucking existence I’m truly at a loss for words.
Brian looks at me with a mixed expression of shock and pity. It makes my skin crawl and I do my best to bolster some small trace of confidence before I leave the room. I nod my head and stride away from them, hurrying down the hall like being near him is dangerous to my health. It probably is. I’ve lost my damn mind. Love screws people up something fierce.
I find Hemingway asleep in his little travel kennel beside the couch. “Hey, little guy. I missed you. I bet Damon missed you, too.” I scoop the furball out and snuggle him to my chest. I scratch behind his little ears and watch as his eyes close in doggie bliss. With Hemingway in my arms, I climb the stairs and make my way into the loft library. I plant myself on one of the cushy couches and hold my pup out in front of me, showing him the thousands of books.
“Who do you want to visit with? Giant whales? A complicated teen that gets tossed out of private school?”
Talking to Hemingway about book selection is just plain nutty, but I need a distraction badly. There’s no way to dress that up to make it better. Talking to my dog about books is a whole lot better than sitting around feeling ass hurt over Zombie Damon dismissing me. After a complete mental breakdown, he finally decides to speak to his assistant. Not his girlfriend. His fucking assistant.
If Captain were alive, I’d make up some excuse to go talk to him. He never turned me away. Not once. Thinking about Captain has me thinking about my heartbreaking dream. Captain’s right. No one likes being in the dark. I don’t like it in the literal sense and I damn sure don’t like it in the figurative sense. In the dark. I guess I’m in the dark since Damon dismissed me like some annoyance.
Maybe he’s in the dark, too.
***
Versan’s receptionist waves me in, and I know I should say something, but I walk right past her and into his office. One look at him and my level of irritation goes through the roof.
He’s as cool and collected as always, sitting in his shrink chair. “Come in. Make yourself comfortable, Josephine.”
“For fuck’s sake, please call me Jo!” I snap, plopping down on the patient couch. It’s tan suede and deliciously comfortable, especially compared to Damon’s crap couches.
He nods in resignation and leans back in his seat. “Okay. I’m sorry,” he says cordially.
There’s that stupid feeling of guilt that I hate. He sounds so nice that then I feel bad for snapping at him. I look down, feeling a tad shameful as I settle into my seat and put my bag on the floor.
“You seem agitated this morning. Care to discuss it?” He flips open the object I dread most about these visits, his leather bound notebook, his fancy ass pen poised to take notes.
“Not really,” I lie. But I do want to get it off my chest. I’m so damn frustrated I could ninja kick a stranger in the head right about now.
“I think you should. It may help.” He cocks his head to the side, looking at me like I’m some sort of science experiment.
“Okaaaay.” I draw out my response like a true smartass then adjust the hem of my tank top just for something to do. I’m fidgeting like a gutless wimp. Stalling isn’t going to help me here. “Yesterday was tough is all… After you left, I fell asleep and had a weird dr
eam, and then Damon decided to make me feel even more invisible. Brian brought us dinner and they hid out in his office. He still won’t say a word. Not to me anyway. He talked to Brian. He didn’t sleep in his bed. So, yeah I’m a little edgy. I’m flying blind here.”
“Let’s talk about the dream first.”
Sounds fucking peachy, Sigmund Freud. I nod reluctantly, giving him the green light to analyze the shit out of everything.
“Tell me about it.” He crosses his legs and gets comfortable. Ready to write.
“Well, I dreamed that I was sleeping and Sutton woke me up. He said that I wasn’t alone and that he would never leave me. I was freaking out because I couldn’t find the light. He told me that no one likes being in the dark. He said that just because I couldn’t see him it didn’t mean he wasn’t still there.” I sum up the dream and shrug like it means nothing, when in reality; I’m hanging onto my composure by a thread. Yesterday morning I was begging for some emotion, for some tears; right now I wish I could put a lid on this shit. I’m all over the place.
“Do you think maybe you’ve manifested this dream out of a subconscious fear?”
“A fear of what? The dark?” I feign confusion while the good doctor looks on quizzically.
“Not of the actual dark, Jo. When I say the word dark, what are some things that come to mind? Go ahead. Tell me.”
“Um…Cold. Alone. Unprepared. Blind. Disadvantaged. Weak. Vulnerable,” I mumble. I’m staring right at him but my eyes don’t focus at all.
His pen scribbles away and I can’t seem to think about anything but the words that just popped out of my mouth. Unprepared. Vulnerable. Weak.
“I want you to think about why you associate those words with darkness and next appointment we’re going to continue with the subject. Right now, I’d like to move on to how you and Damon are interacting.”
I guffaw sarcastically at his choice of words. “Interacting? Um, not the word I’d choose. But it’s your show here, so go for it.”
“Why wouldn’t you use that word?” Versan seems taken aback, which I don’t understand at all. He’s seen Zombie Damon! He’s tried to “interact” with him.
“Because he’s acting like I don’t exist! I thought him being in…s-stress shock or whatever you called it was bad, but this is worse. He acknowledged Brian. He even talked to him! But me? Nothing.”
“Why do you think he’s doing that?” he asks, looking down at his accumulating notes.
“I don’t know. Maybe he blames me for causing this mess. Maybe he hates me. I can’t blame him for hating me. I should’ve given him a chance to explain; to tell me his side of the story, ya know?” I’m nervous and I want to do something with my hands. What the hell is that? I settle for resting them, palms down, on my jeans and try to keep them still.
“I don’t think he hates you, Jo,” Versan’s voice holds the tiniest hint of compassion. “I think he’s depressed; severely depressed. Both of you need to understand that he has a long road of healing ahead of him. Both of you do.”
I hang my head. “I get that now. I didn’t realize how bad it was. How bad he was. It’s my fault he did what he did. I’m bad for him. Just say it.” My knee starts bouncing up and down. Versan notices it, of course, and jots something down without even looking at the notebook. Fucking shrinks!
“If you’re looking for me to tell you to give up on him; that you two aren’t good for each other, I won’t. I know that would make this far easier on you, but I’m afraid I can’t do that. What do you know about his parents?”
Finally! A question I know the correct answer to. “I know his mom ditched him and his dad is a raging dickhead who lives in a bottle.”
“So you can imagine how he feels about being abandoned.”
I nod and feel like hiding my face in my hands. “I hate that he feels that way and I really hate that I caused this.” I stand quickly, the need to move overcoming me. I pace back and forth for a few moments and Versan just watches. Probably counting how many times I cracked my knuckles or something. I drop back into the couch and look in his eyes, making sure he makes eye contact.
He stares back at me; he knows I’m going to ask something important. He even sets his pen down.
“Can I ask you something, doc? Why can’t I tell him no? Why can’t I refuse him? It’s been this way since the moment we met. It drives me insane.”
“I don’t think that’s the right question to ask. It’s not why can’t you refuse him, it’s probably more like why don’t you want to refuse him? Have you asked yourself if you ever really wanted to tell him no?” His voice is calm and soft, as usual, but this time I suddenly feel like he actually understands me; understands what’s going on with Damon and I. I guess this guy is good.
“I’ve never really thought about it that way.”
“The connection you two share is profound. That much is obvious. The tragedy you both went through has linked you together. Forever. He’ll always be the boy in the other car that hit yours. For the rest of your life, you’ll be the girl who lost her family, the girl he tried to save. That’s a fact that will never change. What you can change is how you decide to deal with it. If you two are willing to work at it, I think you can have a healthy, thriving relationship.”
“So you’re saying this is a fight or flight sorta thing?”
“In a way; yes.”
“Okay. I guess,” I shake my head and check the time. I have loads to think about and a drive should help. “Time’s up, doc.” I grab my bag from beside my feet and stand.
Versan walks me to the door leading out of his office, putting a soft hand on my arm. He’s never done that before and I almost flinch away.
“Jo,” he whispers, “it’s okay to not be okay.”
I stand stock still, absorbing what he’s just tossed out there. Is it really okay to be fucked up?
“I hope you’re right.”
“I hope you realize it one day. I’ll see you next time, Jo.”
I take my time getting to my car. I have plenty to think about and I’m in no hurry to get back to cold, distant Zombie Damon. Brian’s with him. He came over early this morning and said that Damon wanted to catch up on things for work. Of course, I wouldn’t know this since he won’t even look in my direction.
I walk numbly across the parking lot to my car. Damon is completely and totally embarrassed about my hideously ugly car. Frank has been reliable if nothing else and I like his patchwork paintjob; it’s unique. I slide the key into the ignition and wait for the tired engine to turn over. With my seatbelt in place, I lean forward and rest my forehead against the steering wheel. I’m spent and it’s only a few minutes past ten o’clock in the morning. Over the past month and a half I’ve gone through a gamut of emotions; most of which I’ve never experienced. I damn sure have never been in love and subsequently heartbroken, then faced with losing it all. I flip the air conditioning on to cool off. It’s a wasted effort because I know the damn thing only partially works. It blows musty warm air into my face and I cringe.
“I really should just drive Captain’s car.” I sigh heavily and put Frank in gear. My thoughts swirl out of control as I drive mindlessly, with no destination in mind. I don’t know where to go. I could go to work, but I’m still battling the grief that consumes me every time I walk into the store. I could go visit my parents and Captain, but taking the leap from visiting once a year to twice is a bit daunting. Before I realize it, Frank comes to a stop in the guest parking lot of Grams’ old folks’ home.
***
The cool air in the wide corridor feels nice against my face as I make my way towards Grams’ suite. Her door is open like it always is and I give it a half-assed knock before stroll in. Grams’ face lights up then immediately falls in disappointment. Fan-fucking-tastic.
“Nice to see you too, Grams,” I say in true smartass fashion.
“Well, get your narrow behind over here and sit down!” she demands, pointing a bony finger at the chair next to
her.
I scurry over to her like an obedient kid. “What the hell, Beatrice?!”
She cuts her blue eyes in my direction and I swallow my urge to laugh, raising my hands in surrender. I know she hates her given name. I’ve never called her by anything other than Grams.
“Sit down and look natural, for the love of God. He’ll be here any minute. You stink! Spray on some perfume!”
My eyes widen at her insult and a smile breaks through my sadness. “Damn. Excuse the hell out of me. I’m a little sweaty. My car has shitty AC. Who exactly are we waiting for?”
She’s watching the door expectantly and I can’t help but wonder who the hell she’s so excited to see. Surely she isn’t waiting on Edward and it’s most likely not Damon. Maybe they got a cute new orderly or something.
“The maintenance man!” She claps her hands together excitedly. “Never mind that, though. I wasn’t expecting you to come here today. Glad you did, though. How’s my grandson?”
The mention of his name makes my shoulders tense and my brows knit together. I don’t know what to think about his current state. I don’t know what to do about his obvious aversion to me. I’m all kinds of twisted up on the inside and for the first time since I fell into those amber depths of his I’m regretting this dating thing. I have to tell Grams something positive.
“Well, the good news is that he’s talking; he’s just not talking to me. I think he hates me for ruining everything.” I shake my head in disgust. Disgust at the circumstances. Disgust at life. Disgust with myself.
Grams scoffs like she’s just choked on her own tongue. “You’re too damn smart to be so dumb, girl! I would know. You and me are just alike, ya know?” She pats my hand affectionately. “He doesn’t hate you, Jo. Give him time. He’ll come around and you’ll have to figure out how to help him get there.”
“How?” I whine like a petulant child as my shoulders slump.
Grams clicks her tongue at my dismal state. I can’t blame her. Even I’m repulsed by how pathetic and weak I must look.
“You’ll figure it out. I’m sure of it. It reminds me of what happened with that dog he used to have.”
