With that said, he returned to his seat and we continued to eat. He drilled me with questions about baby girl clothes and room decor, and then we slipped into talking about unimportant things. Sports and memes and social media. We talked about old friends, but our reminiscing stayed strictly confined to the time before his career had started.
When the meal was done, he helped me clean up and then he thanked me for dinner and left. His departure was perhaps a bit abrupt, but I was relieved when he left. It seemed neither of us wanted to push our luck and end up fighting again.
♪♫♪
You never truly know how broken something is until you try to put it back together.
In trying to reconstruct my friendship with Sean I discovered just how broken we were. It wasn’t a pretty sight. After several days of tip-toeing around him, fighting down the urge to lash out each time I perceived some judgement in a comment or a look, I admitted to myself that I needed help and made an appointment with a counselor. I’d toyed with the idea on and off ever since Jonas died, but I’d put it off, thinking, It’s grief, it’s normal. Everyone does it. I can figure this thing out. But once Sean came into the equation, it was clear that my issues encompassed more than just grief. The grief was compounded by my unresolved issues with Sean. I needed help if I was going to glue our relationship back together—if I was going to glue myself back together. So I went to therapy.
I never knew there were so many terms for dysfunction.
It would be good to gain a vocabulary for what I’d been doing, though. And my therapist always took care to validate my feelings. Even when they seemed big and irrational in my head, and especially when I described them to her out loud, she took it calmly and assured me that my reactions were only natural. Perhaps not always healthy, but at least understandable. After all, I was a twenty-four week pregnant widow at the age of twenty-seven.
I took a leap of faith and asked Sean to put his number back into my phone, which he did with such humility that it felt right. He became more confident in being welcome in my house, and I became more and more used to having him around. It even became (dare I say it?) comfortable, and I credited my therapist for that.
I started wondering if Sean had ever been smart enough to go to therapy. So one evening after dinner as I was curled up on the couch beside him, listening as he futzed around on his guitar, I got brave and asked, “Have you ever thought of seeing a therapist?”
“I had a call-in session with my therapist two nights ago.” A self-deprecating smile crossed his face. “I can afford as many therapists as I want.”
I blinked, surprised and impressed. “How long have you been seeing one?”
“Since rehab.” He rested his arm on top of his guitar and turned to focus on me. “I needed a lot of help.”
My face fell; it was an ingrained response as the guilt and shame of leaving him pushed into my chest and tried to squeeze my heart.
He noticed and grabbed hold of my hands. “I needed the kind of help that only a professional could give me.”
I latched on to those words and stared at his face, trying to determine if he was telling the truth or only trying to make me feel better. I wanted the clutch on my heart to ease.
“My mom couldn’t help me. She didn’t have the know-how or emotional fortitude. And she loved me too much to be able to give me the direction I needed. She needed the therapy just as much as I did.”
I nodded, unable to speak.
“And, uh…” he said with obvious emotion and hesitance. “After—” He swallowed. “After what I put you through, the way I acted. And then losing Jonas…you could probably use some too.”
A sharp ache filled my chest at the mention of Jonas, but I breathed through it and gave a weak smile. “I started going a little while ago.”
He let out a whoosh of a sigh. “Good. That’s good.” He bent his head over his guitar again and plucked a melody from the strings.
“Yeah, it is." I watched as he paused and wrote something on a notepad. “What are you working on?”
“A new song.” He looked up, giving me a cheeky grin.
I rolled my eyes. “I figured that much.”
“I think this will be the first single off my next album.”
“When’s your next tour?”
“Not scheduled yet.”
My brow furrowed. “Don’t you have to book those things more than a year in advance?”
“Yeah. I’m just writing right now. Then I’ll start recording on my own time. Maybe in six months or so. But I don’t have plans to tour this album.”
“You don’t?”
He shook his head. “I’m trying to slow down my schedule.”
“Why?”
When he looked up at me, there was a calm and an assurance in his eyes that I envied. “For my own sanity.”
I lifted an eyebrow in question.
“After I got clean and felt stable enough, I agreed to jump back into everything but touring, because my team thought it was important to show that I was really back and could keep producing good music. Then last year, I finally agreed that it was time to show that I could do everything. And I did. And the fans loved it. But it’s done now, and the rehab is old news, and the schedule I’ve been running isn’t something I want to maintain. I’ve been doing fine, but it’s getting harder not to let all the stress and demand get to me. So I’m backing off.”
The shower of relief that flooded over me was almost tangible. Everything he said sounded so reasonable. His words had a maturity to them that I’d never heard from him when talking about his career, and it caused a blast of hopeful energy to swell in my chest, easing some of the ache there.
It was a good start. Sean and I were each moving forward. What we were moving toward—and whether or not we were moving in the same direction—I really didn’t know, but it felt promising.
♪♫♪
I found my extra house key and put it in my pocket as I got ready for the day.
As I was eating breakfast, Sean knocked lightly on my back door and then tried the handle. I had unlocked it already, so it opened easily and he came in, grinning when he saw me. “Good morning,” he chimed.
“Morning,” I answered, then fished the key out of my pocket and set it on the table.
He walked over and picked it up. “What’s this for?”
“It’s getting harder to heave myself off the couch, so it’s a key to my back door. If you want to come over, then just…come over.”
He blinked, looking distinctly…humbled. “Really?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice. This was an act of faith on my part. I was choosing to have faith in him, to give him as much trust as I could drag out of the wreckage of my heart.
He blinked and smiled and came over to wrap his arms around me. “Thanks for this, Libby,” he said into my hair.
“It’s a safety thing too,” I hedged, not wanting him to read too much into it. “I’m alone,” I said, pulling back. “No family or anything, so it really is good to have someone checking up on me and Little Miss Peanut.”
He chuckled. “Little Miss Peanut, huh?”
I shrugged. “I have a feeling I’m going to be coming up with a lot of nicknames in the next four months.”