I nod, staring into my coke. “Yeah, I know,” I admit.
“So?”
“So I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” I say, my words rushed and harsher than they should be. “Not with you, not with Ruby and sure as shit not with a fucking therapist.”
“Why?” Reid asks, not giving me an out.
I glance over at him. “Really?”
“Yeah, really,” he says, eyes wide as if to say, why the fuck do you think I’m asking.
I shake my head, letting out a long breath. “How the fuck am I even supposed to explain this, Reid,” I eventually say. “Who’s ever going to understand this shit?”
“I don’t know, a therapist,” he suggests, his tone half sarcastic, half playful.
I glance at him, brow raised. “Seriously?”
Reid grins, taking another sip of beer and pausing as the waitress drops off our food. When she’s gone, he grabs his burger, lifting it to his mouth. Before he takes a bite though, he stops, looking at me as he says, “You know that’s their job right, to deal with this kinda stuff.” It’s not even said as a question and before I have a chance to answer, he looks away, taking a bite of his burger.
The two of us eat in silence for a few minutes. I’m not really sure what he expects me to say or do. He has to know that I don’t want to talk about what happened back in Providence, none of us do. Not him, not me and not Sienna.
But it doesn’t mean any of us think it didn’t happen. Of course we know it happened, it’s impossible to fucking ignore. But why rehash the past? What the fuck is that ever going to do?
Eventually Reid puts his half-eaten burger down, taking another sip of his beer, before wiping his hand across his mouth. “Tell me what’s stopping you.”
I look over quickly before turning back to my barely eaten food. “I don’t know,” I say. “I just don’t want to talk about it.”
“Not talking about it isn’t going to make it go away.”
“I know,” I say quickly, my words harsh. “You think I don’t know that?”
“So, what,” he throws back. “You’d rather not talk about it and let it fester inside you, making everything worse, ruining every chance at you having a normal life, of moving on?”
“Fuck, Reid,” I exhale, shaking my head in annoyance. “What the hell man?”
He says nothing and from the corner of my eye I watch as he finishes his burger before taking another sip of his beer. Eventually, he turns to face me, his elbow resting on the bar as he waits until I look at him.
“What happened to you was shit, Caleb,” he starts, his voice calm. “No one’s disputing that. Back in Providence, and here,” he continues. “But you can’t go on like this. It’s not healthy for you, it’s not healthy for us and it’s definitely not healthy for whatever it is you’ve got going on with Ruby.”
My eyes close as my head falls, wishing to fuck I could make all of this just fucking disappear. I thought I was doing that, that somehow, I was making things better, that I was getting better. But then everything that happened with Ruby’s professor has just fucked all of that up again.
“Do you really want to ruin what you have going with Ruby because you aren’t willing to talk about things?” Reid says, his voice low.
I lift my head, my eyes meeting his. “Aren’t you worried about ruining things with Sie?”
Reid shakes his head at me but doesn’t look away. “Low blow, dude, seriously,” he says, but I can tell he’s more disappointed than pissed off. “And for the record, Sie and I talk. A lot. We talk about everything. And yeah, we both know this is fucked up and it’s going to take god knows what to fix it, but we don’t bury this shit.”
“So why can’t I just talk to Ruby?” I say, annoyed.
Reid exhales. “You can,” he says, his hand moving to my shoulder. “But what happened to you, it’s…it’s more than everything else,” he says. “Sie and I have shared history, but you and Ruby don’t. It doesn’t make this any less real, but don’t make her carry this burden, don’t make her feel like she has to be the one to fix things.”
I feel a sudden wave of anxiety at his words, as though maybe I’m not being fair by expecting Ruby to be my sounding board. As though she is somehow okay listening to all of my shit. How could she be? And how fucked up is it that I somehow think she will be?
“Do you think I’m being unfair to her?” I eventually ask.
Reid shrugs, squeezing once more before he lets go of my shoulder. “No,” he says, shaking his head. “But do you really want to risk going down that path?”
I turn back to my food, picking at my fries as I turn his words over inside my head, trying to make sense of what he’s saying, of what I know to be true, even if I don’t want to admit it.
“I know it sucks,” he says, breaking the silence. “But if it helps, I’ll come with you.”
“Really?” I ask, my head shooting up.
Reid gives me a wry smile. “Fuck man, it’s not like I’m not fucked up because of all of this, too.”
Chapter Seven
Ruby
Sienna and I have been shopping for a few hours, but my head is not completely in it. I’m too busy worrying about what Caleb is doing and if he actually got moving after I left. I haven’t acknowledged that I know he’s been staying in bed and sleeping far too much. Discussing it with him is just as difficult as the discussion about the therapist.
“You okay?” Sienna asks, stopping just outside the next store we were planning to go in. “You seem…I don’t know…distracted.”
I want to scream at her that I am distracted and I don’t understand why she’s not. She’s far more relaxed about this than I thought she would be. Either that or she’s hiding it really well. I understand that she’s had to learn to cope with a lot of shit in her life, so maybe her way of dealing with it is to just act like it isn’t happening.
“Yeah, I’m…” I start, but I’m tired of the lies. That’s what will only perpetuate this situation. It’s what’s allowing Caleb to keep hiding out in our bedroom. I think Sie, Reid and I really need to start to push things or Caleb will just end up going down this black hole he’s already circling.
“You know what? No, I’m not okay,” I finally announce, my words come out quickly but leave me feeling less heavy. “I’m worried about Caleb. I’m worried about you and how you’re just sort of…whatever about the whole thing. He has a court hearing in like a week and his lawyer wants him to start seeing the therapist. I feel like I’m the only one who is like what the fuck.”
I hate the way I sound. I sound judgmental and bitchy, as if I’m coming down on Sienna, which is not at all how I wanted this to go down. I guess this is what fear and anxiety sounds like when spoken out loud.
Sienna doesn’t say anything for the next few seconds and my heart slams against my chest. I grew up in a family where you voiced your concerns and people cared about your wellbeing, but in Sienna and Caleb’s world, they only had each other. Not to mention navigating growing up without an adult figure to guide them. They always dealt with things as they came and found their way out by being tougher than the situation.