~
Natalie sees me climbing out of Trey’s truck and a smile the size of Texas spreads across her face. I groan inwardly knowing I’m never going to hear the end of this. She comes sauntering up, her hips swaying with a slight bounce in her step.
“Good morning, Tally,” she says sweetly, too sweetly.
“Nat,” I say, with a slight warning I hope she hears.
She ignores me, figures.
“Trey, my main man.” Her voice imitates the little girl on ‘Wreck it Ralph,’ and I have to stop myself from grabbing Trey’s arm and running.
“Good morning Natalie,” Trey says smoothly, as he takes my hand. Her eyes latch onto our clasped hands and if I thought her smile couldn’t get any bigger, I was smoking something good.
“How was the rest of your night after I left?” She asks me, as we all start walking towards the front doors.
I shrug, “Nothing exciting.”
Trey chuckles, and I nudge him with my shoulder.
Nat raises a brow at me, as her eyes narrow. “Uh-huh, right.”
“How was your night?” I ask innocently, totally ignoring her evil eye.
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, she is once again beaming.
“Bobby texted me,” she says, in sheer delight.
“Aren’t you two dating?” Trey asks, as he looks around me to Nat.
Natalie frowns, “Does it seem like we’re dating?”
Trey shrugs, “He seems pretty into you, so I just thought you must be together.”
Her eyes dart from Trey to me. “Do you think it seems like we’re together?”
“Not from your end, but Bobby has been pretty blatant about how he feels, you’re just oblivious Nat.”
“Really?” She asks.
“Hey guys,” Bobby says, as he catches up with us in the hall.
“Hey Bobby,” Nat and I say in unison. Trey does the whole guy, head nod thing.
“Bobby, are you into Natalie?” Trey asks, bluntly.
My jaw drops open and Nat’s about hits the floor. I look up at Trey and then over to Natalie whose face is in more shades of red than Sherwin Williams offers. I look at Bobby, thinking that he’s going to be just as embarrassed, but no, he’s grinning like a damn fool.
“You’ve been here all of two days Swift, and you caught on that quick?”
“That’s why they call me Swift,” he jokes.
Natalie’s head whips around to look at Bobby. He grins at her and then wraps an arm around her shoulders tugging her to him. I hear him whisper, “Morning Angel.” They walk off together and I stand stunned, looking from them to Trey.
“What?” he asks me.
“What was that?”
“I just figured they might as well get it out there. Natalie obviously doesn’t always have all her French fries in her happy meal, so I thought I’d help Bobby out.”
I laugh, “All her French fries?”
He smiles at me and I feel my stomach drop, yeah it’s one of those smiles.
“Come on, we don’t want to be late.” He tells me, as he lets go of my hand and wraps his arm around my waist.
My day is much like the day before, other than me fighting Trey the whole time of course. No one bothers me. We walk down the halls together hand in hand talking, laughing and no one says a thing. People always just seem to get out of Trey’s way when he’s walking so we never have to walk around anyone. There is just something about him that screams move or die, and yet I know just how gentle he can be.
~
“How is your one class without Trey?” Nat asks me, as we stand at her locker waiting on the guys.
“Everyone just ignores me and I want to keep it that way. So,” I say as I flash a smile, “what’s with you and Bobby?”
Her face, once again, flushes as she looks down and fiddles with the zipper on her purse. “He asked me out on a date.”
“That’s great Nat,” I pause, “right?”
She nods with a shy smile, “I can’t believe I didn’t realize he likes me. How long have you known,” she snaps, suddenly.
My eyes widen at her and I cringe as I say, “Like a year or so.”
“WHAT?” She nearly yells, catches herself, and then begins whispering frantically. “You’ve known for a year that a guy, a freaking hot guy, has liked, me and you didn’t bother to tell me? Isn’t that against some code in the handbook or something?”
“What handbook?” I ask with a frown.
“The girlfriend handbook, you know, hoes before bros, toys before boys, or, crap I don’t know, but there’s a handbook.” she snaps.
“I plead insanity,” I smirk at her.
“You can only milk that crazy crap for so long Baker.” Her words are sharp, but I see the humor in her eyes and know she isn’t really mad at me.
“So, where are you going on your date?”
“Paradise,” Bobby says, with a wicked grin as he walks up behind Nat. She turns her head slightly to look up at him and he winks. I feel arms come around me from behind and instinctively lean back against the firm chest.
“How did you know I wasn’t some strange guy getting grabby with you?” I hear Trey’s voice in my ear and his warm breath against my skin gives me goose bumps.
“There is no one in this school, save Bobby, who comes close to having arms as big as you. I was pretty certain it had to be my,” the words hang in my throat. I was about to call him my boyfriend, I mean, that is what he is right, I ask myself. But what if I’m being presumptuous? What if he doesn’t think of us in those terms, maybe he just wants to say we’re dating.
“Your what, Tally?” he says, loud enough for Nat and Bobby to hear.
I feel my face heat up and I try to duck my head but Trey deftly turns me in his arms and raises my chin to look at him. “Your what?”
“My, um, well you know,” I’m stumbling around like an idiot searching his eyes for the words he wants to hear, but he gives nothing away. “Grr,” I growl in frustration, “My boyfriend.” I finally snap out.
A huge grin spreads across his face and I start to smile back, but then I realize he baited me into admitting it. I slap him across the chest. “You butt head, I was all worried that you might not want me to call you that, why didn’t you just say it?”
“Because, I wanted to hear it from you,” he says, matter of fact, not bothered in the least by my frustration, or that I’m taking it out on him.
I hear Natalie clear her throat behind me. “So you guys are together?” She asks and I hear the smugness in her voice.
Trey looks down at me and the smoldering heat that seems to always lie just below the surface rises in his eyes, “We are definitely together.” He murmurs, and then leans down and kisses me softly.
~
“I have something to tell you,” Trey says, as he pulls into my driveway. I look over at him and the worry I feel must show on my face, because he smiles and says, “It’s a good something.”
“Okay.” I tell him, and feel my shoulders relax.
“I talked with Mr. Taggert and he said I can bring you out to see the horses any time.”
“Really?” I ask, and fight not to clap my hands like an over excited child.
“Yes really,” he smiles. “When would you like to go?”
I start flipping through my schedule in my mind, like I’m so busy. I have therapy on Thursday and that’s about it.
“How about Friday?” I ask.
He nods, “Friday it is.” He frowns briefly and I can tell that he is thinking about something.
“What’s up?”
“Shouldn’t I meet your parents before I take you on a date?”
I had honestly never thought about introducing Trey to my parents, but I suppose I will have to eventually. Part of me doesn’t want to. I want to keep him to myself as if he were my own secret paradise untouched and un-scrutinized by my parents.
“I guess so. I’ll have to see if they will be home. Their schedules are
pretty crazy.”
“Alright, I’ll just plan to meet them, unless you tell me otherwise.”
“Sounds good.” I sit there a moment, wonder if I should invite him in or do I just say have a nice evening, and climb out? I look over at him and as usual, I can’t tell what he is thinking.
“Okay, have a good evening.” I decide to go with the least embarrassing. I start to open my door, but Trey reaches out and grabs my left hand.
“I had a good day Tally,” he tells me and the look in his eyes turns my insides to warm liquid. “Come here.” He tugs me towards him across the bench seat and brings one hand up to cup my face. As his soft, full lips press to mine, I fight the need to get closer to him, to climb into his lap and beg him to let me stay there.
When he ends the kiss, I take a deep, shaky breath and open my eyes.
“You’re really good at that,” I tell him honestly.
“Kissing?” He grins
“Yes.” I feel a rush of blood bloom on my cheeks, and they warm under his scrutiny.
“It’s easy to be good at something, that you so thoroughly enjoy.”
I let out a nervous laugh, because really what do you say to that?
“K, I’m going to go now,” I tell him, as I scoot back over to the passenger side and push the door open.
“I’m going to visit my mom, and then I have work. I’ll text you later,” he tells me. I’m glad for it, glad that he gives me something to look forward to and doesn’t leave me wondering what his next move is going to be.
“Tell your mom I said hi.”
“I will.”
I walk towards my front door and try not to turn around, as I hear him backing out of my driveway. I’ve already made such a fool of myself, drooling over him, and looking at him in awe and wonder. It’s freaking ridiculous.
~
I take a seat in Dr. Stacey’s office and glance around at my surroundings. They are surroundings that I have become so familiar with over time. It’s a place that has grown to be more comfortable to me than my own home and I wonder, not for the first time, if I will ever feel at ease in my house, ever again.
I spent the night before writing in the journal Dr. Stacey had told me to keep. She said that sometimes writing out my feelings might help me see a change in my emotions before they get too far out of control. I asked her what I should write about, I’d never kept a journal before and writing about my day just seemed so redundant. I mean I had just lived it, why do I need to catalogue it?
So, she said instead of writing about my day she wanted me to attempt to write poems about how I was feeling. She didn’t care if they were simple, complex, or rhymed or not. She just wanted me to pay attention to my emotions.
“Hi Tally,” she says as she sits down across from me. She hasn’t changed a bit, although why I thought she should have in the past nearly three weeks that I had been gone was a mystery to me.
“Hey doc,” I smile, and it’s genuine.
“I see you brought your journal.” She motions to the notebook lying next to me on the couch.
I hand it to her and as she opens it she begins to read it―out loud. Great, now I get to listen to her read just how bad my poetry is.
“I am broken, but my pieces have been placed back where they belong,
I am a jumbled mess of notes, but they are slowly becoming a song.
I am a torn quilt, but the needle has been threaded to mend the frayed seam.
I am a dull piece of pottery, but the glaze is being added to create the gleam.
I am in this tired and worn body, though I thought that I was lost,
To finally begin to be repaired is good, but it wasn’t worth the cost.
I don’t want to dance too much, smile too wide, or laugh too hard,
I’ve been dealt a new hand and I’m waiting on that one bad card.”
The silence in the room was suffocating as I watched Dr. Stacey’s face as she read it again only silently this time. When she finally looked up at me, I saw a mixture of emotions on her face.
“You are hopeful, but you don’t want to be,” she finally says.
“I guess that I just feel like that living with this disease is going to be a constant waiting game of when the next shoe will drop.”
She shook her head at me. “It doesn’t have to be that way Tally. Take your meds, come to your therapy, and work on having a support system. If you do these things, you will be able to catch the swing before it gets too far in the opposite direction. Over time you will begin to gage your moods and pick up on when you need your meds adjusted or therapy to increase.”
I glance out the window as if I will find a sign that says Dr. Stacey is right, listen to her. And, I want to believe her, but when you have been where I have, the only thing you can think is that you know you can’t go back. I don’t know that I would survive falling that far again.
“I’m dating Trey,” I blurt out suddenly. Don’t ask me where that came from. It was just one of those things that had been bubbling up and though I tried to swallow it down it refused to go.
Dr. Stacey smiles at me, a gentle smile that said she thought it was a good thing.
“How is it going?” She asks.
“Sometimes he seems too good to be true,” I finally admit, out loud. I didn’t want to say it to Trey. I didn’t want to hurt him.
She nodded, “He’s very mature for his age, but then he has been through a lot in his young age. His father died and that tragedy seemed to trigger the schizophrenia in his mom and he has been caring for her. It can be a very tragic mental illness.”
I couldn’t begin to imagine what Trey had been through, what he was still going through.
“I didn’t want to date him.”
“Why?”
“For the reasons I told you before. I don’t want to be just one more tragic tale in his story.”
She tilts her head at me and looks thoughtful. “In order for you to date Trey, it requires you to trust him to be able to cope with your bipolar disorder.”
I nod.
“And you don’t think he will be able to?”
“He hasn’t seen me at my worst doc. You told me that stress can cause chemicals to get depleted more quickly and that the meds sometimes don’t keep up with that, which means I might crash. How is he going to handle that? And then how am I going to handle how he is handling it?”
“You are worrying about something that may or may not happen. You can’t live your life like that Tally, if you do your life will pass, and before you know it you will be grown and very lonely.”
“You’re so cheery doc, thanks.” I tell her as I roll my eyes. I know that my worrying will do nothing. I know that it’s pointless and maybe that’s why I decided to go ahead and date Trey.
“How is school going?” She completely ignores my sarcasm as she often does.
“The first day was hell.” I tell her about my locker and as I sit there talking about it, reliving the emotions of seeing those blades on my locker something inside me crumbles. I sit there with tears sliding down my cheeks, and I wonder when I will ever sit in her office and not cry. I’m convinced she pumps something into the air that makes a person feel emotionally naked.
“I guess I was hoping that people would just let it go,” I tell her as I wipe my eyes.
“People often deal with things they don’t understand in one of several ways,” she leans back in her chair and lays her hands in her lap, “they get angry, they get scared or they become defensive. Teenagers are especially difficult because you all are dealing with all the hormones swirling about inside of you as you try and figure out who you are. Your classmates don’t understand what they saw last year. They are scared of it, and they are dealing with that fear by being defensive. If they make you out to be insignificant, then they don’t have to be afraid of you or what you have done or might do.”
“No offense doc, but that’s just ridiculous. What they did was cruel.”
She nods,
“You are correct, it was cruel. I’m not defending them; I’m just trying to help you understand their motivation even if they don’t know why they are doing it.”
I told her then about Trey and how he had threatened Carter and she didn’t seem surprised by it.
“He is a natural protector. In the Native American culture, the men are the hunters, protectors, and leaders of their tribes. It is literally bred into Trey to be that way. My advice would be to be open and honest with him about your feelings, and be patient with him. Try not to see your relationship in black and white because life is not black and white, it is full of grayish hues.”
“I’ll try,” I tell her simply. She looks at her watch and I know our session is over. I stand and take my notebook when she hands it back to me.
“Keep writing. You are very good at it.”
I smile at her, though I don’t really know how to take the compliment.
“Thanks,” is my brilliant response.
As I’m walking out of her door, she calls my name. I look back at her. “Tally, you’re doing well. Practice being still this week, and make sure you are getting plenty of sleep.”
“I’m on it doc,” I tell her, as I close the door behind me.
~
“Finally!” Candy groans as I step into the hall. I smile at her. “I thought you were never coming out, I mean seriously were you guys trying to come up with a solution for world peace or something?”
“Candy, some of us actually go to therapy and stay for the entire session.”
“Bah, who has time for therapy when there are rules to break, patients to scare, and staff to annoy?”
I laugh as she grabs my hand and starts tugging me towards the rec room.
“What do you have up your sleeve now?”
“Have you ever seen nut jobs do karaoke?” She asks me with a twinkle flashing in her eyes.
“No.”
“You might want to go pee first, I don’t want you having an accident when you’re rolling on the floor laughing. Actually we can just get you one of those adult diapers.”