The Real Thing (23 page)

Pressure builds up in my chest as I bite my tongue. My hands curl into fists over my knees. She’s swerving, but she pulls back to the lane whenever her eyes flash back to the street. I want to rip that phone from her and toss it out the window. I know she’s messaging someone, and every time she opens Facebook, she cuts a quick glance at me. My limbs feel tight. I keep fidgeting in my seat. The pressure in my chest tightens my airway. And Em keeps sliding her thumb around the keyboard on her phone like she’s not driving, like I didn’t ask her to put the phone away, and I can’t stop my paranoia that she’s talking to that damn guy again, and she’s afraid to tell me.

She laughs, and my fingers dig into my palm, because why the hell is she laughing? Pay attention to the damn road!

The light in front of us turns yellow, but she’s got her eyes on her cell.

“Em …”

“I know, I’m stopping.”

Her foot doesn’t move to the brake. I grip the “oh shit” handle as she casually tucks her phone into the cup holder.

“Em …”

“I’m stopping, Eric!”

“The light’s red!”

Her hands shoot to the wheel, and the Camaro squeals as she pushes the brake to the floor. My seatbelt locks against my chest, and that’s it for my breathing. I was already having difficulty, but now I can’t get any oxygen. The car stops over the crosswalk lines, slightly in the intersection, but we’re out of the way of oncoming traffic.

My hands are shaking as I try to unhook my seatbelt. I need out. I need air. I need away from that damn phone and whoever the hell she’s talking to who’s more important than the road. More important than me.

“Where are you going?” she yells after me. I don’t care that we’re in the middle of the street. I sprint to the sidewalk, gulping down air, blowing it out, and pace.

My heart pounds in my chest, blood pulses in the vein in my neck. I don’t want this to be a big deal, but it
is.
I’ve tried the calm thing. I’ve asked her about it. I’ve been pissed.
She knows
it bugs the hell out of me, and she still can’t even drive down the road without looking at that damn phone.

She pulls over after she goes through the intersection. The door slams behind her and her flip-flops slap the pavement.

“What the hell, Eric?”

I glare at her. “Why are
you
mad?”

“Seriously, backseat driver?” She stops about an arm’s length away and returns my glare.
“I was watching.”

“You were watching your damn Facebook page.” I pull at the back of my head. “You can’t put your phone down for ten minutes till we get to the house.”

“Because I didn’t want to be on the phone when we were going to … I don’t know … whatever we were going to do before I had to go to work.” She crosses her arms, her phone still tucked in her palm. “But obviously
that
wasn’t going to happen.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You know damn well what I mean.” Her voice starts to shake, and a notification bings from her cell, but she ignores it. “You won’t even touch me, Eric. You keep giving me signals, and just when I think we’re moving forward, you pull back.”

Damn it, I knew she was frustrated. She said I could take it at whatever speed I want, but … “Is that what this is to you?” I wave my hand between our bodies. “Is it just about sex? Is that why you take your phone out every two seconds? Because it gives you the attention I don’t?”

Her eyes dart around us, but I don’t give a shit who’s listening. She was the one who brought it up.

“I’m
not
in front of my phone every two seconds, Eric. But at least my phone doesn’t shut me out.”

“You know why I shut you out? I have to take a step back because the anxiety gets so bad. Sometimes I have to pop a pill. Sometimes I have to go to therapy. And sometimes
I just can’t breathe.
” It rushes from my lips before I can stop it. Faster than I can say it without yelling it.
Screaming
it. Em takes a step back and hugs her arms around her torso.

“Pop a pill?” she squeaks. “Therapy? What are you talking about?”

I run a hand over my face and take a deep breath, but my voice is still louder than I mean for it to be. “I’m messed up. I have social-anxiety disorder and I’m not talking just a minor case. I’m talking I have to go see a doctor. I pull back when I feel an attack coming. I pull back when I’m afraid of hurting you. And I pull back because I’m afraid to touch you in a way that you don’t want. Ali always told me I … shit, I just, that’s not the point.” I shake my head. “I see you on your phone all the time. When I talk to you and you’re not listening, it drives me insane. Like you’d rather be with whoever is on the other side of that thing than be with me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about your anxiety?”

“Would it have made a difference? Were you on your phone because I wasn’t paying attention to you, or because you can’t help it? I don’t get it. I just want to be more important to you than that.”

“And I want to be important to you, too.” She drops her voice and takes a step forward. Her phone goes off. “Every time we touch I worry that you’re going to slam on the brakes. So sometimes I don’t even want to start because I’m left disappointed. It sucks, and it’s embarrassing.”

My breath is gone again.
Disappointed.
Will I ever have a relationship that isn’t tainted with how disappointing I am? If it’s not because of how I touch her, it’s how I don’t touch her. Maybe I’m pushing Em toward the Internet. It’s more interesting than I am. But then my mind races back to when we weren’t dating at all, and she was still on the damn thing. My head starts to hurt, and I curse at the sidewalk and turn from her, because I don’t know who I’m more upset with, and I need to get some space.

“Em, you
are
important.” I breathe in and shut my eyes. “I think that’s why my anxiety is so bad. Because I’m in love with you. All I can think about is how I won’t be enough, and I don’t know how to
be enough.
”

She reaches for my wrist, and I resist the urge to jerk away. “You’ve always been enough.”

“Then why are you somewhere else when you’re with me?” I look over my shoulder to her hazel eyes, and ignore the way they’re covered with unshed tears. “If it’s not your phone, it’s your computer or your Kindle. I get the online thing. Hell, I’m grateful for it because it kept me close to you when we were apart. But … it’s
all the time.
I’ve caught you sneaking peeks at your phone when we’re together. There are times when I’m trying to talk to you and all you do is nod.”

Her mouth opens, but it takes her a few seconds to respond. “I’m … I’m really trying to get better at that.”

“But why is it so hard to be with me? So we’re not having sex. We didn’t have sex before and you seemed to like being with me. What the hell changed?”

She shoves her phone in her pocket. “Nothing’s changed. I loved you then, and I love you now.” Her hands slam against my cheeks, and she brings my face to her lips. It’s so sudden, I can’t respond the way I probably should. I shake my head and push her back.

“No.”

Her neck goes red and she hugs her torso again. A notification bings from her pocket. “Of course, no,” she says. “It’s always no.”

“Damn it, Em. It’s no because you’re not answering me. You can’t kiss this problem away. We’re not one of your damn books. We’re not some fantasy couple that you can post online to show off to your friends. We go through shit and it’s not going to disappear because you say you love me or I say I love you. I’ve been in a relationship where things were swept away and seemed forgotten, but that shit comes back. It
ruins
you. That’s not going to happen with us.”

“So, what do you want, Eric?”

I let out a breath. I want an apology that sticks. She says she’s sorry about the screen time, but she does it all over again. I want to be able to touch her and know I’m not disappointing her. I want to get through a week without a pill. And I’m about to tell her all of that, but her phone goes off in her pocket, and it only infuriates me.

“I need a breather,” I say. “And you can answer that. I know you’re dying to.”

Then I step around her to the Camaro and plop my ass in the driver’s seat. I check the rearview and watch Em’s back. She’s curled into herself, and I feel like shit for blowing up, but I know if I go to her side and hear that phone I’m going to lose it again. I reach in the back for the scrubs I left there when she picked me up from work yesterday, and fish around for the bag of Xanax I keep in the pocket. But I can’t find it. Must’ve put it in the other scrubs.

I flick my gaze to the rearview again. Em’s wiping her face and my hand is on the door handle, but I snatch it back after I see her reach into her pocket.

I stop watching when she puts her phone to her ear.

Emilia Johnson posted a picture to Eve Ferguson’s timeline

32 minutes ago

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I stopped the tears for a good twenty minutes while Eric drove us back home. But I feel them start up again when he opens the door to the condo and lets me slide past him.

“Em?” he says, stopping me from darting straight to my room. His fingers wrap around mine. A long breath falls from his lips. “I’m sorry.”

My forehead wrinkles and I turn around to look at him. “Why are
you
sorry? You’re right.”

He closes the door. “What?”

I step up to him, cautiously testing the physical boundaries we have right now. “I spend too much time in front of a screen and not enough with you.”

He shakes his head. “I still shouldn’t have yelled at you like that.”

“I shouldn’t have said what I said.” I take another step toward him and tighten my grip on his hand. “I love everything we do together.”

“I should’ve been more open about my anxiety.” His fingers twitch. “There’s no on-and-off switch for it. It instills fear that makes no sense to anyone else, but it overtakes all rational thought. And that’s something I should’ve warned you about.”

“Is that what you were trying to say when you told me you were scared?”

He nods, and his forehead falls to mine. I inhale his scent, his warmth, his everything, and resist the urge to kiss him.

My phone dings in my pocket, and I know it’s Scott. I told him I had to run, but he keeps messaging. Eric tenses, and instead of opening the screen so I can get rid of the stupid Facebook bubble before Eric sees, I wrap my hand around the cell and toss it to the couch.

I look up, worried I’ll see his face pinched and hurt and everything I saw twenty minutes ago, but he’s grinning at me.

“
That’s
all I wanted, Em,” he says, then his hands go to my waist. He pulls me in, warm breath hitting my mouth for a brief moment before he flattens his lips against mine.

This is not slow. It’s not soft. It’s so much that my knees buckle under me and he has to hold me up. A moan vibrates up my throat and he swallows it up, then slips his tongue in my mouth, slides it across mine in one smooth, fluid, body-tingling motion. Then he does it again, and again, and I can’t stop the rumble of noises that slip between our connected lips.

His hands grip my hips, his fingers teasing under my shirt. I wonder if this is
finally
it. If he’ll take that next step and travel underneath my clothes instead of just on top of them. I open my eyes to see his, to get a read on his thoughts. His eyes are screwed shut, and he’s breathing hard and fast on my skin. Then his grip loosens, and before he can jump away, I snatch his wrists and watch his eyes pop open.

“No,” I half whisper. “Don’t pull back. Keep touching me, please.”

“I can’t.”

“It’s okay.” I press against him, moving his hands to the small of my back under my shirt. “I want it. I’ve told you already that I want it.”

He looks at me with the most heartbreaking expression I’ve ever seen. My heart thunders in my chest. “Why are you
scared of me
?” I croak. I’m so frustrated from not understanding, I feel the tears well up in my eyes and I snap them shut and take a deep breath to calm down.

“Damn it,” Eric says before slumping against me, his face in the crook of my neck. “I’m about to give you a damn line, Em, but it’s not a line …”

His hands move down my back to my butt, and he does his signature Eric ass grab, but it feels a lot less playful right now. “It’s not you. I want you, but my head won’t shut the hell up.”

“What?”

“I’ve never been with someone.”

“Okay …”

“And the one person who ever came close … well … I can’t get her out of my head.”

My stomach sinks. “This is about Ali?”

He nods. “She told me things, and it’s hard not to think of them when …”

“Told you what things?” My eyes search his face, but he won’t look at me. “Eric, what did she say to you?”

“It’s nothing.”

“No. It’s not
nothing.
If it were nothing, you wouldn’t be acting like this.” My voice is coming out in a panic. I won’t let him close off.

“This anxiety thing, I’ve dealt with it for a long time, but when I was with her, it got … really bad.”

“What happened?”

His eyes pinch shut. “You can’t freak out, okay?”

“Okay.” I say it, but I’m already freaking out. And I’m pretty sure Eric knows it, because he takes my hand again, and doesn’t let go.

“My relationship with Ali was … weird, I guess. She would make me feel wanted just enough that I stuck around, but most of the time, she’d tell me how … disappointing I was.”

His Adam’s apple moves up and down as he swallows. Short bursts of pain shoot through my stomach. I want to rip back the words I said earlier, because I didn’t mean them. Eric’s never disappointed me.

“At first, the attacks were minor. I’ve always had trouble around new people, doing new things, and adjusting to different situations. I took things slow up until that point, not really knowing that’s what I’d been doing. I mean, hell, Emmy, it took me a few months just to talk to you.”

“It did?” How did I not know this? We’d been talking ever since the moment he asked for a pen during that class. “But you always seemed so …”