The Real Thing (24 page)

“Comfortable? I was. You never made me feel out of place. You sort of, well, you made me forget about …” He clears his throat. “You made me forget about my insecurities. My weight. I felt uncomfortable with everyone, including myself. Everyone but you.”

“But you still had attacks? Why didn’t you ever tell me about them?”

“It’s not an easy thing to admit. Especially to someone as beautiful as you.” His eyes go to our linked hands and he glides his thumb over my ring finger. “But I really should tell you about them now.” He licks his lips and takes a deep breath. “Ali wanted to move fast. At the time we got together, I thought she really cared about me, and that’s what couples do. They move fast. But when she first saw me without my shirt on, she … well, it was her face. It was
disgusted
, Em. She poked at me, told me I need to train harder with the team, and that she couldn’t touch me without turning out the lights.”

That
bitch.
My grip is so tight on Eric’s hand that he winces a little and pulls at my fingers.

“Why the hell did you stay with her?” I growl.

“That wasn’t all she said.” He sighs. “And the rest of what she said to me … I believed her.”

“Like what?” I grit my teeth. I really need to calm down because I
know
he said not to freak, but I’m about to search out this girl and throttle her.

“Mostly things about my weight. That I wasn’t attractive enough to find another girl. I wasn’t confident or funny or experienced. I had nothing going for me and she was going to help me get all those things. Except she made it worse. The attacks came in constant waves, and not just when I was with her. When I knew I was about to see her, I’d clam up. I’d hyperventilate. I’d shake and get dizzy. I couldn’t breathe. It was so hard to … it was hard to …” He stops and I take his face between my palms.

“Hey,” I say, willing him to look me in the eyes. His skin feels moist under my hands, and I start to breathe deep, hoping he’ll follow my lead. He does after a moment, and I move my hands from his face to his shoulders. “You okay?”

He nods, sucking in another large breath. “Thank you.”

I’m about to tell him to take it easy, but he picks up where he left off, much calmer than he was a minute ago.

“I started cancelling on her, but she’d show up at my house. She’d kiss me and I’d try to relax and kiss her back, but she’d tell me I was doing something wrong. Anywhere my hands were—
that
was wrong. And whenever she stripped me, I got that disgusted look from her and she’d turn out the lights. I never stripped her. The one time we saw each other fully naked, my anxiety hit its peak, and I passed out. I woke up to her yelling at me.
Yelling
for me to stop being so damn incompetent at everything.”

He’s shaking, and I wrap my arms around his torso, and notice I’m shaking too. Hot tears sting my eyes as I press into him. He runs a hand over my back.

“I was worried about the blackouts, which were coming more and more frequently. Tolani and I have dealt with panic attacks since we were kids, and when his got bad he saw a therapist. Up until that point, my anxiety had never caused a blackout, so I was willing to try anything to make that shit go away. After talking to my mom, I started seeing Dr. Shuman who put me on regular medication.”

“Your mom knows?”

“About the attacks? Yeah. But not really. She doesn’t know the cause of them.”

“Who does?”

“Tolani. Dr. Shuman. And now you.”

“Eric,” I say into his shirt. “Why didn’t you tell me before now?”

“I guess … it’s embarrassing.” He loosens his hold on me, sees the tears running down my face and cups my cheek. “So I was called fat a few times. I shouldn’t be panicking over that.”

“No. This is so much worse than that.” I close my eyes, let a few more drops fall from my lashes and shake my head. “Please don’t tell me that bitch is why you lost all that weight.”

He lets out a breathy laugh. “No. Working out helped me get off the medication. It helps to have something else to focus on, like breathing, counting … it was a good stress and anxiety reliever.”

“But you said you were still on the medication.”

His lips press together, and he hangs his head. “Yeah, I—I had to get on it again.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to panic when I’m with you.”

A fist locks around my airway. Do I remind him of
her
? Am I pushing too much, too fast, too far? I kissed him first. I said, “Sure, go slow,” then I get myself waxed and try to kiss him farther south. I grind on him any chance I can. I move his hands. I beg, I plead, I get frustrated as hell and now I’m crying because I had no idea what he was going through when I did all those things.

Eric must sense the tension in my body and quickly grabs my face, his chocolate eyes wide.

“No, Em, I love you. Nothing we do is anything like the relationship I had before. This is all about taking things easy so I don’t panic again.” His thumb moves gently over my brow. “Do you know what a trigger is?”

“Like on a gun?”

“Sort of. It’s the thing that sets off a reaction. And in anxiety patients, it’s usually the cause of an attack. Sometimes it’s minor. Like, I’m not good with crowds so a concert or a party will occasionally cause a minor attack. But sometimes … the trigger is something so small, yet causes a major reaction.”

His fingers slip a little against my cheeks, but I hold him there. He kisses the tip of my pinky before continuing.

“Tolani can’t wear a certain type of cologne anymore. That’s one of his triggers. He was wearing it once when he had a blackout attack and now every time he smells it, he senses another one coming.”

“Is it bad for him with … I mean, he’s married. So …” I’m not sure how to phrase what I’m asking, but Eric smiles at me and shakes his head like he knows what I’m trying to say.

“With that particular trigger, it’s somewhat easy to avoid. He just doesn’t wear that cologne anymore. But when someone else does, there are methods, techniques to prevent the attacks.” The veins on his forearms appear as he flexes his fingers around a small strand of my hair. He takes a deep breath and slides it behind my ear. “For me … it’s hard to intimately touch or
be
touched because … it’s one of my triggers.”

My stomach sinks, and my chest hurts, and I take a step back, worried that whatever way I touch him will make him uncomfortable, but his eyes widen again, and he pulls me back where I was.
Closer
than where I was. My skin burns against his, causing tingles in my lower abdomen.

“I’ve never done these things with anyone,” he says, breath warming my already hot face. “Ali tried to get me to do them, and I couldn’t. I choked, I backed out, I fumbled, and she told me my mistakes every second. And I hear her repeat those mistakes every time I touch you, because it
scares
me. It scares the hell out of me that I’ll do something wrong. I’ll ruin what we have.”

“If you need therapy … if you’re on medication …
Eric
, if it’s uncomfortable with me—”

“Look at us, Em.” He squeezes me, my chest bumping against his, our legs twining together. Warm fingers caress my cheek while I rest my hand over his heart. “We’re touching each other, holding each other. And I’m fine.”

“Your heart is pounding.”

He grins. “Well, there are other reasons for that.”

I let out a juicy and hollow laugh, but I swallow it right back up because it’s hardly the time for laughter.

“Trust me, Em. I want you. I visualize everything with you—burying myself in you, losing myself in you. I feel so much when we’re together it’s like an itch under my skin I want to scratch so badly, but I’m afraid of what’ll happen when I do. That’s why I take it slow.”

I nod, pressing my lips together, scared to ask if sex will ever be a possibility, because I don’t want to seem insensitive. I do
not
want to pressure him or make him feel like this is anything like what that bitch did. Just as I open my mouth and nothing comes out, Eric pulls a little on my bottom lip and I know that again, without having to say anything, he knows what it is I’m
not
saying.

“Dr. Shuman says I’m getting better. I haven’t had to take my meds for a few days and”—he pauses to kiss the bridge of my nose—“she’s gotten quieter.” He knocks on his head and gives me a reassuring smile, but it doesn’t work. She shouldn’t have been there at all.

“I don’t know how she could say any of that to you.” I grab the hand he has resting on my cheek and attack it with kisses and tears. “You’re
none
of those things. You’re beautiful, and sexy, and patient, and kind, and sweet, and compassionate, and tolerant, and strong, and warm, and—”

“It’s okay,” he says, cutting me off, fingers pressing at my nape.

“No it’s
not
.” I wrap my arms around his neck and squeeze tight. “I want to go back in time and kick her ass.”

He laughs, but I’m serious. I kiss up Eric’s neck, breathe him in, crying because I can’t believe how insensitive I’ve been, and apologies start flooding from my mouth.

“I’m so sorry for pushing. I’m so sorry for trying to rush things and for yelling at you about it. And oh my gosh, I asked you … I asked you—”

“You don’t have to be sorry. You didn’t do any of that.”

“I asked you for sex
today
, Eric.”

“No. You asked if we could make love.” He reaches for my arms, unwraps them from his neck and kisses my fingers. “And I want to make love to you.
Love
, Em. That’s something completely different than what Ali asked me to do.”

I don’t know what to say, so I press my face into his chest, wishing I could take away everything he’s gone through. Wishing I had done something or noticed it in high school. Wishing and wishing, but nothing is happening, so I count the beats of his heart, and try to be happy that he’s sharing it with me.

We hold each other, occasionally kissing. My phone keeps buzzing from the couch, but the background noise is just that.
Noise.
It’s not important.

“It’s three o’clock,” Eric whispers over my head. Damn work. But I did call Rachel after Eric and I fought on the street to let her know I might be running a few minutes late.

“Guess I’m fired.”

He chuckles and squeezes me. “Do you want me to walk with you?”

“Yes, please.”

We get halfway down the stairwell before Eric snaps his fingers and bolts back upstairs. I play with the end of my ponytail while I wait for him. He’s only gone for a few quick seconds, and when he gets to my side he slides my phone into my back pocket. My stomach thunders because I’m worried that he looked at it, but he kisses my temple and claims my hand, so I figure my screen stayed black while in his possession.

Guilt guts me with every step toward the SnoGo. Innocent or not, I can’t talk to Scott anymore.

My bed feels so empty. Work made me smell like the fruit sweat again, so I took a shower and got dressed all cute for Eric, even though it was, like, ten o’clock, and when I finally smelled like my coconut body wash and my hair was curled, Eric was conked out in his room, sprawled over every inch of his mattress. So I put my hair up, stripped to my cami and pajama shorts, and tried to fall asleep, but it didn’t happen.

I turned my Facebook notifications off for my cell, and that helped take the constant buzzing down a lot. I left Scott a message telling him I’ll be pretty busy, so if I’m a little off the grid, that’s why. Typing a “Sorry, we can’t talk ever again” message was harder than I thought, so I chickened out and went with vague.

When I snuck into Eric’s room, I grabbed
Horton Hears a Who!
As I read the words I can hear Eric’s voice, and that makes me smile.

“That’s a good one,” Eric says in the darkened doorway. He covers his mouth as he yawns. My smile stretches.

“It’s making me cry.”

“What part are you at?” He steps into the room and I slide over on the twin bed so he can squeeze in next to me.

“Then, on through the afternoon, hour after hour … Till he found them at last! On the three millionth flower!”

I nudge Eric’s shoulder and hide the book from his view. He laughs and says, “‘My friends!’ cried the elephant. ‘Tell me! Do tell! Are you safe? Are you sound? Are you whole? Are you well?’”

“You’re insane.” I set the book down, open, between us. “Do you have all the Seusses memorized?”

“No,” he says as I close it. “But this one was Tolani’s favorite, so I heard it a lot. It was one of his anchors for his attacks.”

“Anchor?”

His mouth twitches. “Yeah, sorry. That’s the word me and my brother use for it. Just something to focus on when we start to panic. Helps keep our heads.”

I pick at the orange corner of the book where it’s frayed. There’s tightness in my chest I want badly to loosen, so I tentatively press my legs against his, grateful when he runs his hand over my knee and pulls me closer.

“What’s one of your anchors?” I ask.

He laughs a giant laugh that jolts me a little.

“The ocean,” he says, staring at me straight on. I start laughing, too.

“Well, that makes no sense.” I stop picking at the book. “The ocean is way too scary to calm anyone.”

His fingers tickle my knee. “That’s the most effective anchor. But when I was younger, I had a Seuss that helped, too.”

“Which one?”

“Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”
He takes the book and sets it on my nightstand, then asks if he can turn off the light. I watch his backside as he gets off the bed before we plunge into darkness. His hands are shaking when he settles back next to me.

“You cold?”

“No. I—I just … want to touch you. But I don’t have any medication left, so I’m going to have to take it easy.”

“Eric, you don’t have to—”

“I
want
to.” He sets a finger on my cheek and my whole body tightens. “Is that okay?”

I nod because I’m not sure if I can open my mouth without drool coming out. He strokes down to my chin, then up to my forehead. My eyes drift closed, and an involuntary moan seeps through my lips.