Bet on It (44)
Thankfully, Gram accepted his answer easily, even if she didn’t like it. They were silent, her pressing the toast into the butter-coated skillet and him trying to calm down. He wasn’t sure how he’d managed to hold it off for so long, but now he could feel the anxiety building. Creating pain between his shoulder blades as he stiffened, putting pressure on his calves as his knees bounced, and making his jaw hurt from his grinding teeth.
It never failed to surprise him how he could be fine one minute and completely off the rails the next. He’d grown familiar with the telltale signs of a panic attack. This wasn’t that. This was straight anxiety, the kind that threatened to stick around for however long it wanted. Minutes, hours, days—it had a mind of its own.
He preferred the panic attacks. The short bursts of fear and emotion were almost comfortable. He knew they would pass relatively quickly, and after he could crawl into bed, let his emotional exhaustion drag him into a deep sleep, and wake up the next day to only a slight headache. The anxiety stuck around too long for his liking. It followed him to work, to the bar, it even slept right next to him every night. It was still there in the morning too, up bright and early to make him breakfast and remind him that he was never, ever truly safe.
He wasn’t going to run upstairs and hide though. Mostly because that wouldn’t serve him, but also because he still wanted that French toast. He’d been in therapy for ten years, and he had the calming techniques to show for it. He worked through the ones he knew, trying to think of one that would allow him to do most of the coping work inside his own head. The last thing he needed this morning was to slip into a mindfulness meditation in the middle of the kitchen and spend the rest of the day fielding questions he didn’t want to answer from Gram.
Progressive muscle relaxation exercises had always been his favorite. He could complete them quickly, anywhere he needed. At work, in the car, in a strange woman’s bathroom the morning after some aggressively mediocre sex. With this exercise, ten minutes was all he needed to start reducing his anxiety.
He started by relaxing in his chair as much as he could. The old wooden furniture wasn’t nearly as comfortable as the couch would have been, but it was all he had. He focused his attention on slouching his shoulders some and spreading his legs and thighs until his body felt less like it was being held together by safety pins. Then he fixed his breathing. Deep, heavy breaths in his nose and out his mouth that helped build awareness of his calm surroundings and steady his heart. Starting from the bottom of his body, he worked his ankles, tensing and rolling them, flexing his feet upwards. Creating tension, then releasing it. He continued these actions with the other parts of his body, his calves and shins, his thighs, his ass. Isolating muscles, making them rigid, then soothing the strain.
He became aware of nothing but his body. The way it moved and shifted as he manipulated himself. Everything else faded, even the things happening around him. His ears were too busy being brushed by his rolling shoulders to hear the French toast frying. His brain was too busy focusing on his body to think about the uncertainty of the future.
By the time Gram set their food on the table, his body was floating, and his brain had calmed. The anxiety surrounding the choices he would soon have to make wasn’t going to disappear completely. It would come back, and it likely wouldn’t leave until his decisions—whatever they turned out to be—were made. But for now, he felt OK. He would take some time to enjoy his breakfast and his grandmother’s company and try to feel comfortable and at home in his body and mind—those things did serve him.
Chapter 14
“Did you know there are only three drive-in movie theaters left in South Carolina?”
“Uhm … no…”
“Well, there are,” Walker held the phone between his shoulder and his ear, taking his baseball cap off to comb his hair back with his fingers before putting it back on. “One in Greenwood, one in Monetta, and the other in Beaufort.”
“That’s … great, Walker.” Aja’s voice was a little far away, like she was focusing on something else.
“Obviously, the ones in Greenwood and Monetta are a few hours’ drive away, but Beaufort … that’s practically next door. A half hour if there’s no traffic. Which there shouldn’t be on a Saturday afternoon.”
“Walker, is this another one of your roundabout ways of asking me out?”
“They’re playin’ all the new movies. Even that one with Lucy Liu that just hit theaters.”
She paused. “The one where she beats the crap out of all of those men?”
“The very one.”
“Hmm…”
His heart was stuck in his throat as she made him wait on her answer. On Tuesday, the day after their romp in the bingo hall parking lot, Aja had been dealing with some work emergency. Then he and Gram had missed Wednesday-night bingo because one of Gram’s friends had been hospitalized in Orangeburg that morning and they’d had to make the hours-long drive through the state to see her. On Thursday, his own work had gotten the better of him. All this meant they hadn’t had the chance to talk about what had gone down. The only real acknowledgment was Aja mentioning she’d made an appointment at the closest Planned Parenthood to get an STI test and thought it would be smart for him to get one too. He’d agreed, making an appointment of his own a few minutes after their call. Other than that, there had been no mention that anything sexual had happened between them at all.