Bet on It (70)
“Heartbreak is like any other loss,” Dr. Sharp said. “It doesn’t matter how much we try to brace ourselves; the blow never comes any softer.”
Aja swallowed, tears collecting in the corners of her eyes. It felt like she’d already had her chest cut open, and Walker hadn’t even left yet. She was staring down the barrel of absolute devastation and she could do nothing to keep the shot from coming. The pure helplessness of it made her knees buckle.
“How am I supposed to keep it from tearing me apart though?” she asked, tone dripping with desperation. “How am I supposed to be OK after he’s gone?”
Dr. Sharp paused, placing her chin between her thumb and index finger. It was such a stereotypically therapist move that it should have been amusing.
“You’re very focused on trying to stop the hurt from coming right now. But I don’t necessarily believe that’s the wisest choice. The hurt is going to come, Aja. You’re a person who feels things very keenly, you’re only going to harm yourself if you try to push down that part of you.”
“So, what am I supposed to do?” Aja sniffed. “Just let myself hurt?”
“Yes,” Dr. Sharp said simply.
Aja scoffed. “How is that supposed to help me any?”
“Allowing yourself to experience your emotions fully is only going to make you stronger. You already know what happens when you try to suppress them. They’ve got to come out sometime, some way, and will likely cause you a lot of harm once it gets to that point.”
As hurt as she was, she didn’t want to harm herself. She’d come so far with her mental health. She still had a long way to go, would likely always be working hard at being her own version of OK. But seeing the forest for the trees was easier said than done.
“Everyone says it’s bad to wallow in heartbreak. I thought that all the crying and ice cream and sad music were bad for you.”
“They’re wrong.” Dr. Sharp’s tone was matter-of-fact. “What’s bad is trying to force yourself into fake happiness and positivity that you’re not ready to feel yet.”
“But what do I do?”
“You do whatever you think you need to in order to feel everything fully and come out on the other side.”
“And if that involves a couple gallons of ice cream and a lot of Adele?”
“Then that’s perfectly OK.”
* * *
Aja sat through most of Wednesday night bingo with what felt dangerously like a pile of bricks in the pit of her stomach. It was nearing the end of July, and Walker would be leaving Greenbelt in a little over a week. He would be leaving her—leaving them—behind. Not that there was any real, cohesive “them” to leave … but hell, wasn’t that the overlying issue in and of itself?
They had been very artfully avoiding talking about his imminent departure in any explicit terms. Instead, whenever either of them brought it up, they’d just say “when Gram/Ms. May gets her casts off.” They were absolutely taking the coward’s way out, but she didn’t really know what to do about it. As much as she wanted to have an in-depth conversation with him about the state of things, she also really, really didn’t.
She’d spent so much time over the past few weeks trying to squash her growing feelings for Walker. For a while, she’d felt confident that she could keep herself from falling for him. Then, when she hadn’t been able to accomplish that, she’d thought she could mitigate her pain by working him out of her system naturally. Allowing herself to feel all the twirly feelings and act on her sexual cravings so that when it was all over, her fond memories would lessen the sting of his absence. She’d been utterly ridiculous to ever think that could work. The good times they’d had together would only serve as heartbreaking reminders once she finally got left behind.
She needed to talk to him, to tell him that she was almost one hundred percent positive that she was in love with him—a fact that had nearly made her body collapse in on itself once she became cognizant of it. The need to do this wasn’t born out of a belief that Walker would change his mind about leaving and stay in Greenbelt forever with her—for her—but because she didn’t want to leave anything unsaid. She didn’t know how she was supposed to survive knowing that she’d had the chance to tell him something so important but decided against it.
But, fuck, it was hard. Every time she contemplated uttering the words, she froze up. Sweat beaded up on her forehead and her palms, and her mouth refused to make words. Like always, she found herself torn between what she wanted to do and the limitations of what her brain would allow.
Aja was trying to work on it. She hoped that she would manage to get the words out before he left, even if it at the last possible second.
Until then, she did what she’d been doing for months: used bingo to distract herself from her difficult reality. Walker sat to her left and Ms. May to his left, the three of them quieter than they’d ever been during a bingo game.
About halfway through, Aja was closer to getting a bingo than any other time she’d played. One of her blue sheets only had one spot left to fill in the center of the layout. She didn’t consider herself lucky by any means. Mostly she considered herself the exact opposite. It seemed almost statistically impossible, but she had never been one square away from winning. She still didn’t believe that a random Wednesday in July was going to be the night that it happened for her, yet she couldn’t help but get excited.