Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake (A Brush with Love, #2)(50)
“You know how I kind of minorly flipped out earlier?”
Rake’s lips quirked at the edges. “Very minor.”
Lizzie smiled back. “I know what you’re saying makes sense. It’s the right choice, us not having sex. I get it. I agree.”
Rake looked at her wearily. “But?”
“But, I flipped out like that because I … I automatically took that smart, adult decision as a personal rejection. It’s part of RSD. It’s like this visceral reaction when I sense rejection or that I’ve disappointed someone or done something wrong. It feels like a punch square in the chest. Or like my stomach dropped out of my body, folded itself inside out, and then wrapped around me and tried to suffocate me. It’s an overwhelming, primitive type of pain.”
Rake continued to stare at her, the corners of his mouth turned down in a small frown.
Lizzie breathed out. “I’m doing a terrible job explaining it. I’m sorry, I’ll stop.” She moved to slide off the bed, but Rake grabbed her hand, squeezing it gently. Lizzie wanted to cry out at the relief of the reassuring touch.
“No,” Rake said, “keep going. I’m listening.”
Lizzie looked at their hands, and she twined her fingers between his. “I tried to explain it to my mom once,” Lizzie said, the words quiet. “She had taken me to a child psychiatrist, convinced I had some disastrous imbalance because I was so sensitive and emotional. ‘You’re too much, Elizabeth. Too much for one person to be,’” Lizzie said, mimicking her mom’s prim voice.
“My mom wanted to put me on more meds—I was already on stuff for ADHD, but she didn’t think it was enough. She wanted something to calm me down, I guess. Sedate me more likely,” she said with a wry smile that Rake didn’t return. He continued to look at her with a steady focus, like she was the center of all his attention.
“The psychiatrist told me it was part of having ADHD,” Lizzie continued. “We’d known I had that for a while … not hard to miss.” She let out a genuine laugh, plucking at the comforter with her free hand. “I felt so … understood after the psychiatrist told me RSD was a thing. Like I could finally understand why I always felt things in a way that was too … too big. Too sharp. But on the flip side, happiness felt like I could burst with it, overflow with it.
“I tried to tell my mom about it—how every punishment for not keeping my room clean or forgetting to do something or messing something up felt like a catastrophe. Like I was the world’s greatest failure.”
Lizzie traced the index finger of her free hand over the grooves of their knuckles, enjoying the slight dusting of blond hairs across Rake’s.
“What did she say?” Rake prompted, giving her hand another squeeze.
Lizzie looked at him then down at the bedspread, dropping his hand and smoothing both of hers over the sheet. “She told me it was nonsense and I was too defiant and headstrong for my own good. That she was only trying to help me and do what’s best for me. Helping me be ‘normal.’ She took me to a different doctor. One that put me on meds like she wanted. I didn’t feel quite as much after that.”
The room was silent, heavy. Lizzie needed to break the tension. Dissolve it. She didn’t like all the feelings that were diffusing through the walls like ghosts. She blew out a raspberry and grinned at Rake, trying to blink past the tears that felt like little pinpricks in her eyes.
“Anyway, that’s why I flipped. And I’m sorry. You’re right, it would be ridiculous for us to continue having sex if we’re going to do this as platonic coparents. And I hope you don’t think I’m too crazy to do that with now.” She gave him a goofy look, hoping to make him laugh.
His face was sharp lines and deep furrows as he continued to look at her. Lizzie’s body began to vibrate under his gaze, wanting to move. Get out of the room. She didn’t want to hear him break it off. She didn’t want to see the end of one more failed attempt to fix a disaster of her making.
Slowly, he reached up a hand, cupping her cheek. He brought his head forward, resting his forehead against hers. “I’ve never thought you were crazy, Lizzie. Weird? Yes. Crazy? No. And you shouldn’t think of yourself that way either.”
Lizzie let out a shaky breath, the tension in her shoulders easing a bit. It was so easy to fall into that trap and let the mean voice in her head dig its claws in. Tell her that her brain wasn’t okay. That it didn’t fit in this neurotypical world and that it was wrong.
She tried to be conscious of that internalized ableism and shut that shit down, but it was nice to hear someone else say it too.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him. She wanted to melt into the feeling of him hugging her back. Hugs were miracles. Drastically underrated daily miracles.
They stayed like that for a few minutes, just holding each other, little buoys in the absurdity of this curveball life threw at them.
Chapter 26
Week ten, baby is the size of a hermit crab.
Two days later, Rake’s alarm blared, and he jolted up from the bed, panting and disoriented. He’d been having a dream moments before. A vivid one.
A recurring one that involved a great deal of nudity and moaning from his totally platonic roommate/coparent.
“Morning, you great barrier queef,” the object of his fantasy said from her side of the room. Lizzie sat cross-legged in the center of her air mattress, the blue light of her laptop reflecting in the saucer lenses of her glasses.