Page 52 of The Very First Night

BETTER MAN

TWENTY-FOUR

KAT

As the ticking of the clock on the wall grows louder and more insistent, I shift uncomfortably in my armchair. My therapist, Janet, sits across from me, her pen poised over a notebook as we near the end of our session. I can practically feel the minutes slipping away, and I find myself anxiously glancing toward the door, wondering when I can escape this confined space.

“How are you feeling about going back to school next week?” she asks as I sink further into my seat, the plush red fabric doing anything but providing me comfort.

Talk about a loaded question.

I’m beyond excited to see my friends. Tanner and I have kept in constant contact through text messages this summer, and we even went to the zoo together twice. As for Jenna, we have been texting every day, but unfortunately I haven’t had the chance to see her in person. She has been interning in Ann Arbor, and her visits have been few and far between. Despite the distance, our friendship remains as strong as ever.

Still, I can’t shake the anxiety I feel every time I remember that we’ll all be living together this coming semester. While I’m brimming with excitement over the prospect of all of my friends under one roof, the constant reminder that Elijah’s name is also on the lease makes my stomach churn.

I shrug slightly in response to her question and find myself picking nervously at my cuticles. My nails dig into the tender flesh, leaving behind ragged edges and painful reminders of my inability to control the bad habit.

“Are you excited to see Jenna?”

That question causes me to perk up as I’m reminded that while, yes, Elijah will be living in the house, so will Jenna and Marcus. No more Jenna disappearing to stay at his apartment—we’ll be under one roof. Honestly, I’m still a bit shocked that we managed to convince Marcus to live with us. He’s always been diligent about having a quiet environment with minimal distractions to get his schoolwork done—it’s why he moved out of the Lambda house, after all—but I think the trade-off is the exact reason Marcus and Jenna claimed the attic, which is separated from the chaos of the rest of the house.

“I’m excited to see her,” I say. “Her internship kept her really busy this summer.” Which, of course, my therapist already knew. Whenever the topic veers too close to what is really bothering me, I always manage to shift the conversation back to Jenna.

Jenna is a safe topic; I can handle talking about Jenna.

“And Tanner?” Janet prompts.

“Of course. I saw him a few weeks ago, but it’ll be fun to see him more,” I reply, and she nods before jotting something down.

My gaze diverts to the clock on the wall. How has it only been three minutes since I last looked at it? I’m hardly a conspiracy theory nut, but I’m starting to think the clocks in therapist offices are slow. Snail-speed slow.

“How are you feeling about seeing Elijah again after last semester?”

And alas—the question I knew she was building up to. Except I still can’t formulate an answer. She asks me in almost all of our weekly sessions, but I have so many mixed emotions about him right now that I can’t quite place how I’m feeling.

Once again, I shrug, and once again she scribbles something on her pad.

After Elijah didn’t show up to Flash Fest, it wasn’t pretty. I’ll admit, I cringe a bit when I think about who I became in the weeks following what was essentially a full-on breakdown at the realization that he ended things by simply leaving.

Yet, despite all of that, I still kept trying to contact him. I couldn’t even tell you the amount of unanswered text messages I sent; after a while, I deleted the text thread out of sheer humiliation.

He never reached back out.

With every text message or the occasional call that went unanswered, I slipped further and further into what I can only describe as a hole of despair.

I didn’t leave my bedroom for weeks. Even my usually oblivious mother couldn’t ignore the state I was in. She all but forced me to call her old therapist from when I was a kid. At the time it felt invasive, like she was forcing me to do something I clearly didn’t need to do. However, once I started therapy, I knew my mom was right.

I just wish I didn’t need to. How embarrassing is it to be so distraught over a breakup that you essentially have a nervous breakdown and are strongly encouraged to seek therapy?

“Have you looked into the on-campus therapy options like we discussed?” Janet asks, pulling my focus away from the clock.

After last week’s session, she gave me homework and told me to look into the therapy options provided by Kent State’s health center, but I failed to follow through.

I don’t say anything, but based on the look she gives me, I’d venture to say she knows what my answer would be.

“I took the liberty of printing these off of the Kent State website. They have a few different therapists on staff for students in crisis or even if they just need a therapist when theirs is back home. Read it over.”

“I’m fine,” I say as I grab the papers she proffers, pretending to thumb through the pages.

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