Page 133 of Harrison's Wedding

Brendan nods and writes something down on his notepad before smiling at me. “That’s correct. I can’t imagine it’s easy for you, but you are making good progress. So, what are your goals from here, do you think?”

I consider the question, and there’s one thing I want more than anything. Heather. She still dominates most of my waking thoughts, and I love her so much. The hole left in my life from her absence is still incredibly painful.

It’s not even the sex, it’s the intimacy. It’s the empty half of the bed when I sleep. It’s having a piece of news and not being able to tell her. It’s hearing secondhand about her latest success with Serenity. She’s the first person I think about when I wake up and the last person I think about when I go to sleep.

“I want Heather back,” I say quietly.

“Okay, what do you think you need to do for that to happen?”

I shake my head and sigh. “Nothing. It’s not something that I can force. If she isn’t ready, then she’s not ready. She knows that I love her, and I know that she loves me. All I can do is keep working on myself and be ready when she is.”

“I see. How does that lack of control over the situation make you feel?” Brendan writes something down in his notepad before looking at me over his glasses.

“Strangely peaceful. It’s the one thing I want more than anything in the world, but accepting that I can’t control the timing allows me peace. At the end of the day, I also care about Heather’s wellbeing more than anything, and if she isn’t ready, I certainly don’t want to push her into anything.”

It’s the truth. I miss her terribly, but she needs to be ready for a reconciliation. We finish out the hour talking about coping mechanisms for stress as I head into a busy time with the band. When my time is up, I pay and head back to Hayden’s apartment with Michael.

I find Hayden in his office, looking through emails on his computer.

He looks up and asks me, “How was your session?”

“Good.” I smile at him. “I got an email from Reid Music that my guitar is ready.”

I did have to give the bass back to them in the end, but only so they could improve it as per my feedback.

“That’s exciting. When are you going to pick it up?”

“Tuesday the sixteenth, do you want to come with me?”

“Absolutely,” Hayden nods. He pauses for a moment, then says, “I’m guessing you want to go to Club Delirium tonight?”

I consider it. I’m tired of partying all the time. It’s one of the unhealthy coping mechanisms that I’ve been using to get myself through this.

I shake my head at him. “No, we’ve got Gabriel’s birthday next weekend. It might be nice to stay in and watch a movie, or something this weekend, instead. Maybe we could order a pizza?”

“That sounds great,” Hayden says, and smiles at me.

* * *

“Hey, Ally,”I smile at her as she walks into Hayden’s apartment behind him the day before Gabriel’s birthday party.

“Hi, Harrison. How are you doing?”

I shrug. “I could be worse, I guess.”

She sits on the sofa next to me while Hayden takes her suitcase to his bedroom, and she fixes me with a level gaze.

“Come on. How are you really doing?”

I give a half-laugh. “Okay, you’ve got me. Things are still shit, but I’m trying to be as positive as I can be. Lots of therapy, lots of trying to cope with what happened, the usual.”

“What happened is so far from ‘the usual.’” Ally frowns at me.

“True. I guess it’s just my new usual. It’s easy to get caught up in my feelings about what happened, so I try not to focus on those. I can’t change what happened, so all I can do is try to move forward.”

“You’ve come a long way,” Hayden says, giving me a proud smile.

I shrug, starting to feel uncomfortable with the conversation. I focus on the feeling of the ring hanging around my neck to ground myself, and slow my breathing down.

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