Page 129 of Landon & Shay: Part One

“What is it?” I asked.

“What is what?”

“What’s going on in your head?”

He snickered and tapped his temple. “Not much goes on in here,” he joked.

“Landon, really. What is it?”

“Don’t worry so much, Chick. I’m okay. I’ll talk to you later, all right?” He pulled me into a hug and kissed my forehead. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

I couldn’t get the knot out of my stomach, though, based on how he said his words. Why did his “I love you” feel like he was saying goodbye?

30

Landon

Shay left Sunday morning,and I was thankful to have Maria come that afternoon.

I knew I shouldn’t have been alone. Even with Shay staying with me last night, I felt a heaviness on me that I couldn’t shake away. I was afraid to be alone with my thoughts. I was afraid to be left with only myself and my mind.

“You are quiet tonight, which means you’re probably thinking too much,” Maria commented as we ate our dinner together.

“Just a lot going on in my mind,” I commented, swirling my spoon around in the mashed potatoes.

“By all means, share your thoughts.”

I wanted to talk to her about it. I wanted to open up and show her the messiness of my brain, but it didn’t work that way. Even if I talked about it, my thoughts would leave my head jumbled and flustered. They wouldn’t make sense to her, because they hardly made sense to me.

All I knew was that I was tired. Each day felt more like a burden, and I was being weighed down.

She clasped her hands together and leaned toward me. “Slow it down, Landon. Your brain is running on overdrive, so you must slow it down. Go slow. Take your time to process through your feelings.”

I wished it were that easy. I wished depression was like a car, and I could simply push the brakes to slow down my mind whenever I needed a rest. I wished I could shut off the engine and be still for a small amount of time. But depression, for me, was the complete opposite of that. When my mind started driving, it hit the accelerator and took off at full speed toward a brick wall.

Any day now, I was going to crash.

Any day now, I was going to fall completely apart.

I gave Maria a sloppy grin. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

She narrowed her eyes and placed a hand on top of mine. “You’re not okay, and that’s fine. But don’t spiral too far away from home that you can’t pull yourself out of it. I know that feeling. I’ve been living with depression for a very long time. I know how your mind can swallow you whole.”

I raised a shocked eyebrow. There was no way Maria had depression. She was the happiest woman I’d ever crossed paths with. She was just like her granddaughter—the definition of joy.

“There’s no way…” I started.

She smiled, and dammit her grin looked like Shay’s, and dammit, dammit, dammit, I missed Shay’s smile the most. And her laugh. And her eyes. And her small nibbling of candy.

“I’ve been working my whole life to make peace with my depression. It was a long battle of finding the right medication for my system and talking to the right people. I still see my therapist once a week. There seems to be this idea that if you have depression, you don’t deserve certain things in this world, and Landon Scott, that is a lie. You deserve more. More than your thoughts that lie to you. More than your doubts that you keep feeding yourself. More than your fears that you’ll never have a normal life. You deserve more.”

I lowered my head and fiddled with my fingers. “I’m scared,” I confessed.

“What’s your biggest fear?”

“Being alone. Not being able to let people in because of the mess that is my brain.”

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