Page 60 of The Plus One
Indira chewed on her lip as she considered the question. “I guess, in a lot of ways, I have my parents’ divorce to thank for setting me on the path.”
The grass rustled as Jude turned his head to look at her. Indira kept her eyes trained on the sky.
“It probably sounds dramatic, but it really fucked me up,” sheadmitted to the stars, licking her lips. “I woke up one day and my dad was packing up all his shit while my mom cried and yelled. I knew they fought a lot, but I guess I never understood that people can just… leave.” She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “And then I watched my mom lose herself in the wreckage.”
Indira’s mom, Angela, had spiraled after he left, to the point Indira didn’t recognize her for awhile. She hid herself in a fragile shell that eventually turned into endless broken pieces. Tear-smudged pillows. Lipstick-stained wineglasses. Angry sobs when she thought no one was home.
“Missing is such a painful emotion,” Indira said, digging her fingers into the dirt. “So painful. And I missed my dad so much after he left. But while missing him, I also missed my mom. The carefree woman she once was, replaced by this hurt and wounded person.” Indira sucked in a shuddering breath.
Indira had felt so clueless and useless as a little kid witnessing complex adult emotions while feeling so many of her own. And, as she grew up, it was a new type of pain to see her mom as human, lovely and wonderful, but flawed and messy all the same.
“And Collin wasn’t much better. On the outside he handled it well.” She felt Jude nod beside her. “He kind of shut down for a bit, walking around with these walls up, all feelings pinging off. He told himself he was the man of the house and nothing could convince him otherwise. He channeled all of it into school. I know he loves what he does, but I can’t help but think he found medicine because he was searching for stability. A career that was safe. Employable. Would make him enough money so our mom would no longer have to struggle.
“And they both continued on their trajectories, my mom collapsing in on herself, Collin building up shell after shell. And I was caught in between. I always felt like this raw nerve. Everything touched me. Every feeling hit me with an overwhelming force. I’m sure you remember how sensitive I was as a kid and teenager.”
She turned her head to look at Jude, and he was staring at her like she was the center of the world.
“It was… a lot,” she said at last, thinking of the swells of emotions that had swamped her when she was young. The bellyaches and head throbs when things felt like too much for her. “And while my mom hadn’t handled the divorce perfectly, she realized the toll it took on both of us, and she was quick to get us to counselors.”
It had been transformational for Indira. A weekly space to pour her heart out. To fall apart. To have someone listen. During college, she’d gotten out of the habit of going, convincing herself she’d healed enough. But her med school program had required her to participate in counseling as a patient on a rotation, and it had inspired her to keep going to Dr. Koh.
Indira was surprised by how difficult it was to open up in the sessions as an adult. How hard she pretended to be okay. She was sick of pretending.
“And… yeah. That’s how I discovered I wanted to do something in the mental health field. When I realized how much I liked chemistry and pharmacology, psychiatry ended up being the perfect fit,” she said. “I wanted to help people—especially kids—who felt everything too. Or nothing at all. Or some mixture of both. Because feelings matter. They’re chemicals mixing with experiences and some deep, unknown part of a human soul. They make us who we are and I always wanted to help people find a way to steer their ship when those feelings had them lost at sea.”
They fell into silence again, the cold night biting at Indira’s cheeks and the tip of her nose. Maybe it was Jude lying beside her, but she felt exquisitely, comfortably warm.
“Thank you for telling me that,” Jude said. “I… It means a lot.”
“Of course,” she said casually, waving her hand. She bit back the words that she had a terrible desire of wanting to tell Jude everything.
Indira cleared her throat. “You can talk to me too, you know. If it would help.”
Jude was quiet for a minute. “I don’t want you to be my psychiatrist, Dira.” The words were spoken on a fractured sigh.
“I don’t mean it like that. I mean… I don’t know. Talk to me as a friend. Or as just a person.”
“You aren’tjustanything.”
Neither said anything after that.
Eventually, cold and sleepiness forced them from their sacred little spot back to the tent. Without thinking, Indira laid her head next to Jude’s with an ease of intimacy that was startling and inevitable.
After a moment of awkward silence, they crafted a small barricade of bedding between their bodies, much of their newfound closeness left down at the river’s bank.
But Indira couldn’t suppress the happiness that lit up like sparklers in her heart at the tiny steps they’d taken back toward each other. She fell asleep with a smile on her face.
When she woke up to the early chill of the October morning, she found the barrier of blankets and pillows down the center of the tent still intact.
But, sometime in the night, they’d both reached across it to hold hands as they slept.
CHAPTER 22
Jude
T-MINUS TWO WEEKS UNTIL THE WEDDING
“What are youwearing?” Jude choked out, his eyes nearly popping from their sockets.
