Page 35 of A Certain Step
One of these days, he was going to lose it.
She would give him that beautiful smile, and he’d be too far gone not to confess every one of his feelings aloud. He was terrified of when that day would come and how he’d put their friendship on the line in the process, but he was hanging on by the flimsiest thread in existence.
11
WILLA
Willa took her morning tea and a piece of dark chocolate with almonds, then sat at the small desk in her bedroom. Sahar went to the gym earlier on days when Willa had therapy, giving her the space to sit wherever she wanted in the flat.
The night ended in better circumstances than it had begun, but it was a whirlwind still. Willa was extra glad that her bi-weekly session fell on this Monday instead of the next because she really needed it.
Her run-in with Alden unleashed a fury of demons she hadn’t thought of extensively in a while, and she wanted to shove them back into the cesspool they rose from. She felt small again, far from okay. Initially, when they got home, she thought she’d be fine. She’d been so knackered during the car ride back that she figured she’d fall asleep immediately after she showered.
Instead, she tossed and turned until three a.m. while her mind chased the comfort of Ethan’s arm around her shoulders. How concerned he’d been, the irritation she’d noticed in his eyes.
She couldn’t believe that any of those emotions had stirred inside of him becauseof her. There was no way. There had to have been something else bothering him when he walked away for a solid five, maybe ten minutes.
And so, with sleep continuing to escape her, she had called her mother, wanting to check in, knowing she’d be awake with the time difference. Willa mostly caught her up on work, limiting the details of her personal life, but when Beatrix Davidian asked at the end of the phone call if she was sure there was nothing else she wanted to talk about, Willa felt the crushing weight of the words she couldn’t say aloud.
It was a simple, generic question any good mother would ask, yet somehow, the tornados in her mind swirled every logical approach away from reach, leaving the worst possible thoughts holding their ground.
She’d told her that she was fine, that everything was good. She didn’t dare mention the possible feelings growing for Ethan, and definitely not how she was questioning everything—her past, her present, her future.
She flipped open her laptop camera, which was covered by a small adhesive sticker, and waited. Marie entered the video call a minute after she did.
The woman on the other end of the screen smiled. “Good morning, Willa. How are you?”
Willa sighed and waved. “Hi, Marie, I’m okay…I think.”
Marie tilted her head slightly. “Just, okay? Has something happened?”
Willa exhaled audibly, convincing herself to spill it all—she couldn’t go over more minor issues today. She needed to let all of this out without holding anything back, and she needed to address the majority of these pent-up emotions.
“I saw my ex-boyfriend yesterday. The one who gave me the most shit about demisexuality and the one I felt pressured to have sex with.”
“Were you expecting to see him, or did it just happen?”
Willa swallowed a lump in her throat. “It was purely coincidental. We were out for Miles’ birthday, and Alden was there with his friends,” she paused before starting again. “The initial realization that he was there made me freak out a bit, but the conversation itself wasn’t too bad. He had the gall to offer to buy me a drink, but I politely declined, and he let it go.”
Marie nodded empathetically. “This is the first time you’ve seen him since the breakup, correct?”
“Yeah, I never thought we’d run into each other. New York City is massive, and the odds of it are slim to none, especially when we don’t run in the same circles.”
“I see. How do you feel about it at this moment, now that it’s already happened?”
Willa bit the fingernail on her thumb, mentally talking herself out of ripping the Gel-X on it. “I don’t think I care so much about seeing him, but it sort of stirred all these feelings inside me that are becoming too suffocating to contain.”
“What kind of feelings?” Marie asked.
Willa entwined her fingers together, cracking her knuckles and moving them around out of habit. “Of why I even dated a man like him in the first place, why I let myself think that maybe he was right for me. I know we’ve been over this. I know it’s not my fault, but maybe I had all these convoluted feelings about sex because I hadn’t had it before. The desperation I felt when I was with him because I was in my thirties. It all comes down to this loneliness I’ve often felt in the pit of my stomach that’s never gone away. And it’s a feeling I’ve always felt so guilty of.”
“We’re going to take this one issue at a time. With everything we’ve covered prior, you know that it wasn’t your fault, correct? That your feelings, no matter how convoluted they might seem, aren’t up for debate by another person, especially if you aren’t actively harming them.”
Willa nodded. “I know, and I think I sort of brought myself back to that understanding after last night, and everything was fine, but then I came home and couldn’t sleep all night, so I called my mum, and when she asked me if something was bothering me, I sort of just spiraled.”
Marie bobbed her head, nudging Willa to go on.
“She had every right to ask. I’m sure she could sense I was off, but that’s just it…I became more aware of my loneliness when I was back home for my brother’s wedding. I couldn’t help but feel like everyone was secretly concerned for me. Poor little Willa, quite literally the only single person in her entire family. That’s also not a hyperbole, Marie. Even the youngest person in my family has a significant other. And then there’s me.”
