Page 83 of Actions and Reactions
“We said the day you were born that we were blessed with two beautiful, perfect children, and that we would only ever be grateful to get a front row seat to watch you grow. There hasn’t been a day since that that hasn’t been true.”
“I’m sorry that you ever had even a second of doubt over our love for you, Si. You could’ve hated hockey,” Mom continues, unable to stop the tears now. “Absolutely hated it, and we never would’ve cared. You could’ve become an accountant?—”
“Or played football,” Dad adds, making me chuckle and Mom come out of her grief long enough to roll her eyes at him.
“Or anything else in the whole world and we wouldn’t have cared for a second. We don’t carewhatyou do. Yes, we were amazed at how much you cared about hockey, how important it was to you, and of course we were proud of how dedicated you were, but it was never about the what, it was about the how.”
“Please believe me when I tell you we’re as proud of how hard you worked for your degree and the career you have now as we were when you were fourteen and were already skating circles around the pros.”
Dad’s words are nice, I appreciate them of course, but it’s the look on his face, that absolute desperation and hope mixed in his eyes, that gets me to the point where I can believe them. Internalizing this will take a lot longer, though.
After those declarations, what is there left to say?
Well, I can think of one thing.
“Thank you.” I reach for Mom’s free hand and then offer my other one to Dad. “Both of you, for everything you’ve given me. I know I’ve given you a lot of worry, andI’ll do everything in my power to never give you a reason to worry over me ever again.”
After that session,therapy gets exponentially easier. I get to actually enjoy exploring every aspect of myself and what I want of my future.
The last two weeks of my time at New Hope fly by, and I can’t believe I’m actually going to go back home. I’m not as excited about that as I thought I’d be three months ago, or well, there’s not only excitement but also so many fucking nerves.
Vinny and I have stayed in contact, that’s true, but we haven’t talked about usat all, and that makes me beyond nervous.
It’s all up in the air.
If I take into account how we left things, then we’re broken up. But then the texts after and the fact that he tells me he misses me every day suggest we’re not completely broken up.
I tell him too, of course, because every day something happens that I wish I could tell him in detail.
“Please tell me something to distract me,” I beg Annie while she’s waiting with me until three so I can get my phone and see what Vinny has texted since yesterday. She never gets her phone, but she’s always here with me.
“I want to drop out,” she blurts, and I can’t even turn fully to look at her before she’s babbling away so fast I canbarely understand a word. “I don’t have anyone here who cares about me. My family in Montana don’t give two shits about me, and you’re the only friend I’ve made in years. So I don’t know what I’ll do, but I want to go to Vegas with you. I talked about it with Dr. Conway, and she doesn’t love the idea, only because I’m springing this on you and you’re a good person and you could maybe feel pressured to take care of me when you don’t really want to. But I think we could both use a good friend.
“You can’t really count Vinny as your friend anymore, since you finally figured out you’re in love and everything, so what do you think?” She keeps going before I can answer. “I think I could go to the community college there, since I don’t think Albert has a great swimming program, and I mean, I can always go into sex work.” My heart drops to the bottom of my stomach and it must show on my face. “That was a joke!” she shouts and holds up her hands. “A bad one, sorry. I could never do that, not ... yeah, no. But I can work at one of those chapels where people get married or in retail or something?—”
“Stop,” I tell her, almost begging. “Jesus Annie, take a breath.” I take one with her and think it through.
This is not something I can decide on impulse. Like she said, doing this out of pity or some sense of savior complex would be wrong. She deserves better, and she doesn’t need saving.
But I am leaving in two days, so ...
“Just let me think about this. I want to talk to Dr. Conway.”
“Yes, of course!” She jumps up like she’s ready to run. “You can go see her now, she should still be here.”
As we power walk to her office, I turn and mutter, “And I’ll always count Vinny as my friend, but you’re my friend too, and I’ll never feelpressureto help you out. Iwantto help in any way I can, but only if it’s actually going to help.”
“Look, Dr. Conway agrees that I need a change. Everyone kept giving me awful looks and stayed away from me after I freaked the fuck out and almost drowned that motherfucker, so I really don’t want to go back there.” We stop in front of the closed door and face each other. “You’re literally the only person in the world I’m close to, Silas. You’re the only one I have.”
“I get that, Annie, of course I do. But that only makes this situation trickier.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Come on, you’ll see.”
21
Ivan
