Page 38 of Glass Half Full
I manoeuvre my way over to the hall and take off after Renee. We stopped serving food a few hours ago, so there’s only one cook in the back finishing the cleanup and a few prep tasks I asked to have done tonight.
“Did Renee come through here?” I ask him.
He looks up from where he’s putting the metal covers over the line ingredients. “Uh, yeah, maybe. Someone just went out through the back, but I didn’t see who it was. I just thought someone from the front of house was doing a garbage run.”
I nod and cover the distance to the back door in a few strides. It leads to an alley where our deliveries get dropped off and our garbage gets picked up from a dumpster. The motion sensor light is already on when I swing the door open. We keep a few milk crates out here for when people want to take smoke breaks or get some fresh air—not that the air in the alley is particularly fresh.
Renee is crouched down on one of them, arms wrapped around her shins with her head between her knees. I don’t have to ask her if she’s okay; it only takes a second to realize that she’s very, very far from okay.
Eleven
Renee
RHYTHM: The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables within a poem
“Couldyou watch Michelle for a few minutes?”
“I’m not a baby, Renee. You do not need to watch me.”
I ignore my sister and focus on Tahseen. I need to focus on one thing at a time right now or I’m not going to make it outside. My fingertips are already going numb, my tongue getting heavy in my mouth. My heart starts to pound louder than the bass thumping through the sound system, and I know I’m only seconds away from completely losing control of my breathing.
I’m going to lose it right here.
That’s not an option. That’s not happening. Get out now.
“Please,” I beg.
“Yeah.” Tahseen shifts closer to me, dropping her voice. “You okay, Renee?”
Her eyes wander across my face, and I know I don’t convince her when I answer, “I’m fine. Yeah. Just, uh, bathroom. I’m going to the bathroom.”
The crowd is far too thick. I have to stare at the floor as I move between bodies; if I look at their faces, I’ll start wondering what they’re thinking. I’ll start wondering what they think about me.
You’re a freak. You’re crazy. Look at you. You can’t even handle a night out at the bar.
I trip over my own feet and almost send myself crashing into someone’s back before regaining my balance at the last second. I just need to make it to the hallway, and I’ll be fine. I’ll go outside. I’ll find somewhere to breathe, to be still, to get myself under control.
I am under control.
I repeat it like a mantra as I hit the major congestion at the bar and scan the tangle of legs for space to squeeze by. The edge of the bar is so close. I’m dimly aware of muttering, “Excuse me,” to someone standing in front of the hall and waiting for them to get out of my way before I’m finally, finally free of the crowd.
The temperature drops a few degrees lower than the heat of the main room, but it’s not enough. I hurry down the hall and through the empty kitchen. I’m so focused on the back door I have tunnel vision. Reaching for the handle, I all but throw myself outside and blink into the blackness of the night. The motion sensor lamp clicks on and spills a pool of white light onto the grimy pavement of the alley.
A couple of plastic milk cartons are clustered by the wall. I let myself drop onto one of them and start kneading the fabric of my jeans.
Something you can touch. Describe it.
It’s too late for that trick. This is happening. I can’t stop it. The realization hits me like an earthquake, like a lurch in the very ground below my feet that sends the walls of the alley toppling in on me.
I can’t breathe.
Seeing Dylan perform set me off. As I watched him stand on that stage and capture every breath and heartbeat in the room, I knew I was looking at the start of a tidal wave crashing toward me, and there is no way to stop a force of nature like that. I’ve never wanted anyone like this, in so many senses of the word. I want his body, his mind. I want the very deepest depths of him, and I don’t know how to ask for that. I don’t even know if I can.
It’s not a crush. I’m not covering him in the residual sparkles of an infatuation that started when I was sixteen. I don’t know if it was ever just a crush, and I don’t know if I can keep doing this.
I heard the love he has for this bar in every single word of his piece. I felt an echo of that same love growing inside my own heart. Taverne Toulouse is the only place besides my bedroom and my therapist’s office that I’ve truly felt okay since I got back from England. Dylan’s poem made me realize just what losing it would mean. I’d be taking two steps back for every faltering step forward I’ve managed to make. These people aren’t my family yet, but they could be. The bar behind me isn’t my home, but it’s somewhere I could belong. It’s a new base camp, a starting point for reaching the next level of my climb.
It’s also feels like I’m throwing darts at my own heart every time I walk through the door, pricking myself with the pain of being so close to someone I want so much closer, and I don’t know if I can keep facing that pain, not when it gets stronger every day.
