Page 27 of Bet on It

This was it. This was the reason he hadn’t been back to Greenbelt in over a decade, the reason he avoided even thinking about the place unless he was in a safe space—like a therapist’s office. Whenever he delved in too deep, he started feeling sick. His heart raced and his skin got clammy. Irritability inched its way up his spine, mingling with the anxiety already digging into the base. It wasn’t a panic attack that he felt coming, but anger. Not just the frustrated sighs and slightly irritated tone that his grandmother perceived as him being angry. Real anger—the kind that made his head hurt with the force of it. The kind that made him want to find the nearest small space and fold his body into it for so long that his muscles started to groan. The kind that would only go away when some other part of him started to hurt, whether from sheer sadness or physical strain.

In the past he would have flicked himself between the eyes or jammed his elbow against something sharp. Whatever it took to distract him from the chaos in his head. He couldn’t do those things anymore though. Hurting himself wasn’t healthy and it didn’t serve him. That’s what he’d been told time and time again.

Hurting myself isn’t healthy and it doesn’t serve me.

Hurting myself isn’t healthy and it doesn’t serve me.

It doesn’t serve me.

It doesn’t serve me.

Repetition had always been his self-soothing technique of choice. It had worked when he was a kid, and it worked now—to an extent. Not enough to make the anger go away, but enough to clear the fog.

“So you don’t remember when I was little, and she started all those rumors about us? Telling people that dad had tried to trade me in for a fix and that you used to lock me in a closet at night and that’s why I had panic attacks? You don’t remember that?”

She grunted. “Wally, there’s nothin’ to do in Greenbelt but gossip. You think we’re the first family in a small town to get talked about like dogs?”

“No, Gram, I don’t think that. I know other people got it too, but I don’t see them goin’ out of their way to be friendly with the people who treated them like crap.”

“If I avoided everybody in this town who ever whispered about my failings in raising you and your daddy, I’d never have anybody to talk to,” she snapped. “You left and you made a home somewhere else and found a family somewhere else. Greenbelt is my home, and these people are my family.”

“I’m your family!” He strained to keep his voice level.

“You haven’t much acted like it for the past twelve years.” She turned her head towards the window and sniffed. Walker couldn’t see her face, but he could picture the tears welling up in her eyes, and it made his ribs ache. “A short call once a week, makin’ me drive all the way to Charleston a couple times a year just to see you. I barely know anything about your life, Wally. I barely know you.”

Her words felt like a punch to the sternum. She hadn’t done a perfect job of raising him, they could both acknowledge that. But he hadn’t done a perfect job of being there for her either. She was right. For as little family as he had, Gram had about the same amount. Her husband was long dead, her only son may have been sober, finally, but he was as distant as distant could get, and the grandson she’d raised had all but cut her out of his life. Walker knew his feelings were valid. He had a right to be angry about the help he’d gone so long without. But he loved her.

For all she hadn’t done to help him, there were a million things she had. She never flinched when she found him sleeping on the floor of his closet. Whenever things got too rough that he couldn’t deal, she pulled him out of school for a few days without a word. In the end, she’d always been there for him. Even when she complained about not seeing him enough or him not visiting, it was always with a certain lightness. Like she was telling him subliminally that asking for her forgiveness wasn’t necessary because he’d never need it. He’d never been forced to hear the pure devastation in her voice when she brought up the state of their relationship. Whatever real grief she felt, she did a good job of hiding it. All so he didn’t have to acknowledge that he was hurting her too. It fucking sucked. It made self-loathing color every part of his vision.

His original plan had been to leave Greenbelt behind, not his Gram. At first, he hadn’t. His first year at school, they’d spoken on the phone damn near every day. But the more distance he put between him and his hometown, the longer he had to come into himself without the constant outside stressors weighing him down, the harder it got to keep up with her. When he started therapy and learned that his issues with Greenbelt were intertwined with his family issues, he’d found himself stumped. Torn between feeling eternally grateful to her for taking him in and raising him and feeling the brunt of the damage caused when she allowed him to flounder in his trauma without any real help, he had pulled away.

That struggle became his proof that counseling wasn’t a cure-all for his issues. He also had to be willing to tackle them, and this was one that he hadn’t been open to taking on in the past. He didn’t even know if he was willing now. All he knew was that something had to give. For both of them.

“I want you to know me,” he admitted, laying his body down across the couch, his head in her lap. Even impaired, one of her hands immediately moved to stroke his hair. It was familiar, comforting. Back when she’d seen him suffering from something she couldn’t put a name to, this had been the only way she knew how to calm him. But they’d lost this too somewhere along the way. “I just wanted you to know that it… it hurts me that you’re friends with someone who hurt me.”

Gram’s hand stilled, her eyes free of tears but no less distraught. She stared down at him, taking in every inch of his face like it was the first time she was seeing him—or maybe the last.

“I never want to hurt you, baby,” she said quietly. “I’ve only ever wanted to protect you, to make up for those times I couldn’t.”

He went to speak, and she put a finger against his lips and kept talking.

“I know I didn’t do a perfect job. I should have done more for you. I knew it then, and I know it now. You needed help, and I thought my love was enough to make you better, and it wasn’t. It just wasn’t. I can understand why you… why you hate bein’ around me.”

Walker’s hand was cupping her cheek before he could even fathom his own actions. “I don’t hate bein’ around you, Gram. I love you more than anythin’. It’s just hard when we have all this… stuff between us. This stuff we never talk about. I never know if it’s safe to tell you how I feel or to talk about my problems. I don’t want to make you feel bad and I don’t want to make you think that I’m not grateful, that you’re not the most important person in my life. I just… I don’t know how to connect with you anymore.”

She nodded, understanding written across her face. The relief made his cheeks flush. He felt like a child again. Safe and warm and comforted in her arms. Tucked away from everything bad and wrong and scary he had ever felt. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed this.

“Well, we’re not dead yet, Wally. We have time to get it right. I have time to get it right.”

His throat was thick, and his eyes were full. When the tears started to escape at the corners, she wiped them away.

“We can get it right,” he choked out. “We have to.”

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