Page 101 of How Good It Was (Excess All Areas 3)

Neil pursed his lips. “Do you believe you are loved, Luke?”

His mind immediately went to Willow. Did she love him? And then there was the realisation he’d had in the bathroom. “Everyone leaves eventually, though. Shit. I don’t know. Intellectually, yes. I said it to Matt the other day. But, honestly. No. I don’t think ... fuck. This is stupid.”

Neil remained silent.

“What? You want me to go through each person I know to see if they love me. Or if I love them.”

“Why is this making you angry?”

Luke stood and paced to the window. “I’m not fucking angry.” He tapped the frame of the window with his fist, when what he felt like doing was punching his hand straight through the glass. “Fine. I’m angry.”

He turned and leaned his back against the window, the glass cool to the touch.

“I think I have a theory,” Luke continued. “And you can tell me if it’s bullshit. But I think, maybe, I shut my emotions down. Dad’s death would probably have been enough on its own. And, maybe, I’ve sort of shut people out, because if you don’t love anyone, you don’t get hurt. And then I have these other feelings. Abandonment. People leaving. Which I kind of cause by not being open to people. Which leaves me feeling embarrassed and guilty. They are all big, complex emotions. And left unprocessed, they’ve festered, and everything goes out of perspective.”

Neil nodded. “That’s a big realisation. When all those feelings get too much, it would be natural to want to bury them rather than process them. Like asking if you loved your mum. Like asking how you feel about Willow heading back to America. You want to feel love. You want to be loved. But the brain is an odd body part. It can’t differentiate feelings. So those feelings get buried until the emotions get too big and they burst. You’ve talked about how you’ve been an easy trigger for years. It’s all this. Bubbling. Festering. It’s time to let them all out. And I think we needed to start at the beginning with grief.”

“That’s a lot.”

“It is. Did you learn something about your dad when you saw your mum?”

“He wasn’t as perfect as I remembered. Things started to come back to me. You were right. I’d put him on a pedestal. How do I forgive myself?”

“That’s a great question. What are you forgiving yourself for?”

Luke returned to the chair. “For giving myself such a hard time for so long. For not realising that not only was I doing my best, but actually, I did a half-decent job. Shit, my hands are shaking.”

“That’s a big breakthrough. Unlocked energy, adrenaline. Take a deep breath.”

“I didn’t panic.”

“No. But if you do in the future, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“I feel like I need to go and talk to Izabel.”

“You do that. At our next appointment, we’ll tackle the other points in my notebook.”

“Yeah,” Luke said, his chest feeling lighter. “I look forward to it.”

He stepped out of the warehouse and walked over to the shelter.

“Luke,” Ibrahim, the shelter owner, said to him as he stepped through the door. “Izabel’s in the kitchen.”

The shelter was empty, most of the occupants taking advantage of the nicer weather to spend time outside. While Izabel was only part-time there, now, running her charitable events company for the rest of the time, it was still where her heart was since she’d first volunteered there all those years before.

He found her in the kitchen, standing on her tiptoes, trying to put bags of rice away on a high shelf in the pantry area.

“Here, Iz. Let me.”

She grinned when she saw him. “Thank you. How come you’re here?”

“Needed to chat with you.”

“Okay.” She stacked six loaves of bread, then turned to lean on the counter.

“I just had a therapy session, and I wanted to come and talk to you about it.”

“Of course. What’s on your mind?”

---