Page 20 of Hard to Forgive

The afternoon inched by, moving at a pace that made a snail seem like a cheetah. I didn’t get anything productive done. I stared at my sketch and tried to digitize it. I went over the spec document several times, not absorbing a single word. It might as well have been written in Russian for all the good it was doing me.

It didn’t help the rising tide of anxiety.

I drank too much water, trying to keep my tongue from turning into a cotton patch. An hour before it was time to leave, I finally had to get up. I didn’t say a single word to anyone. I didn’t even take my earbuds out. I motioned to Yvette that I was stepping out, but didn’t wait for her to nod her acknowledgment. I was an adult. I didn’t need permission to use the bathroom.

The moment I stepped inside, my eyes drifted under the stalls. No one was in there. Thank fuck. I wasn’t the only one with anxiety. My bladder had a serious case of social anxiety, and Icouldn’t piss if someone was in the room with me, no matter how badly I needed to relieve myself. I did my business, washed my hands, and contemplated how long I could drag out going back to my cubicle.

It was quieter in the bathroom. The lights were still too bright, but there wasn’t the added sound of other voices crushing me. Just the dull hum of whatever it was that bathrooms hummed with—electricity, maybe? The sound made me remember Seb’s quiet voice, asking me for prompts.

Five things I could see: the sink, the paper towel dispenser, the soap dispenser, the chipped paint on the corner of the stall door closest to me, and the flickering light above the window. Four things I could hear: my music, the hum, the echo of the freshly flushed toilet… There wasn’t really anything else to hear. I wasn’t doing smell, touch, or taste in the bathroom.

Not that it mattered. Having Seb’s voice in my head soothed me as much as the grounding technique I’d used. I drew in a deep breath and leaned against the wall for a moment.

I needed to go back.

The sooner I went back, the sooner the day would end.

The sooner the day ended, the sooner… I’d have to see my dad.

All of the grounding in the world couldn’t brace me for that. All of the time stalled in the bathroom couldn’t make that go away. I should have told him no. If I were Eli, maybe I would have denied his demand for money, but I wasn’t and I hadn’t. So I had to man up, as he’d been telling me since I was a teenager and battling anxiety for the first time.

I also had to go back to the office before Yvette thought something was wrong. The last thing I wanted was to draw attention to the fact that I was freaking out. That was motivation enough to push off the wall and propel myself from the bathroom.

“Are you okay?” a quiet voice asked the moment I stepped through the bathroom door.

It was the wrong question. I hated that question when I was like this, because I very much wasnotokay, and the only thing worse than being decidedly not okay was anyone realizing that I was not okay. I walked past the source, only to feel a small hand wrap around my wrist.

I turned on my heel and yanked my hand from Isabel’s gentle grip. “Don’t fucking touch me,” I hissed.

Her tan skin paled, and her dark eyes widened. “I’m sorry?”

“Why are you out here?” The anxiety was turning to anger. I could feel it, simmering beneath the surface, ready to explode. I should walk away, but I’d tried that and she’d stopped me.

“You seemed, I don’t know,offwhen you came back from lunch. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Her voice sounded as sweet as sugar and honey combined, too sweet to be real. And given who she’d attached herself to the moment they met, why would I even begin to trust her? How could I know that this wasn’t another ploy by Silas to get under my skin, to get past my guard, only to fuck with me just like he did back then? No fucking way would that be happening.

“Jonas?” her soft voice said my name again.

My eyes narrowed. “We’re not friends,” I informed her. “Meaning you have no reason to check on me.” She blinked her doe eyes at me. I could see the hurt there, just lurking behind them. Maybe on another day, I would’ve seen that as a stop sign, but I just kept barreling recklessly through. “In fact, you have no reason to talk to me. You especially have no reason tofollowme to the bathroom. You are nothing to me. You’re nothing but an annoying busybody, sticking her fucking nose where it doesn’t belong. So if you’re reporting to your asshole friend, you can just… not.”

Her eyes flooded, and her lip quivered. “I’m—I’m not—What?”

My fists clenched, but even the bite of pain wasn’t enough to ground me with the storm swirling inside. “Just leave me the fuck alone.”

I turned on my heel and stormed back to the office. I didn’t look at anyone. I just went back to my desk, fists still clenched tight. When I finally unfurled them, they were shaking. I turned my music up, letting it blare so loud that I couldn’t hear anything in the office, and forced my eyes on my screen.

I didn’t look up for the rest of the day.

My bad mood lingered.

I took the money to my dad’s but left it in his mailbox. I couldn’t handle his criticisms. I just sent a text telling him where it was. I ignored texts from my friends, not even bothering to open them when they came in. I just glimpsed the previews, made sure they weren’t urgent, and put my phone face down.

It was all still there.

Hours later, the swirl of anxiety and bitterness and anger was still bubbling. It was threatening to consume me. I had a thousand and one strategies for coping with them, but I couldn’t find the motivation to do any of them. The countdown method was stupid, and it wasn’t like I was losing grip of where I was. It wasn’t that kind of thought torturing me.

Instead what I said to Isabel bothered me. If she went to Yvette, I could get in serious shit. I could get written up, taken to HR, fired.

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