I met her eyes. “I think I unders-sss-s-stand, now.”
She heard something in my voice. “What do you mean?” It was a fearful whisper.
I showed her my arms. “I thought about cutting, a couple times. I never did, but I thought about it.”
“Why?”
“Ben…hung himself on…April…April ninth.” I was forcing myself to slow down, going back to my fluency shaping lessons.
Nell covered her mouth with her hand, eyes wide and tortured. “He hung himself? Ohmigod…Becca, I’m so sorry.”
“I tried to call you, but you never answered. Never called me back. Jason called too.” I tried to keep the bitterness out, but I couldn’t, quite.
“I know. I’m sorry. I just…it was all I could do to stay sane, to survive one day at a time. Things between Colton and me were…tumultuous, at best.” She took my hand. “I’m sorry, Becca. I’m sorry I’m such a shitty friend. I wasn’t there for you when you needed me, and you’ve always been there for me.”
I shrugged. “You had your own…business to take care of. I understand that.”
“What happened? Why did he do that?”
I shook my head. “It’s a long story. He was never well, you know that. Things just…life…it all became too much for him. It was the only way he could…could cope, I guess.”
“Is that why you’re stuttering again? You were doing a lot better for a while, weren’t you?”
I nodded. “Yeah.” I stared at the floor between my feet. “I found him. He left a note, and I found him. He’d…he’d just done it. He was still…still twitching, when I found him. I have…nightmares abou—about it. I always will, I think.”
“God, Becca. I don’t—I don’t know what to say.”
“I’m doing better now. I’ve been seeing Dr. Malmstein again.”
“That’s your therapist? The one you saw after Kyle died?” She said it so smoothly, so calmly. I admired her for it.
“Yeah. I wasn’t going to go, for a while. I sort of shut down for a few months.”
I wasn’t stuttering. I still spoke in the stilted, scripted way I used to, but it was an improvement. It was almost like having Nell here needing me as her friend had given me a purpose for fluency even Jason couldn’t provide.
“Shut down?” Nell asked.
“Yeah. I basically stopped talking. For, like, two months. Jason made me start going to therapy.”
“Well, I’m glad he did. I’m glad you didn’t cut.”
I breathed out slowly. “Me, too.” I peered at Nell. “How are you, Nell? Really.”
She leaned back and burrowed deeper into the bed and the nest of thin pillows. “I don’t know yet. I lost the baby. I was pregnant, and I was afraid. I couldn’t tell him. I should’ve. I just…I couldn’t. I kept worrying what he would say, how he would react. If he would still love me, if he would hate me for tying him down with a child. Now…I know I should’ve known better. I should have told him, should have trusted him.”
I couldn’t breathe. Could she know? She wasn’t looking at me; she was picking a loose thread of the scratchy, loosely woven white hospital blanket. “What—what’s going to happen? With you and Colton?”
“He doesn’t like being called ‘Colton,’ you know. Well, by anyone except me. He goes by ‘Colt.’” She combed her fingers through her hair, wincing at the way her muscles stretched, still feeling pain. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. We’ll be together. I’ll probably stay here for a while, a few weeks at least, until I heal. Physically heal. I’ll probably end up seeing a therapist myself. God knows it’s long past due. Colton and I…we love each other. He gets me. I know lots of people aren’t going to understand, though. How can I be in love with him when he’s Kyle’s older brother? I struggled with that for weeks. I fought it so hard. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to let go—I didn’t want to accept love or let him in. I knew somehow that he’d force me to open up.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose and breathed out, then met my gaze. “You know I never cried for Kyle? Not once. I refused to let myself feel anything, refused to grieve. That’s why I cut. It…it let out the pain, gave me something else to think about, something else to feel besides the ache for him.” She breathed deep, let it out, repeated the process. I saw her pain in the furrow of her brow, the contained quiver of her chin. “It still hurts. I still think about him…I still see him die in my dreams. But I know—I know—I can’t keep living stuck in that loop. The only way out is through. As for this, losing—losing the…the baby? Same thing. The only way past the pain is through it. You can’t escape it. You can’t ignore it. Pain, grief, anger, misery…they don’t go away—they just increase and compound and get worse. You have to live through them, acknowledge them. You have to give your pain its due.”
“Listen to you, sounding so wise.” I tried to laugh, lighten the mood with a joke, but it fell flat.
She winced. “I’m not. God, I’m so not wise at all. I just know pain. That, what I just said, it’s what Colton’s been showing me. He’s been through it himself, through so much. We’re going through this together.”
“I’m glad you have someone to go through it with.”
She turned her eyes to mine. “I’m pretty sure I’d be dead without him.”
“Do you need him to be okay?”
She shrugged. “Yes and no. I know what you’re worried about. It’s not a codependency thing, I promise. I need him, yes, because he’s…just everything. But I know now that I have to keep living, regardless of what happens in life. I’d be a mess without him, but I would like to think I’d cope as best I could.”
“But you don’t have to be without me,” Colt said from behind us. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I moved out of the way, felt Jason’s arm come around my waist. He held a Styrofoam cup of burnt coffee in each hand, and I took one from him. The coffee was really, really burnt, but I sipped it anyway.
Nell glanced at me. “I’m really tired. I’m gonna sleep now. Come back tomorrow?”