If You Miss It

28. heal

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

HEAL

—

It was an odd change— going from not attending a single therapy session in over two months to attending two sessions in one month.

As hard as Dmitri knew it would be to do it, he also knew that he had to see Claire soon enough, because his mental health was quite literally in shambles, and he needed someone to help him.

Not to fix it for him, just to guide him as he did it for himself. Or that was what Tariq had told him.

He had always intended on revisiting therapy at some point since he knew that he had to, but earlier, he had never been able to muster the courage to actually book an appointment for the second time, after the first time had ended so badly.

Hopefully, he wasn't going to storm out in a frenzied fit in the middle of this session, too.

And as much as he wanted to commend himself on going to therapy, on taking the initiative to actually call Claire up and utter the words, Hey, Claire. Is there any way I could get another shot at this?, he knew that it wasn't all him.

Tariq had forced him to make the call, had practically held his hand for him while he called Claire to tell her that he was fucked in the brain.

If Tariq could hear his thoughts, that last thought would have warranted him a smack on his head. One hundred percent.

As always, Tariq had stuck around. Throughout.

Even when Dmitri kept pushing him away, telling him that he didn't want, didn't need Tariq to care about him when he didn't even care about himself. Even then.

If there was a way he could go back in time and take back all the things that he had said to Tariq, to everyone in those past few weeks, he would. God, he would.

The rational side of him knew that it wasn't his fault, not really. But at the same time, he also knew that while his depression explained his actions, it didn't always excuse it.

Nobody deserved to have listened to the things that he had said to them, ranging from Can you please, please fuck off?, to Holy fuck, just get the fuck off my back, I don't need you here right now.

While most of the events that had taken place over the past three days were a blur, one thing that stuck out was Eden crying.

He had made Eden cry with something that he had said, he couldn't even remember it now, but it was poisonous enough to make her cry.

That was his biggest regret. Making Eden cry was the last thing that he wanted to do. The absolute last thing.

"Okay, Dmitri," Claire started, snapping him out of his thoughts with a gentle smile, the smile lines of forty years blatant on her face. "Where do you want to start?"

Breathing out a small but nervous laugh, Dmitri let his gaze shift around the room. Of course, nothing had changed. After all, it had only been a little over ten days since he last saw her, it just felt like much, much longer.

His depressive episodes always felt like they were longer than they actually were, more tiring. Probably because he was spending all his energy fighting the urge to cry, curl up into a ball and never leave his room, or all of those things at the same time.

"Claire, I can assure you that I haven't got a single clue of what I'm doing," he laughed out, shaking his head, eyes falling on the coffee stain on the arm of the plush chair she was sitting on. "I don't know how to start, so much has been happening. It's wild."