Enemies with Benefits

Chapter Thirty-Three

- Rachel -

The diner had been packed. Like a rerun of our first date—minus my teenage assumptions—there had been burgers and fries and milkshakes. And a brain freeze because I still never learned when to stop chugging the frozen drink.

Caleb had laughed. I had laughed. About everything and nothing.

I'd felt happy.

But that was an hour ago. Now, sitting in this little room with a singular window on the wall to my left, I felt naked. Exposed.

Hopeful, yet hopeless.

"Have you noticed that you've held harder onto the hurtful, narcissistic people in your life, held harder onto their opinions and words, than you have the good ones?"

I looked at the doctor with a snap of the neck. "I—What? No, I don't think...I didn't...What?"

Dr. Briar stayed quiet, letting me mull over her words. My face pinched together, and I knew she noticed my realization when she started writing down in the notepad again.

"Why do you think that is?"

I felt my jaw tighten, like the action could force the words to stay within my being. But I didn't want them to. If I couldn't talk about it in a safe space, how was I supposed to be open anywhere else?

With anyone else?

"My parents left me. They were around a little bit, here and there, before. Giving me food when I cried to shut me up or putting a movie on and yelling at me to stop bothering them. They left when I was eleven, and I went into foster care. Even now, if you asked me to sit here and close my eyes and talk about either of them, I don't think I could tell you anything other than I have the same color hair as my father. I think my mom had darker hair, too, but I don't...I don't really remember." I started to play with a string hanging off the bottom hem of my shirt, absentmindedly fiddling with it.

"I, um...I remember...crying myself to sleep when I got scared at the group home and had no one to turn to. The older girls were all already friends. It wasn't that they were mean to me, I just knew I was the newbie. I felt like I was. I remember that first month there. I went two weeks without showering because I couldn't figure out how to turn it on and no one would help me. The knobs were different than I'd taught myself at home, and I just...I couldn't get them. And...I remember that more than I actually remember my parents or the girls I was in that home with. I couldn't tell you their names if I was forced to."

My throat started to constrict and sting, the tears forming behind my eyes following suit.

"When I'd go to school, and I saw parents hugging their kids and kissing them and telling them to have a good day—telling them how proud they were—I hated them. All of them. What were they always so proud of? I'd tried to be the best I could, but no one was ever proud of me. No one ever had been."

I plucked harder at the stupid string on my shirt, barely visible amongst the tears blurring my eyes.

"It took a few months before a family came and decided I was interesting enough to go home with them, but they wanted me to mold instantly into the routine of their family that I'd never had before. I'd gotten so used to, 'Shut up!' and, 'I don't care!' that when they asked me if I wanted to be in the school play like my new sister, or wanted to take violin lessons like my new brother, I didn't...I couldn't say yes. I couldn't answer at all. And when I didn't—when I never did—they sent me back to the group home."

I kept my head facing my lap, glancing up through my lashes to find my therapist writing on her pad of paper. She did a double take towards me and nodded encouragingly, waiting for me to continue.