At No Time || Bruno Mars

75

Trystan was not a huge fan of therapy and counseling offices, but having dealt with them before, she had grown accustom to the blue-gray walls, stiff couches, and pictures of large flowers on the walls. But Peter, who had never stepped foot inside of one before, was noticeable uncomfortable.

He kept shifting in his place on the couch, his eyes switching back and forth between Dr. Chavez's door and Raina, who sat on the floor and played with some of the toys they had out for children.

"What's taking them so long? Do they usually take this long?" he inquired of no one in particular, but since Trystan was beside him, trying to distract herself with a two-month-old magazine, she replied easily, "Relax, Bruno. He's gonna get to us."

"I still don't wanna do this," he mumbled, again more to himself than anyone else. He leaned forward onto his elbows and released an exasperated sigh. "What if someone who recognizes me shows up here?"

Trystan turned a quick eye on him. "That sounds like a question I should be asking. Weren't you the one who told me there was nothing to worry about?"

Peter sat up and leaned back against the hardened couch cushion. "Yeah, sorry. I just don't . . . like places like this."

"We're just gonna give it a try, okay? If we don't think it's helping, we'll try something else," Trystan assured and kept herself from asking the real reason why he did not want to be there, though she already assumed what it was.

Revealing your truth was one of the hardest tasks someone had to do, and she was not sure Peter was completely ready to do that.  But then again, no one was ever truly ready, and if he wanted things to become better between them as much as he said he did, he would have to go through the hardest parts first.

Even though he had been the one to set up the appointment, Peter had dreaded the thirty-minute drive to the business the entire morning. Trystan eyed him oddly over their breakfast of cereal. Rather than piling the bits of food and milk into his mouth like Raina, though haphazardly, was doing, he was leaning back in his chair, stirring the meal slowly in its bowl.

Brows cinched, Trystan asked from across the table, "You okay?"

He glanced up at her with tired eyes before nodding his concurrence. "Yeah, I'm good. Just . . . tired." It was a lie and he did not know why he tried to pass it off as if she would have believed it for a second.

"You didn't sleep good?" Raina questioned, her legs swinging back and forth as she enjoyed her bowl of colorful, non-boring and non-adult cereal. "You should sleep with me and Mommy in our bed. It's easy to sleep next to Mommy."

There would come a day when Raina understood better themes of adulthood, where things were not as simple as she assumed, but both her parents knew it was clearly not that day and things were much more complicated than she thought them to be.

Instead of letting his face stiffen in awkwardness at the sudden bombardment of memories of just how right the little girl was, Peter chuckled softly before rising from the table. He grabbed his unfinished bowl of cereal and announced, "I'm gonna go get ready. The appointment's at eleven." He leaned down and kissed the top of Raina's head before going to the kitchen to dump the contents of his meal into the garbage disposal and the bowl into the sink.

Though she wanted to, Trystan did not follow him out the kitchen, presuming at best, all the fears he kept inside would come about sooner or later.

Dr. Chavez opened his door to the small group soon after Peter's tiny moment of panic, leaning on the golden doorknob to request the family that was not really a family.