Don't Look Down

thirty-one: don't let anyone tell you otherwise

Seth's hands come to rest on mine, halting their motions. "You're flaring." His fingers tighten, turning my hands into tiny balls of tension. Despite my attempts, I can't seem to keep them from shaking.

"I can't help it." I turn my face to his, no longer afraid of what he'll find. He's already seen past the surface to everything underneath anyway. He's already seen me.

His eyes glow with empathy. "I know."

His fingers glide along my forearms, pressing and releasing, as he attempts to work the strain from my muscles. It works, moderately. His contact always does.

Guiding his hands to the nape of my neck, he holds me mere inches from his face. "Breathe."

I take a deep breath. The rush of him sweeps into my lungs, slowly overpowering the anxiety. When I take another, it flickers beneath his strength. I resume control of my limbs, they no longer shake. My heartbeat dulls to a steadier rhythm and I no longer feel like I'm spiraling.

"This place makes me feel vulnerable," I confess, unable to hold the truth in. "Being this close to her, it just hit me like an avalanche."

His mouth curls into a smile, as though he knows something I don't. "You're gonna be okay tomorrow."

"How do you know for sure?"

His thumb skims my cheek. "Because I know you."

The tenderness of the motion and his confidence in me has my heart faltering. It's loosening, desperate to reach the heart of a man who doesn't believe he has one. But I've felt it, seen its effects, same as I do now. It's just trapped behind a cage of barbed-wire people from his past have constructed.

Seth's father, Calvin, Clive-my mother. They don't realize how their actions affect those around them. Some have broken this man, the one with the ability to fix me in moments like this caused by the others. It's cruel and unfair. We deserve more than this.

We deserve to be whole.

I release a frustrated breath. "I hate that I can't go in there waving my perfect job in her face."

"Then lie."

He offers the option as if it's the obvious choice.

"I don't want to have to lie. I want her to be proud of who I am, not of some fabricated version."

At the end of the day, she's still my mother. The deeply rooted need to make a parent proud is something I can't shake. Even if she doesn't deserve it.

All she'll see tomorrow is the daughter who ran away to live a life she thought was better, only to return with nothing to show for it. I don't have a job. I threw it away because of my pride, wasted four years of college to most likely work at a retail chain or restaurant. I can't afford to pay my rent. And I live with a man I'm stumbling into love with, one whose heart is off the table.

My choices and goals have all shifted and I'm uncertain what I'm doing anymore.

I shake my head, overwhelmed by the mess I've made. "Even more so, I want to be proud of who I am."

His brows dip in mystification. "You're not?"

"Partially, yes." Because there are more than just facts to this situation. There's self-worth and intuition that one day this will all work out. There's proof Seth's not detached like he claims himself to be. And there's hope I'm not foolishly destroying everything for no reason. It's just scary being uncertain, utterly terrifying losing trust in your own decisions.

"I'm proud I stood up for myself. But the other parts, I don't know."

"Come here." His hands find my shoulders to maneuver me in front of the mirror above the dresser. He settles behind me, a blistering wave of heat against my back.