Something about you (Norminah)

Chapter Thirty Six

A/n:thank you guys so much for the love and the kind messages that you all sent. I appreciate you all 💛💛

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"So this is it?" she murmured. "We're really doing this?"

"I don't know that there's anything else we can do. At least we gave it a real shot though right? You can go back to how it was before now... you were probably happier then."

She gave me an undecipherable smile. "For what it's worth, I'm really sorry. This isn't how I envisioned things going between us."

"It's fine Mani," I pulled her into my arms, simultaneously wanting comfort while not wanting to look her in the eyes anymore. 

A few hours earlier...
Normani
"So why are you here today Normani?"

I rubbed my temples, my attempts to ease the aching that seemed to emanate from everywhere in my head futile. My headache was both as a result of the copious amounts of alcohol that I consumed the night before and lack of sleep and after snapping at several people and making someone cry, I decided that I needed to see someone before I really hurt someone.

"Normani?"

My eyes snapped up to her face, "Mhmm?"

"Why are you here?"

"I'm losing control, of everything." I looked down at my trembling hands; all the reasons not to do this bounced around my mind, as though my anxiety had awakened the negative thoughts in my subconscious. Shutting my eyes, I took slow breaths, relief flooding my veins when the calm began to settle over me again.

Dr Sullivan was watching me with an unfathomable expression when I finally opened my eyes again. "Coping mechanism. I get panic attacks sometimes."

"What triggers them?"

"Feeling like I'm not in control."

"What's making you feel like you're not in control?"

"Nine months ago, my life was perfectly fine," I mumbled, smiling when I realized what I had said. "I don't have a baby, I have a girlfriend for the record."

Dr Sullivan smiled, "how did getting a girlfriend change things?"

"She wrote an article last year about how falling in love is irrational and it's like free falling into an abyss. And if you fall for the right person, you never hit the ground. I think it's more like swimming. One minute your head is bobbing above the water, you're floating and the next, you're not. And you can't find the hand that's supposed to be keeping you tethered to reality. I feel like I'm drowning, and it's my fault that she's not pulling me out."

"Why do you feel that it's your fault?"

My mind instantly conjured up images of Dinah in tears last night. What should have been shrugged off as just a weird misunderstanding, turned into probably one of the worst fights that we've ever had. All because she hadn't gotten the message that I sent her about having dinner with Eli and our mothers, and she'd found out because she followed me.

We should have talked about the chasm that had formed between us, slowly widening with every argument we had and driving us further away from each other. That's what should have happened. Instead of us sitting down together, she walked away and I didn't follow, each of us retreating to our corners as we mentally armed ourselves for a battle that I won, if winning is measured by who ends up in tears and who doesn't. Really we both lost.

"I'm trying to protect her, like I promised I would. And I'm pushing her away to do it. So she can't even see that anything's going on with me."

"What are you trying to protect her from?"