Page 30 of The Other Side of Wild
She’s quiet; I can almost hear the gears in her head turning. She’s not a knee-jerk reactor; she thinks through things before she says them. She knows the power words have, and sometimes, I think it holds her back. Never wanting to say something if it might upset someone else, even if not saying it hurts her.
“How can I offload some of that for you? I know physically there isn’t anything I can do, but how can I walk with you through this in a way that actually helps?” What? How in a world of billions did I cross paths with a woman who asks the questions I didn’t even know I needed to be asked?
I sit with that for a minute; what is it that I actually need? A hug? Her to come with me? A brain transplant? “Talking to you helps; music helps sometimes.” I pause, realizing I’ve been mindlessly petting Harley for the past fewminutes. “Harley is helping, too.”
“Yeah, Harley is my unofficial therapist. She gets more out of me than Megan does. Her fur is like a siren, pulling you deeper until you don’t realize you’ve spilled your entire life to a furry angel who has no idea what you’re saying.” My only response is a low hum.
The only thing worse than not being able to control these feelings is the soul-crushing guilt that comes after every single time. Sometimes, the anticipation of guilt makes everything twenty times worse. Like you start to spiral before the spiral even starts. It's such a vicious cycle that I’d love nothing more than never to go through again.
“Music helps me too. I have an anxiety playlist. I also have a sad and angry playlist, which consists of 2000’s emo songs. Sometimes, it helps me when someone else screams at me about their problems, making mine seem a bit smaller.”
She pauses for a second, her hand resting on my hip. “I can confirm my mom did hear me belting out all the Hawthorne Heights songs about eight thousand times when I was in high school, but she was not a fan.” I roll flat on my back and look up at her as I try to imagine high school, Hannah.
“I need a visual. Can you act it out for me?” She thinks for a second, and a mischievous look spreads across her face. She taps my shoulder twice, telling me to get up; I groan my displeasure.
“You asked for a show; I’ll give you one. But I have to get in character first.” Oh, my sweet Lord, this is going to be good. She skips off towards her room, and I’m left grinning like an idiot. Harley watches her walk away, then returns her attention to me. “You’re a great therapist, little fur ball.” I continued my earlier motion of running my hand down her back, picking my hand up, putting it on her head, and running it back down.
As I sit in the quietness of her living room, my head starts to wander. Would I fall this fast if my brain was normal? Am I throwing things at the wall, trying to see what sticks? Is there a purpose to this? Do I have a purpose here? Would I be as good of a hockey player as I am if I didn’t have the ability to harness my negative emotions and put them into my game? What would happen to me if I couldn’t play hockey? What would I even do? I think for a second, and my thoughts go back to the mental health booth we’re setting up for the carnival.
I think I’d be an advocate for kids' mental health. Maybe I’ll start a charity of my own once I retire. Giving others the resources I didn’t know I had. I think it’d help a lot of people. Having an athlete be open and vulnerable with their struggles might help kids who are struggling in silence. Just like that, a sense of purpose blooms deep in my soul.
Kara made me believe if I didn’t play, I didn’t have a reason to be here. Sometimes I wonder if she’s right. The number of times she told me to “work through it.” I just needed to be happy and thankful for all the things I had in life. She really messed me up; she knew she’d get away with it too.
I don’t know how much time passes before she comes back out of her room, but when she does, I lose every ounce of heaviness I have been carrying. I cannot tell you the last time I laughed so hard. She has on ripped black jeans that fit her like a second skin with black high-top vans; her hair is pulled to the side in a braid.
The makeup under her eyes looks like she’s rubbed her fingers through it to ruin it a bit. The kicker, though, is her shirt; it’s baby blue, and in rust-colored writing, it reads “Ohio Is For Lovers,” and it’s tied in a knot at the side, showing a tiny bit of her toned stomach.
She walks over and stops in front of me, bringing her hand up like a microphone, “Tampa!! ARE YOU READY?!” I’m trying hard to get a handle on myself because I really want to enjoy this, but my stomach is cramping like I did two hundred sit-ups. She presses play on her phone, and the song picks up; she doesn’t miss a beat.
Her head drops to the floor for a few seconds as the intro picks up, then it snaps up quickly but not all the way. She glared at me through her lashes, her chin still angled down, and she mouthed, “Hey there,” in perfect sync with the song. She’s so serious, never breaking character.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and hit record. She jumps around, lip singing, dancing, perfectly imitating the primal screams coming from her phone, all while never cracking a single smile. My shoulders are still shaking when the song ends. Walking over to me, she sits down on my knee and asks, “Feel better?”
I wrap my arms around her waist and press a kiss to her temple, “This is the best Warped Tour performance I’ve ever seen.” It’s like the heavens have opened, the brightest light shining down on the two of us. She laughed, I laughed, we laughed, and suddenly, I forgot why I was anxious in the first place. “You’ve effectively danced your way around my original question. Time’s up.”
She’s picking at her nails, eyes trained on the couch. I need to see those pretty greens. My hand finds her cheek as I raise her face to mine. “Please, Kitten. I’m dying here.”
“I can’t tell you, Grey. It’s just not a good idea.” Her voice is so quiet it’s almost a whisper. The tears welling tell me she doesn’t believe her own words.
“I know Tate had something to do with it; both he and Abby confirmed that. I just need to know how I can fix it.” She shakes my hand off her face, returning her gaze to the couch.
“What if you can’t fix it?” Her voice cracks, and that breaks me. I wrap my arm back around her shoulders and rub circles on her skin. There’s a wet spot forming on my shirt, and suddenly, I want to burn the world down. More specifically, I want to hunt Tate down and kick him in the nuts for making her cry.
“Let me be the judge of that, please.” The shuddering breath she lets out vibrates through me. I think she’s going to give me what I want, but instead, I’m met with silence. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do this again, to have to yank teeth every time there’s confrontation. “If you aren’t going to let me in, I don’t know what to do. I can’t build a relationship by myself, Hannah.”
Silence.
I pat her back a few times and stand to my feet. I look down at the woman who was just in my arms, she looks so small. So fragile. I start to walk towards the door when I hear her choke out, “I’ll never be good enough for you.”
I freeze to the spot I’m in. Did Tate tell her that? “What?”
“I’ll never be enough for you, Greyson. I know that. I work too much; my priorities clearly aren’t conducive to a relationship. I don’t even know what a healthy relationship looks like. I’m not enough; I never will be. We’re better off as friends.”
I spin on my heels and drop to the floor in front of her. “Says who, Hannah?” I cup her face in my hands, needing her to look me in the eye and tell me she believes what she’s saying. “Because everything you’ve said so far seems like an excuse. So what are you scared of? You said you didn’t know what you were doing, but you wanted to do it with me. What happened to that?”
Her eyes are wide with panic; her chin quivers as she speaks. “I did, I do.” She lets out a frustrated groan, a tear escaping her right eye. “Freaking A, Grey. I’m not going to be what comes between you and your brother. He doesn’t like me, he...” I shoot off the floor, hands flying in the air before I pace the length of her living room.
“He doesn’t like anyone.” My hands fly out of sheer frustration; can’t she see how right we are for each other? “And to be quite honest, I don’t care what he thinks. This isn’t his life; he doesn’t get to make decisions for me.” My words come out laced with irritation, the volume of it is way louder than I intended, but it’s hard to hear over how loud my freaking breathing is.