Crack In The Ice - Chapter 18: Chapter 18

"Elijah?"
I look up from my phone. The young redhead smiles at me. "Dr Wooding is ready for you."
I stand up and walk past her into the office.
Dr Wooding's inside, sitting behind his desk, gathering some papers - a short pile of scribbled paper sheets to his left, a shorter pile of fresh sheets to his right.
"Good morning, Eli. Take a seat," he says, straightening his black-rimmed glasses on his nose and gesturing for the big chair across from him.
"Good morning," I reply.
Dr Wooding has a very round, unthreatening face. That was the first thing I noticed about him when we met. I wondered back then, and I still do now, if he was just lucky to be born with the perfect face for a therapist or if he just trained his own facial muscles to look like that over the years.
"How are you feeling today?"
"Fine."
He gives me a welcoming smile. "That's as good a starting point as any. How did your week go?"
That's how we start most conversations. There's never anything as intrusive as 'what brings you here', or 'what's on your mind', just 'what happened in the past week'.
"It was fine. Normal schedule," I say. "My friends got here last night. We had dinner."
"Friends from back home. Right." He takes a quick note. I used to try to make out what he was writing when we started. Now I don't. "You mentioned them last week." He pulls out one of the scribbled papers from the left pile and takes a look. "Olivia and Natalie. Are you happy to have your friends visit?"
"Yes."
"Remind me what's your relationship with both of them."
"Olivia lived next door from me. She's my best friend's sister and we've been close since her family fostered me for a year," I tell him. "Natalie went to our school. We dated in sophomore year."
"You mentioned it was a relatively peaceful breakup."
"Yeah. It was around the time my parents died."
One of the first things Dr Wooding insisted we worked on was getting me to a point where I could talk about the events surrounding my parents' death. It was a long, slow process. I still have my moments. But I can say it out loud now.
"I kinda shut a lot of people out back then, and she was one of them. She wasn't really surprised when I broke it off."
"So you broke up as a result of what followed the accident?" Dr Wooding asks.
"Mostly."
"Mostly?"
"Pretty much."
Dr Wooding nods. "Did you ever have a conversation with Natalie after the breakup?"
"Kinda."
"What does 'kinda' mean here?"
"We kinda talked before leaving home."
"Did you two talk about what led to the breakup? About how you were feeling at that moment in your life?" Dr Wooding asks.
"She knew."
"So you never talked about it." It's phrased as a statement, but voiced like a question.
I shrug again. "It's been a while. It would be weird to bring it up now."
"Why?"
I shrug.
"Do you think Natalie would resent you for bringing it up?"
"Well." I shift in my seat. "No."
"Are you afraid it would make her uncomfortable if you brought up the subject?"
"I guess."
"Would it make you uncomfortable?"
"There's just no point talking about it."
"Why not?"
"We're fine."
"You've been able to be comfortable around each other without talking about it?"
"We're not around each other much."
Dr Wooding leaned back on his chair and linked his hands over his lap. "You are around each other now. For the weekend."
"Mh."
He unlaces his fingers, letting one of his arms relax on the arm rest and bringing the other up to prop his chin on his hand. "What about Olivia? How do you feel having her here?"
"Great. Olie's always fun."
He nods with a smile, but no words.
"She asked about the appointments," I say.
"What did you tell her?"
"That it's going well."
"How do you feel when people ask about our appointments?"
"Fine."
Dr Wooding straightens his glasses on his nose with one soft, fluid gesture.
I rub an imaginary itch on my arm. "I don't feel as uncomfortable as I used to. Think it doesn't bother me anymore. Doesn't feel like an intrusion as much."
"Okay." Dr Wooding nods encouragingly.
"She cares. That's why she asks. And I'm trying to get better at answering, but..." I bite my lip. "I kinda wish she would let me reverse the roles a little."
"How so?"
"I think with some of my friends... Olie and Owen especially. I don't know, maybe because I lived with them in the year after my parents died... It's like they got used to asking first. Making sure I'm okay. And I'm trying to get better at answering them honestly, but I also want them to tell me what's going on with them. And I think they're so used to this one-way dynamic that they won't let me."
"Have you tried asking them?" Dr Wooding speaks as he's finishing taking notes.
I sit up. "Yes. Olie said everything is fine and immediately went back to focusing on me. And I don't know where it's okay to push and where I should just back off."
Dr Wooding is nodding as he's taking notes, like he understands what I'm saying. And for some reason he always has me believing him.
"Have you tried telling Olie that? Sometimes communication issues are best resolved by communicating where you're having the issue," he says. "Ask Olivia if it's okay to push whatever topic you want her to talk about, or if she'd rather come to you when she's ready."
Dr Wooding smiles again. "The oldest trick in the book to getting someone to open up with you is to open up to them. Maybe Olivia won't feel comfortable opening up to you until she's confident you're being open with her."
"What do you mean?"
He shakes his head noncomittally. "People feel more comfortable being vulnerable when they feel they're not the only ones."
"But if I'm vulnerable or whatever, she'll just latch onto that and want to talk about me again."
"Maybe. But vulnerability isn't always about sharing a secret. It can be something as simple as sharing your feelings." He pauses, then smiles.
"Simple, of course, might not be the right word here. What I mean is. You've tried asking her about her life and you felt she was dismissive of your concern. But are you sure she knows it's concern you're expressing? Instead of framing it like a question, you could try telling her how you feel. That you are worried. That you'd like to know if she's okay. This might frame the situation differently for her. And if there's something going on that she's not quite ready to share, it also leaves room for her to say so."
***
"Dean and Nat went out," Olie says from the couch as I close the door to my apartment behind me. "To have the best grilled cheese in the world, Dean said."
"You didn't go with them?" I ask.
She's still in her lilac-on-white polka dots pajamas pants and one of my t-shirts. The TV is on, playing some cartoons, but she mutes it when I sit next to her.
"Wanted to wait for you. I made lunch." She gestures to two bowls on the coffee table. One of them is nearly empty, with just a trace of milk and cereal on the bottom, the other is full of cereal, a carton of milk by the side. "Got tired of waiting so I ate mine."
I smile, pouring milk over my cereal to lean back on the couch to eat. It's not the kind of lunch I normally eat now, and my coaches would definitely frown at it, but we used to eat this all the time when we were kids, on the weekends. Especially at her house - Dean, Owen, Olie and I.
"The channels here are weird," she says.
I shrug. "We usually watch Netflix."
"Ooh, got a fancy subscription with that athlete money? Show me."
"Olie."
She looks at me.
"You sure everything's fine with you and Trey?"
She sits up. "Yeah, why?"
"You know you could tell me if it wasn't. It doesn't always have to be about my problems."
Olie nods, pursing her lips. "I know," she speaks slowly. "But Trey and I are fine. Honestly. We're just not really... We were never James and Chloe, you know?"
I frown.
She tilts her head like she's thinking of a better way to put it. "It was never love. We're in it for the fun and sometimes we take a time off each other. It's not deep."
"So I wasn't imagining the thing between him and Kate Doyle when we went home?"
Olie snorts, tucking her legs under her with an eye role. "Yeah, no."
"And you're fine with that?"
"I'm not gonna duel Kate for Trey's honor, if that's what you mean."
I snort. "Kate wouldn't stand a chance if you did."
"Oof, don't put your money on that. She's definitely invested."
I arch my eyebrows.
She rolls her eyes. "Whatever. It's between them. Trey and I are good. He might not look it, but he's actually really good at checking in and respecting boundaries. At least, with me."
She's right. He doesn't look it. But maybe he grew up. I always thought of Trey Coleman as the eternal rich party boy with not a serious or responsible bone in his body, but maybe four years away made me miss some development.
"Kate's your friend, though. Right?"
Olie looks at me. "Yeah."
"That doesn't bother you?"
"Think it bothers her more." She looks at me and smiles. "You seriously been worrying about this?"
I shrug. "I promised your brother we'd beat Coleman up if he hurt you."
"Aww. How brotherly and neanderthal of both of you."
I snort.
She slaps my chest with her hand. "Come on. Show me that Netflix account. Trey lets me use literally all his streaming services, but he refuses to get Netflix and I wanna watch Bridgerton."
"It's not that good."
She raises her eyebrows.
I roll my eyes. "Dean wanted to see it. It's also not that bad."
She sprawls on the couch to watch the show, with her head on the armrest and her legs over my lap. The familiar comfort of the situation hooks on the underside of my stomach and pulls it up to my throat.
The way my relationship with Olie developed was so unexpected, and at the same time so natural. She was possibly the best support I had during the first couple of years after my parents died - the hardest years.
Owen and Dean were always my best friends. They knew me better than anyone. That was maybe why it was so hard for them to be there. They knew the person I was before the trauma. They knew how to talk to that guy. They had no idea how to comfort me the way I was then, and they were too hesitant to try.
Olie was a balm. She never treated me like we were supposed to ignore the huge elephant that always entered the room with me, but she also made it feel smaller. She made me feel like I could talk without ever asking. She even made me feel like I didn't have to say that much when I talked. Half-truths and unfinished sentences were always enough for her. She understood my limitations.
Even after what happened, with the failed kiss, she was there. Putting me first. Respecting my boundaries. Accepting my half-truths and unfinished sentences. Giving me space. And time.
She was the only person I ever came remotely close to admitting more of the truth than I was ready.
It's a little like what Dr Wooding said to me, if I think about it. The best way to make other people be vulnerable with you is if you're vulnerable with them. After she tried to kiss me and the situation blew up with her brother, I needed her to forgive me. I needed her to be in my life. So I tried being vulnerable in a way I never thought I would.
Sometimes I still can't believe how close I came to say it.
The words were not quite on the tip of my tongue, but they were in my head. I didn't say it. Instead all I could do was tell her how much she meant to me, hoping she'd listen to the words I was saying and maybe some of the few that I wasn't. Back then, I thought maybe she did pick up on my unvoiced thoughts.
To this day, I still can't decide whether that's what I wanted. For Olie to just know.
Today, sitting on my couch, with her legs over my lap as the TV fills the silence, it's not the first time the feeling takes me.
I don't really know what to make of it, but over the past four years I've had moments like this where I fantasized about saying it. It's always when it's just the two of us. She's said something nice, or funny, and I can feel myself let my guard down with her.
Except it's never fully down. With anyone.
And that's what I regret.
With Olie, she almost makes me feel like maybe I could. If I said it, she'd probably accept it. Accept me. She always has.
But only the parts she knows, a voice in my head always reminds me. You can't take it back if you say it.
Would I really need to, though?
"You good?"
I look at her. "Mh?"
She smiles. "You're tense. Like, even for you. Anything you wanna get off your chest?"
Yes. "No."
"Okay then."
"Olie."
"Yeah?"
I stare at her, wordless. What? What was I going to say?
You can't take it back if you say it.
The TV is still playing, but Olie's eyes are on me. There's no trace of pressure, or impatience. She's just waiting. It wouldn't be the first time I make a move to say something big and cower at the last minute.
In a breath, before I can stop myself, I whisper, "I'm gay."
You can't take it back.
Olie sits up with a frown, pausing the TV. "Can you say that again, love? A little louder this time."
I swallow the lump forming in my throat, but it refuses to go down. Can't take it back. "I'm gay."
Slowly, she nods. "I heard you the first time."
My eyes widen as I catch the slow smile growing on her lips. I grab a pillow and hit her with it.
Olie laughs, protecting her face with her hands. "I'm sorry, but that's not the kind of thing you can whisper. You need to announce it- Ow- confidently and audibly."
"If you heard it, it was audible," I say, continuing my pillow assault.
"Tell me it didn't feel better the second time- Ow!"
I stop the pillow, glaring at her.
She laughs. "Okay, okay, fine. I'll do the thing then." She sits up again, fixing her hair before resting a gentle hand on my knee. "Thank you for telling me, Eli. I'm glad you felt safe enough to confide in me, and I love you. All of you," she finishes with an exaggerated motherly tone.
I narrow my eyes at her. "I hate you."
"You should."
I hit her with the pillow again.
She laughs. "At least, I finally have confirmation that the whole incident with you rejecting me was completely not my fault. I promise, if you were into girls you'd've been all over this back then."
"I'm sure I would," I say flatly.
"I know you would. Seriously, I'm a catch."
"I'm sorry, can you say that again? A little louder this time."
Olie gets on her knees on the couch. "I, Olivia Marie Holmes, am a goddamn catch," she shouts.
The front door opens right on cue, and a smiling Dean and Nat walk in.
Nat's smile opens up into a grin, looking at Olie. "Yeah, you are, hun."