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JC
Satan-walks, as they became known, were a regular thing. Every morning for the last five days Adrian and I had walked up to the fence, and sometimes we had to wait for Satan to arrive, other times he was just there as if he knew it was important to me. Something else that had become the norm was the fact that we held hands.
All the time.
And sometimes Adrian would put his arms around me as we walked, and I didn’t question him holding me, or think he was just trying to protect me, because it all felt so perfectly natural. We’d gotten through Thanksgiving with smiles and handholding, stuffed with so much food I thought I’d burst, and then the same as all the nights now, when we went back to our room there was no question about him sleeping on the cot. The happiest I felt was when I snuggled into his hold, and we fell asleep in each other’s arms.
On occasion, we would kiss, but it wasn’t a prelude to sex, it wasn’t sexy, it was… life confirming. If that even made sense. It was as if the kiss and everything we’d done in the bed had happened too fast and we were taking a step back to learn each other in a better way.
At least, that is what was happening in my head—I’m not sure how he was feeling about me holding back, but he wasn’t pushing, and he still smiled whenever he looked at me. Not just a simple smile either, but the one that reached his eyes, the secret smile that was just for me.
In my counseling session yesterday, we’d talked about me and Adrian, and even though my counselor is an amazing woman, she used the word co-dependent, and I’d called an end to the session. She wanted me to stay, to talk out this thing I had with Adrian, but all I wanted to do was find Adrian and look at him and know that it wasn’t an unhealthy co-dependency, but open and honest love.
I thought love about was being co-dependent, but in a healthy way, only a lot of google searching in my quiet time had shown the opposite to be true, and now I was slowly freaking out.
“Can we talk?” Daniel asked as he joined me at the art table. I’d taken to spending a lot of time working on my mental issues while painting. We’d run out of flowerpots, but Toby had brought in a ton of tiny plaster frogs that I was painting in a rainbow of colors. I glanced past Daniel to Grace who was lounging by the door as if she weren’t being my bodyguard right now, and with a simple smile, I communicated that maybe I needed privacy. She nodded, then pointed at the kitchen which was just next door to this room.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“Sure,” both Daniel and I said, and then it was the two of us alone.
I carried on painting the frog that I was in the middle of. It was a cerise pink with the brightest purple dots, and I’d done it the wrong way around—having painted the dots first, which made the cerise harder to apply. Every so often my hand would shake, but I’d gotten used to it and stopped long enough to breathe through the tremor, or to support my bad hand with my good hand.
“Can I?” Daniel picked up a new frog from the bare collection ready to paint, and then jiggled it in question.
“Sure.”
He glanced from the frog to the paints and then gave this cute kind of half frown. The poor man was clearly out of his element surrounded by painted frogs.
“So, choose a color…” I nudged over a tile with the color dots that showed the final effect of each paint color he applied. “Pick a brush, and then just go with the flow.”
He muttered under his breath about frogs being green and then picked up the brightest yellow he could find, tugged a paintbrush from the pot, and then began to paint the frog with cautious dabs.
“So, I spoke to Abbie,” he started as if that had been a throwaway comment with no connection to anything at all. I knew where this was going. “She said you left your session early.”
“I can do that you know, I’m not a child,” I defended with force. Daniel side-eyed me, and I immediately slumped over my half-finished frog. “Yeah, I did.”
“She was just worried she might have triggered something and asked me to pass on that she was sorry.”
“She’s not the one who should be sorry,” I murmured, and applied a dollop of pink to the frog’s head, wincing as it slid onto a purple dot. I spent a while saving my work of art, and then sighed. “All she did was ask me for a truth of sorts, and I didn’t like it. I was rude, and I’ll apologize.”
“It’s not rude to run from an awkward question, JC, it’s self-preservation.”
“She deserved enough respect for me to…” my thoughts blurred, and I rolled my neck, hoping it would crack, or something would shake loose.
A bullet fragment maybe?
“To what?” Daniel asked after a pause.
“I should have been able to defend my thoughts, but she was only bringing up things that I already knew. We’re already working through it, taking a step back, falling in love the right way.”
Daniel stopped painting his frog, which was yellow from eyes to feet, with an added burst of sunlight-orange. It was just as hideous as mine was, but it made me smile and lose track of what I was thinking. He stared at me for a moment.
“Adrian is one of the good guys,” he offered, and the smile that started with the frog didn’t drop—it just became wider.
“She suggested we may have an unhealthy co-dependency.”
“That doesn’t sound like her.”
“Well, she didn’t use the word unhealthy, just asked me about my unusual connection to Adrian is all, and I filled in the rest.”
“Do you know what the definition of co-dependency really is?”
“I looked it up. Hang on.” I pulled out my cell, smudging purple on the screen, then scrolled to the last page I’d been checking. “One person feels that their desires and needs are unimportant and will not express them.”
“Is that you?”
“No, I don’t think so, I tell Adrian how I feel, and I what I need. We’re good.”
“Okay, so you are good,” Daniel mused, pretending to concentrate on his frog. “What about Adrian? Does he tell you what he wants? Does he think his needs are important?”
“Of course,” I said immediately. “I mean, we talk, and he never..." What? Did I truly know how he felt about anything at all? Did he tell me things? "We’re seeing a counselor together tomorrow," I finished lamely.
Daniel nodded. “Pass me the purple, I’m going to make this a sunset frog.”
Grace put down the coffees as he took the color from me, then asked if she could paint her own frog. I tried to get back in my peaceful headspace to concentrate on the painting, but somehow, I’d lost my peace.
I needed to know what Adrian wanted, but I needed to ask him in a place where he couldn’t avoid the question.
Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.
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