Life, as usual, had a way of going on without her. It was always incredible to her that days would come and go while she remained so painfully indifferent. Tomorrow would mark a week since her pathetic attempt at seeking help from a 'professional'. The only things she had managed to accomplish in seven days were making half-assed attempts at looking for a job, collecting unemployment and now successfully leaving her apartment to get groceries—or rather her version of groceries—after a ridiculous amount of pacing and near hyperventilation. Coffee, creamer, a loaf of bread, peanut butter and jelly. To say she hadn't been the picture of health in the past months would be kind compared to what she'd been doing to her body.
Using her laughable amount of keys to open the five locks on her apartment door always caused her stomach to churn. It gave her mind just enough time to wander. Wander back to how her life was before she needed five locks to feel safe. Wander back to how her everyday life always came down to those five locks. Wander to how much longer her life would revolve around those five locks. By the time her door swung open, she was nearly hyperventilating again. For the what, fourth time today? Once before leaving her apartment, once on her walk to the store, once in the store, and again just now. At least it was an even number. Wonderful.
It always seemed like she could never get the door shut and locked behind her fast enough. Time had a way of crawling as she turned all those knobs and slid over chains. She nearly dropped her pathetic bag of groceries as she raced to get them all secured as quickly as possible. The bag hit her kitchen countertop far too hard, skittering close to the edge. She needed to take out her frustration at the same old shit. The cyclical heaviness of her life was always ready to cripple her at any moment. It was a weighted vest, sealed to her tightly, smothering her will to even try and figure out how to be free of it.
She kicked off her boots so hard they bounced and ricocheted off the wall—the stark black scuffs along the white paint a testament to just how often she felt completely fucking defeated after returning home from another daunting foray into the outside world.
As she reached into her jacket pocket to pull out her phone before hanging it up on a hook where it would inevitably sit for another week until she needed enough essentials to deem another trip worthy, her hand came across something unfamiliar.
It sent her heart rate soaring. How the fuck did something end up in her jacket? Did someone slip it in there? When could that have possibly happened between her trip to the doctor last week and her trip to the store today? She quickly pulled whatever it was out of her pocket to face it. What she held in her hand was a soft white handkerchief. From her trip to the doctor last week. From Sam, the helpful stranger. Hadn't she given it back to him before she turned on her heels and scurried back to her apartment to hide?
No. Clearly she had not.
In her fucked up post-breakdown stupor, she couldn't even manage to hand a small scrap of fabric to a person who had lent it to her. That person being a damn stranger, nonetheless. As she stood in the ringing silence of her apartment, she faintly heard a bright, reassuring voice in the back of her mind whisper "Everyone's a fucking mess."
She stared and stared at the unostentatious piece of fabric in her hand. Like it was a living, breathing thing. Like at any moment it would do something spectacular—do something outside of simply existing as an inanimate object. As she stared, a thought slowly crept its way up from the back of her mind. A thought from somewhere deep within herself. From her old self. From a person she hadn't seen or heard from in so, so many months.
The thought was to get the damn handkerchief back to Sam as a small way to prove to herself—and to him—that she could in fact be a somewhat decent person. Maybe. Just maybe.
She'd have to wash it first, of course. After all, she had used it to soak up the disgusting combination of snot and tears coating her face almost a week ago. And it had just been sitting in her jacket pocket, getting crusty and gross. That would mean she would need to do laundry for the first time in ... weeks? A month? God, she had really let things get out of control.
She looked up from the handkerchief at the thought, prompting her to take in the pathetic pit that had become her apartment. Dishes, glasses, clothes, random bits of garbage. It looked—and smelled like—a one-person frat house.
A sigh left her lips as she turned her head to find her reflection staring back at her from the mirror by her front door. Smudged, dirty glass showed her enough to know how greasy her hair was even though most of it was tucked under a hat. It showed her how dull and lifeless her skin looked from not washing it. It showed her the bags under her eyes from the constant yo-yoing of either sleeping too much or not enough.
So maybe she would shower. Maybe she would do some laundry. Maybe she would pick up some of the shit scattered around her apartment. Maybe she would prove to herself that she wasn't a complete waste of a person who was just taking up space in a city of millions. Even if it meant going out into the world for a menial task that would take hours of pep talking for her to even step foot outside her door.
If she could convince herself to take even the smallest step away from decimated blast zone of her current existence, she just might be able to find herself walking out of desolation, and into what, she would never be sure.
----------------------------------------
It felt something like victory to be pacing anxiously outside of the door where a man—a stranger—had come out and helped her cope through a panic attack a week ago. Add in the fact that she had showered this morning, done laundry yesterday, and cleaned up her absolute pit of an apartment some, and eaten dinner last night ... She felt as though she deserved a gold medal for simply accomplishing the bare minimum requirements of a functioning adult. A thought which, in and of itself, was always married closely to feelings of pathetic-ness.
The thought of earning a medal for such common tasks was quickly dispelled by all the things that still plagued her. Like the quick, unsettling cycle of pacing she was currently trapped in. She just couldn't seem to get herself to stop and park her ass on the goddamn bench and simply wait for Sam to maybe come out.
The fact that she had needed to give herself a several hour long pep talk this morning about how going out and doing this would be just fine. The fact that memories from her past life still haunted her every time she stepped out of her door, looked at the sky, breathed. The fact that her fingernails were freshly chewed to the flesh. The pathetic list went on and on and on.
She especially hated herself for thinking that coming back to the building where she happened to run into Sam last week on the same day and at the same time would mean she would see him again. All to return the stupid, meticulously folded handkerchief that was currently tucked away in her jacket pocket.
The damn thing was even ironed—something she had maybe done once or twice in her life with dress shirts she'd had for menial job interviews.
For the seventeenth time in the embarrassingly short amount of time she'd been there, she checked her phone. 4:04pm. Not that she had immediately checked her phone after her panic attack was over and subsequently left Sam. She could only try to use logic.
Her appointment had been at 3:45 pm. The doctor saw her promptly, not a minute earlier or later. They had talked for a total of maybe a minute or two before she split the scene and sprinted up the stairs to have a breakdown. She must've sat with Sam for somewhere between ten to fifteen minutes, putting him coming out of the door around 3:50 pm-ish.
And now here she was, pacing back and forth like some kind of anxious dog waiting for their owner to come home. For fucks sake, the least she could do was sit her ass down and wait just a few more minutes like a somewhat 'normal' person. A normal person who would assume a stranger would have an appointment the same time every week and recount intricately how the minutes had passed a week ago. Jesus.
As she turned to head back towards the bench, having just cleared the door and now only a few short steps away from just sitting the fuck down, she heard the door open from behind her.
She turned to find a stream of people beginning to leave the office—what she assumed was a therapist's office, since that's why she'd been down on the first floor. In all her anxiety and nervousness, she hadn't even bothered to read the words printed on the glass of the door either time she'd been here.
Wringing her hands more intensely with each person that came out that wasn't Sam, she was about ready to just call it quits and head back home to sit in the dark and fall asleep without eating. What a silly, fruitless waste of trying to become a semblance of a person again. As she reached into her pocket to uselessly check the time on her phone before leaving, she heard the same soothing voice she had heard in the same spot a week ago.
"Well hello there, Anna." His tone was light, glad even, imbued with something that might've been shock.
She quickly dropped her phone back into her pocket and looked up to find Sam walking towards her. An easy smile was spread across his face, mixed with an expression that was tinged with surprise as he crossed the small distance to stand in front of her. His hands were in the pockets of the same coat she saw him wearing last week. Something about him seemed brighter than before—or maybe it was just that she wasn't having a panic attack and everything about him seemed sharper, clearer.
The striking features of his face were magnets for her eyes. She took in his contagious smile, the sharp angles of his cheek bones, bright gray-blue eyes, and effortlessly sleek hair that looked better kept than hers ever would. If there would've been a time and a place for her to call someone classically handsome, this would've been the first and only time.
He was well-put together in a way that both confused and enamored her brain. Dressed straight out of a magazine. Lean yet well-built in a way that she wondered what his frame looked like without all the cold-weather layers piled on. After taking in his appearance for a moment, much more thoroughly the second time around, she simply reached into her pocket, took out the handkerchief and stuck it out into the air between them.
"I wanted to get this back to you."
His eyes met hers for a long moment before he reached out with his hand, his watch-clad wrist catching her eye, to take the piece of fabric from her. She hoped he didn't notice the shake in her fingers from the lack of eating and the consumption of far too much coffee on an empty stomach—two habits that did nothing to help her constant state of anxiety and nervousness.
She relaxed slightly as his eye-catching lips tugged upward at one corner while he looked over and felt the meticulously folded, crisply ironed handkerchief. It might as well have been a billboard for how fucking insane she was. If she didn't regret ironing it before, she most definitely did now.
"Thank you for bringing it back to me, and in much better shape than I gave it to you at that. I got by without it just fine, even though it's my favorite one. You must've known."
His calloused fingers glided over the crisp edges, feeling the starchiness of the fabric. Sure it was something used for just wiping off sweat or tears or snot, but that didn't mean it didn't deserve to be taken care of, right? As if he read her thoughts, he looked up from the white square and took her in.
Her washed brown hair fell neatly across and down her shoulders from underneath her beanie, her cleaned glasses, her neat and tidy clothing. Not to mention her face wasn't all red and puffy and fucked up from sobbing. She even went as far as to put on just a touch of concealer and mascara. Even the simple act of applying makeup had helped her work up the courage to get out the door, thinking to herself that maybe it would be just enough armor to convince people that she wasn't an absolute train wreck.
But Sam knew. At least a little. Had some idea of the desolation and despair that existed within her. He may not know the details of what had destroyed her life, mind and heart, but he had bore witness to the stranglehold it had on her. And as his eyes trailed back up to hers, a certain happiness had come over his features after seeing her in such better shape than last week. It caused a blush to spill its way onto her cheeks, making her look down at her shoes and away from him to try and search for words to break up the silence and his observant gaze.
"Well I'm glad I brought it back then—I had no idea I'd commandeered your favorite one. Hopefully reuniting with it will make up for any distress my taking it would've caused." She paused as he chuckled, a rich, velvety sound, and watched as he smoothed it over with his thumb one last time before tucking it away into his inner suit pocket.
"I knew it would be in good hands, even if you didn't bring it back."
Before he could say anything further, she found the words that had been buzzing and bumping around in her brain for the past week bubble up to the surface and come off her tongue in a rushed, haphazard release.
"Look, about last week. I was just, I was, and I mean, I still am, in a bad way. Or a bad place, or whatever. Not that I was a disaster just last week, I've been a disaster for much longer than that. But that's not the point. Anyways, I'd finally dragged myself to a therapy appointment, and needless to say it didn't go very well. God knows all the people who have told me and keep telling me I need to go to therapy are still in my head, and won't shut the fuck up. I just, I feel bad for inadvertently dumping my shit on you. I'm grateful you helped me. Truly. I don't know how long I would've sat there if you wouldn't have come out. Probably an embarrassingly long time. This is all a very long winded, inarticulate way of explaining why I was such a mess and a rude asshole last week."
She finished her garbled explanation with a sigh as she forcefully tucked her hands deep into her jacket pockets—as if she could punch through the fabric and pull out all the bullshit from her body and mind and be done with it once and for all.
"It's okay, really. I know what it's like to feel like all kinds of jumbled up shit. And going to therapy isn't some easy thing that everyone can just do and feel great about. It's a process, and it's okay to not be ready to do it. It takes time, and it has to be on your own terms. Nothing about last week bothered me. It's completely normal to feel that way, and it's nothing to apologize for or be ashamed of."
His words swirled and eddied through her head, somehow taming and calming small parts of her raucous thoughts. It was difficult to think of a response that conveyed just how much it meant to her to hear someone say that she was okay as she was. That it was okay not to be perfect or put together, and just be a goddamn mess as opposed to the alternative—being nothing.
She settled for something that was easier, but equally as honest and meaningful in her eyes.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Moving her gaze from the floor back up to him, she found the courage from deep within herself to look into his clear, depthless blue eyes and ask, "Are you hungry? Because I'm starving, and actually feel like eating for once. I'd love to check out that diner you mentioned last week, that is if you're not busy or have plans—"
"I'd love to. I'm starving too, actually." He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb back towards the door to what she still assumed was a therapist's office. "I'm having a bit of a fucked day myself, so food sounds lovely."
It was then she noticed that redness in his eyes, the tiredness pulling at his lids, the dejection surrounding his smile. How had she not noticed it right away? Was she always so busy constantly wrapped up in her own bullshit that she didn't fully notice others? Good fucking god.
With a mental kick to herself and newfound determination to stop being such a selfish asshole, she stuck out a hand towards the staircase that led down to the first floor and offered with a smile, "Lead the way, mister Sam ... ?"
"Samuel Bailey." He stuck out his hand in the air between them, reminding her of how she met another man just a year ago. A pang struck her heart then, deep and quick. Fortunately it was fleeting, and with a blink, the memory evaporated into nothing more than empty air. With a great deal of effort she hoped didn't reach her face, she shook his hand.
"Anna Weston. It's nice to meet you, Sam."
"It's nice to meet you too, miss Anna. Shall we?"
And down the stairs she went. This time at a normal walking pace with no tears in her eyes, no throbbing in her skull. Trailing behind a person who somehow, by some miracle unknown to her, might just get it.
----------------------------------------
The brief walk down the blustery block to the diner was comfortably silent. The silence was mostly due to the fact that the wind was gusting something fierce, and anytime she opened her mouth to try and say something the wind quite literally took her breath away.
They walked side by side, and as they approached the diner that was perched on a busy corner, he took a few quick steps to get in front of her and open the door. She walked in with her head tucked down against the wind, and got out a quick thanks as she stepped into the small diner's warmth.
Her nose was greeted with the smell of unforgivingly strong coffee, greasy breakfast food and the sweet aroma of waffles. It was pure heaven to her hungry stomach.
It was a seat-yourself kind of place, and Sam took the lead and walked over to a booth tucked against the back wall, his dress shoes clicking rhythmically against the worn tile floor. The booth might've been his favorite one, if this was a place he frequented. He offered to take her coat before she sat down, hanging both his and hers on a hook next to the booth before sliding into the old, rather rickety seat across from her.
She tugged her hat off, giving her hair a little tousle before settling into the squeaky seat.
"I don't think food has ever smelled so good."
"This place has never let me down. I've been here a shameful amount. It's close to work and not far from where I live."
"Isn't it considered treason for an Englishman to frequent a place like this?"
The quip earned her a smile and laugh, the light, happy sound rewarding her for a successful social interaction—baby steps.
"As long as it stays between you and I, I think I'll be in the clear of the crown. I make sure to double up on my consumption of tea and crumpets as a precaution, should they come 'round with a guillotine."
She smiled to herself as she forced opened the sticky menu and began to aimlessly peruse the intimidatingly long list of breakfast options.
"What do you do for work?"
Without skipping a beat, he replied, his hands folded neatly on the closed menu in front of him. No need to peruse when you're a regular, she supposed.
"I'm a lawyer. I came to the States for university as soon as I was able, having saved up for the journey on my own doing odd jobs whenever I could. I went into criminal law, but I've been taking on more family cases and pro bono work for the past few years. It's not glamorous, but I get to help people who need it."
Her eyes cut over to him over the top of the menu that had all the breakfast basics one's heart could desire. An expat, man of the law? Her eyes trailed along the expertly tied Windsor knot at his neck before meeting his bright blue gaze. With a considerable amount of effort, she pushed the thought of him doing odd jobs in the English countryside out of her mind and forged ahead with her rusty ability to make small talk.
"That sounds both admirable and exhausting. Do you like it?"
"It's hard as hell, but I love it. Wouldn't have it any other way. Working double digit days, seeing people go through some of the hardest times of their lives ... Sure it's tough to stomach sometimes, hard to deal with, but I live for it. Makes me feel like I'm serving a purpose, trying to make a difference."
The waitress came over to them then, setting down two steaming cups of black coffee. Anna took one last glance down at the menu, made up her mind and waited for Sam to order first.
"I'll have the usual, Bev."
"Egg whites, English muffin and a side of sausage. You got it, sugar. And for your ... companion?"
A blush flooded Anna's cheeks as she relayed her choice of breakfast favorites.
"Omelet with everything but the kitchen sink, side of hash browns and an orange juice, please."
"You got it. Food will be out shortly, loves."
"Thank you, Bev."
Sam handed her our menus with that charming dimpled smirk of his, and then turned to face me, clasping his hands together on the table and leaning forward slightly on his forearms.
With an eager smile and slight squinting of his eyes, he posed his first question.
"What do you do for work, miss Anna?"
She matched his posture, finding it easier to just mimic him rather than attempt to find a natural and not-awkward sitting position on her own. With a deep breath in and out of her lips, she cast her eyes down at her steaming cup of black coffee and accepted her fate. She had agreed to come. She knew in some part of her brain that would mean answering questions, interacting, talking. You know, things regular people did literally all the fucking time.
And now, now was the time to answer his questions, ignore them, or what—just get up and leave? She was tired of running away, just like she was tired of constantly fighting herself to do the simplest things. So she resigned herself to honestly respond to his painfully simple question. No lies, no charades, just the truth. What did she have to lose?
"Well, as of right now, not much of anything. Nothing, to be completely honest. I had a mediocre desk job that I left to pursue a professional dance career. I became part of a dance company but left due to ... some things that happened in my life. Now I don't know what I want to do, or what I should be doing. I've been scraping by, but that obviously won't last forever. Maybe dry cleaning handkerchiefs is a very particular niche market that hasn't been tapped yet in the vastness of New York City?"
A chuckle left his lips as he considered her, and she him. The wind had made his longer hair unruly—strands were out of place, leading her eyes to his own bright blues. They were so clear, so depthless, shifting in a moment from one shade of stormy day gray to a more sunlit blue. They snagged her gaze and kept it there.
She wasn't sure what he would say next. Would he keep asking questions? She could do her best to keep answering, but she wasn't sure how much farther she could go without completely falling apart. Even answering just one had taken an extraordinary amount of effort and willpower.
"That your go-to breakfast order, then? Because as somewhat of a breakfast novice myself, I commend you for going big and owning it. "
With a chuckle of her own, she took a sip of her black coffee and thanked God that he found her another topic. Anything, anything but more questions about her life. Fortunately for her, Sam seemed to pick up on how uncomfortable she still was talking about anything too personal.
The conversation they had over eating mostly revolved around Sam or lighthearted topics like food, books, movies, their general likes and dislikes. There was easy laughter and a steady, unrushed flow to their conversation that had her more relaxed than she'd felt in months.
He had just finished telling a story about his first job as a court clerk in the city—how he'd walked into a beauty salon when he'd gotten lost on his way to deliver a subpoena, and didn't realize he'd had the wrong address in the opposite end of the city. After the owner of the salon smiled at him sweetly and informed him how far off he was from the address, he ended up getting a free haircut and being horribly late delivering the summons.
Both he and Anna were enjoying a laugh over it at Sam's expense when the bell above the door rattled for what sounded like a rather large group of people coming into the diner.
She shifted her gaze towards the sweet and nostalgic metallic ringing to get a look at the boisterous group, and her stomach dropped as she took in six cops making their way over to a booth at the front of the diner. Right by the front windows, right in her line of sight. It was then the dots started to connect in her mind.
They weren't too far from Ben's precinct. She had no idea if he still worked there or not, or if he transferred or what he ended up doing. But there was a strong possibility that these cops were from that precinct, and that they probably knew Ben, or knew of him. And in turn, they probably knew her, and knew about her.
The urge to get up and leave was overpowering. Natural. She could feel her legs getting ready to lift up and out of the seat so she could head straight for the door before any of the cops had a chance to recognize her.
But it was Sam's voice that brought her back to their booth, back to him and his easy way of talking and making her feel something like normal.
"As long as we're already talking about me making an ass of myself, there was a time back home in England where I had gotten a little too full of myself, a little too cocky. I was doing well, keeping up with the farm work, doing my best to be the boss's pet. You know, all the classic stuff that gets you hated by your fellow lads. My classmates who worked there convinced me it was a thing to wear a suit on your last day of work during your final year at school. Here I was, thinking I was finally being welcomed by my peers, like they'd finally accepted me and didn't think I was an annoying little brown-nosing prick. Well, I showed up on my last day of work, and found out very quickly that wearing a suit was not appreciated by the boss. And I was shirtless underneath the collared shirt, because I was a lazy teenage boy who couldn't be bothered with doing laundry. So I did a whole day's worth of back breaking farm work in a damn suit. And you want to know the kicker?"
She raised her eyebrows and gave him an incredulous look.
"Oh god, there's more? Had you not tortured yourself enough?"
"Oh there's more. I had the balls to ask out one of the girls in my class, thinking she'd be impressed to see me working all dressed up, since I thought it was a thing people would know about, being some kind of tradition for the working, graduating school boys. She showed up at the farm at the end of the day, me shirtless under a suit coat in dress pants thinking I was some kind of hot shit, and well, you can guess what she might have said about going out that night, and where she told me to shove my shit-stained suit as her and the lads laughed their asses off."
Another hearty chuckle escaped her lips at the thought of him, such a gentle, kind, and goodhearted person from what little she knew of him, being so ruthlessly cocky. She was just about to perch forward on her forearms to move slightly closer to him and make a smart-ass quip when she noticed the booth full of cops looking over in her direction. From the way they were leaning in to be closer together and talking quietly to one another while casting furtive glances in her direction, she knew they knew.
"We have to go."
Sam threw a quick glance over his shoulder towards where her eyes were darting around, then looked back to her and gave a quick nod before leaning forward slightly and reaching for his back pocket.
"We can split, Sam, I've got cash—"
"Don't worry about it. I've got it."
He pulled out a few bills and tossed them on the table by their empty plates.
"I can pay you back."
"You can pay me back by taking me to one of those greasy spoons you talked about, how's that sound?"
She gave him a quick and distracted nod as he handed her her coat. She made quick work of shrugging it on while walking.
Sam started walking towards the exit, putting on his coat as he went and giving Bev a quick nod and thanks before pushing through the door. This time he didn't wait to hold it open for her as he did when they'd first arrived—as if he knew getting out and onto the street and away from the diner as quickly as possible was all that she needed right now, not an act of gentlemanly manners.
Eyes pierced into her as she walked through the door behind Sam, and one last look over her shoulder confirmed that all six of the cops were staring at her as they left. Their faces were drawn with serious expressions as they murmured amongst themselves, with no doubt in her mind that they were discussing her and Ben. About what had happened to her.
Thankfully it was only a few blocks to the subway station that would take her home. Back to her safe, empty apartment. Far away from the diner with those six cops sitting in a booth, cast in the welcoming and warm glow of the lights that offered such an inviting and welcome relief from the early afternoon darkness of daylight savings time.
Another place that had started out light, enjoyable and maybe even almost happy. Another place ruined by things that happened so many months ago. Another opportunity to try and become some semblance of her old self ruined. All she had wanted to do was try and get to know Sam, try and fully immerse herself in the now, in an old, dilapidated booth at that delicious smelling and comfortable diner.
But she couldn't. Not with her past sitting across the room from her, in six all-too familiar uniforms.
Sam was talking, maybe asking her about what had just happened. Maybe bringing up something they had been talking about before. Maybe just making polite chit-chat to try and take her mind off whatever had just caused her to get up and leave immediately.
Why was he still here? Why was he still putting up with her? It must've been annoying as hell. He must've been able to tell that she was always half listening, always half trapped in her own head, dealing with the never-ending onslaught of bullshit that kept getting churned up from her past. He must've been able to tell she was so disconnected from the world around them, so out of tune, so out of touch. Why put up with it? Why bother? The questions bouncing around her head made her feel even more like shit.
She wasn't sure when she'd started to cry. It could've been when she kept thinking about those cops in their uniforms. How much it reminded her of a man she used to love so fiercely, used to dream of and spend every waking second of her days and nights with. It could've been when she started to think about how those uniforms felt under her fingertips as she had held the collar in her grasp, bringing her lips to his stubbled cheek for the first time.
The tears flowed steadily and relentlessly down her wind-bitten cheeks. She felt frozen. Cold. Numb. She just needed to make it to the station, somehow say goodbye to Sam without giving away that she was losing her shit yet again, and she could get home. Get away from the world that she hated continuously trying to be a part of again.
They rounded a corner, and the train station mercifully came into view. As they approached, Sam still filling the silence with polite prattle, she tried to keep walking and offer up a simple "Goodnight, thank you," but Sam had other plans.
She felt his hand gently rest on her arm, causing her to reluctantly turn and face him. Face him with tears streaming down her face and a sob dangerously close to escaping her throat after she'd managed to keep it trapped inside for blocks.
With his hand still resting gently on her arm, he took her in, and his expression crumpled, then grew soft with understanding as he realized she was upset.
"There's a bench right over here. Come on, come sit."
She let herself be led by him as the tears blurred her vision and the sobs shook her body, right down through her legs. He sat down next to her on the bench, exactly like he had done a week ago. Her hands flew up to cover her face as she let the attack hit her in full force, unable to hold it back anymore.
"It's alright, Anna, it's okay. It'll be over soon. Try putting your head between your knees. Try to breathe. It's alright."
She listened to his advice, feeling like she was reliving last week in some kind of weird moment of deja vu. Except this time the wind and cold were making it even harder for her to breathe. She was having a hard time catching her breath in order to try and calm down.
Sam stayed there right next to her, his leg pressed against hers to offer some warmth and something solid as the ground seemed to crumble away into the pit of her blood-thirsty memories. The force of this attack seemed to come out of nowhere, and had the power of something with a vengeance.
She guessed this was the price she had to pay for trying to be a functioning person again. To sit on a bench in the freezing cold with a man she had just met. A man who stayed next to her in the biting cold through the entire attack, just as he had before, until it started to ebb and flow into quiet sniffles and infrequent sharp inhalations of air.
He repeated the same mantras to her over and over again as they sat in the cold and waited for her to calm back down. Patient, understanding, forgiving. It amazed her. And as she finally sat up again, images of Ben still coming and going from her mind, a familiar handkerchief appeared in front of her, held in a steady hand.
"Here, take this."
Through sniffles and awkward breaths, she managed to thank him as she took it, then pulled her glasses from her face and wiped off the thick combo of tears and snot that had formed on her face.
"Maybe one of these days we'll stop parting ways like this."
"Maybe. And even if it isn't one of these days anytime soon, that's alright too."
With a deep, somewhat settling breath, she pushed her glasses back onto her nose and shakily stood up from the bench. Everything in her body seemed to scream in protest and ached as she shoved her hands into her pockets and took one last big sniffle before facing Sam, who was still sitting down.
"I'm so sorry, but I have to go. Thank you, again, for everything. For the food, for talking ... Maybe one of these days I'll be, I'll be less ... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I have to go."
Just as she turned on her heel to take the stairs down into the station, Sam called out from behind her.
"It's okay, Anna. Really. You don't have to apologize, not to me. Everyone's a fucking mess, remember? Be safe, have a good night."
He was standing now, hands in his pockets, something like worry and understanding drawn across his features that were beautifully illuminated by the streetlight he stood under. The wind was blowing at the collar of his coat almost playfully.
Some part of her, some beyond broken, scarred and long forgotten part of herself wanted to walk back towards him, pull his jacket closed a little more and hug him tightly.
Instead, all she could muster was giving him the faintest hint of a smile over her shoulder before taking the stairs two at a time in order to make the next train.
And as she sat on an old, smelly seat in the decrepit and rattling metal tube, eyes peeled as she watched every stranger with her constantly shifting eyes that were tired, no doubt red, and most definitely swollen, her hands stayed tucked into her jacket pockets.
And in one of her hands was that starched, white handkerchief that her thumb kept running over again, and again, and again. It somehow helped keep her heart rate down, her breathing even, her emotions in check.
And as she crawled back into bed after locking all five locks on her door, not turning on a single light and just kicking off her shoes, it was still in her hand. As the exhaustion from the day fully took over her, she ran through a short list in her mind as her thumb stroked and stroked the thin fabric.
She had woken up at a reasonable time. She had taken a shower. She had washed her hair. She had put on just a little makeup. She had gotten dressed in clean clothes. She had eaten something. She had laughed a little. She had another breakdown.
And the last little thing on that list was the one that stuck in her mind as she finally drifted off to sleep.
She had returned Sam's handkerchief, and she had ended up bringing it right back home. A small, square piece of fabric. A lifeline.