I felt my breath quiver with fear, as I glared down at the brightly-colored, summer clothing that I wasn’t sure I would ever want to wear again.
I stared at the clothing, I guess for an obnoxiously long time, contemplating how long it would take for me to actually feel like myself again.
“That is yours, right?” Johnathan asked me, breaking the morbid, disturbing connection I was creating with the outfit in my hand.
“Yeah. It’s mine,” I answered, though my voice seemed far away.
At first, the man seemed as though he was contemplating going about his business, but the tone of voice that accompanied my response caused him to turn back around.
“Okay, what is it?” He asked, sitting down on the chair across from me.
“What do you mean?” I asked, even though I knew exactly what he was referring to.
“You’re looking at that shirt like it’s going to attack you. I don’t want to care, but I’m involved, so what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s…just…I never liked this shirt,” I lied.
“Oh, bullshit,” he insisted, which caused me to perk up a little, surprised by his harsh reaction, though I felt I should be used it by now. “You and I both know that the shirt triggered something. So, you should probably talk about it.”
“You don’t want to hear about it,” I replied, “It’s probably nothing.”
“You’re right. I don’t want to hear about it, but that’s because I’m a selfish dick. Right now, I’m asking you about it, so you should tell me, and I will try my best to give some advice.”
“Why should I tell you if you don’t want to talk about it?”
“Because, right now, by some strange twist of fate, I’m all you have, so speak.”
I made a face at him, narrowing my eyes slightly, “You don’t have a very good bedside manner.”
“You think I don’t know that?” He hissed, “Another thing I know, is that you’re trying to get off subject, so you don’t have to talk about whatever is bothering you and I’m not going to let you do that, so talk.”
I grinned, feeling slightly silly, having been caught. Even though he was rough and, as he said, kind of an asshole, I couldn’t help but be attracted to him.
He angered me…a lot and I couldn’t decide if he was crazy or just didn’t care about anything, like his attitude suggested, but below all of that, everything he seemed to do was for the right reason.
For instance, I knew that he had gone out of his way to find my pack for me. I wasn’t sure why he had done it, or if that was his plan when he walked out the door, but he didn’t have to do that.
He also didn’t have to help me, but he did.
Now, he didn’t have to force me to talk about what was bothering me, but apparently, he wasn’t going to let it go until I spoke up.
This man was so strange, but equally intriguing.
So, after a long moment of silence, I decided I would tell him and see if it made a difference, “It just seems…strange. I mean, it’s just a shirt, but looking at it makes me angry and sad.” I stared down at the shirt, trying to find the right words to explain my feelings. “Part of me, is angry and never wants to see it again, because it was with me when it happened, but part of me, feels like this isn’t even my shirt.”
Johnathan nodded, “That’s because it isn’t. Not really. Not anymore.”
My eyes cautiously, wandered over to meet his gaze, wondering if he was going to springboard his comment into some cruel joke, but to my surprise, he was staring right back with a serious expression.
Leaning in closer to me, Johnathan folded his hands in front of him and spoke slowly, as though he was contemplating what he as saying, before forming it into words.
“When people go through traumatic events, especially like what you went through, it changes them. People can say that it doesn’t but they’re full of shit. They either become stronger, or they succumb to it, but either way, they are never the person they were before it happened. So, it makes sense that you don’t feel like yourself. Unfortunately, you might never feel like yourself ever again…At least not the way you felt before last night.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like this was the first bad thing to ever happen in my life,” I admitted, as a thought crossed my mind about why I had come out here in the first place.
Johnathan shrugged, “Yeah, but when that other stuff happened, you had other people, other familiar things to hold on to. Now, you have a fucking shirt. That shirt didn’t protect you. It didn’t help you. Hell, you weren’t even wearing it when it happened, so it didn’t even go through the ordeal with you. It did nothing for you, but right now, that is all you have of your old life to hold on to.”
I contemplated what he said for a moment, internalizing the advice he was giving me, before I turned to him and asked, “So, what do I do?”