“It’s good to see you again, Arianna. You’re looking much healthier.”
“Yeah, I can move without feeling like I’m being stabbed now.”
He chuckles, crossing one leg, and I do the same. “So, I read over everything again and—”
“I’m sorry, not to be rude, Dr. Stacia, but can we not do any of the basic lead-up stuff?”
The man offers a small smile and sits forward. “Why don’t you go ahead and tell me what’s on your mind, and we can go from there? Does that sound all right?”
I nod, stretching past the tension in my chest.
“I don’t remember anything,” I blurt out. “It’s been a month now, and nothing. It’s like I wake up and there’s this layer of fog over my eyes, but I can see just fine. My mind is constantly running, but only with half thoughts. I look at something and lose my breath, but I don’t know why. I hear a sad song and I cry, but for what? I smell familiar scents that aren’t even familiar, if that makes sense, and it’s like my throat swells and I can’t breathe. Almost like everything is on the tip of my tongue, at the tip of my fingers, but when I move forward to grab it, there’s nothing to hold on to.
“There’s this… this feeling I keep getting.” Tears prick my eyes now. “It’s like an overwhelming sense of urgency, demanding my attention, almost like need or awareness. It keeps screaming that I’m missing something, something big. Something that’s a part of me, but I don’t know what it is. It’s physically painful, like beneath the bones painful, where I can’t touch it, can’t find it, but it’s heavy, and the desperation that falls over me when it happens is debilitating.
“It’s so often that now I’m avoiding the things I do know, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to do that soon and I’ll go crazy. I feel like I was tossed out in the middle of the ocean and if I lie back and try to float, try to remember, I’ll drown, so I keep swimming. I keep busy. But lately, I’m running on empty. My family has been amazing, but that’s because I smile all the time, and I don’t know how much longer I can do that.”
I take a breath, looking up at Dr. Stacia.
The man nods, considers everything I have said, and as he begins to speak, breaking down what I’ve expressed and relating it to my situation in a way that medically makes sense to him, a weight falls over me.
I want to scream, to cry. I want to run away.
But instead, I do what I’ve been doing for the last several weeks.
I push it away, bury it with a smile, and when he lifts from his seat, offering me his hand, I shake it, pacing myself as I walk out the door, wishing I never walked through it.
As promised, my mom is waiting just outside the building, and as I slip inside the front seat, saying not a word, my mother reads it on my face.
Her tears are as instant as mine, and when I turn away, she faces forward.
I zone out, and the next thing I know, we’re pulling up to the beach house, my dad’s truck parked behind Chase’s in the driveway.
When I don’t get out, my mom asks, “Want to come back to our condo?”
Shaking my head, I bite at the inside of my cheek and jump out.
I head inside, my movements jerky, eyes watery, and cheeks red.
Everyone’s sitting in the living room watching TV, but the moment they set eyes on me, it’s paused.
My dad’s eyes fly to my mom, and Mason frowns, leaning forward.
Chase stands, starts toward me, but I throw my hands up, toss my purse to the floor and keep walking.
I need… I need…
What the fuck do you need, Ari? Goddamn it!
I’m out the back door and running for the beach in seconds.
The wind whips my face, burning my skin, but I don’t care. I keep running.
About a half mile down the beach, my throat swells, my tears choking me, and I growl, swiping them away with angry movements.
I jerk to a stop and something has me spinning around, looking forward, and that’s when I see him.
Noah.
My shoulders fall, and as if I spoke his name aloud, he turns, spotting me in an instant.
He frowns, grips the edge of the dock his legs are dangling over, but he doesn’t move when something tells me he wants to.
Before I realize it, I’m four feet from him, and he’s looking up at me.
“I don’t feel like talking right now.” I’m not sure why I say it when I’m the one who walked over, but that’s what comes out.
Noah nods, his brows nearly touching in the middle. “Talking’s overrated.”