“I got booted from the service,” he said, glancing at me. “I can’t talk too much about that time, but let’s just say that I was recruited to do some dark shit. And I did it. Dark shit. For years. Until, inevitably, it fucked things up, up here,” he said, tapping his temple.
“I can’t imagine.”
“Out, with no direction, I floundered. I couldn’t hold down a job. Pretty soon, I stopped trying. I drank, I slept around, I laid around and didn’t do a fucking thing. Eventually, without any therapy to work through the shit going on up in my head, some dark thoughts started creeping in. Then the thoughts, yeah, they turned into actions,” he said.
“Oh, Brock,” I said, giving his hand a squeeze.
“First time was, technically, an accident. Self-medicating gone awry,” he told me, shrugging. “But the almost dying thing meant that I had to take a trip in an ambulance, and have a little vacation where I wore slipper socks and did group therapy.”
“I couldn’t wait to take off those slipper socks,” I said.
“They somehow managed to do nothing to stave off the cold in that place,” he agreed.
“How long were you there?” I asked.
“Just the mandatory hold. I hadn’t intended to try to kill myself, so they let me go, and advised me to seek therapy and medication for my PTSD. Spoiler alert, I didn’t.”
“You weren’t ready yet.”
“No,” he agreed, nodding. “It seems like you can’t force someone to be ready to accept their own mental illness. Sometimes you just have to spiral through it for a while. After I got back, I was careful for a while. But then the bad dreams came back. So did the ways of distracting and numbing myself. Then one night, maybe a year later, I had a real bad day followed by a real bad night. And then another. And another. Then I took some extra meds again, and got myself my own scar,” he said, reaching up to pull down his bowtie to reveal a scar on his neck that I’d overlooked before.
“Oh,” I exhaled, feeling my heart crack a bit for him, for the man he’d been, one without hope, without a way out of his own misery.
“Yeah, so when I woke up that time, I was ready for my hold, ready to milk it for all it was worth. When I got out, I sought out the therapy and the meds they suggested. Then, not long after that, Sawyer had a job offer for me. The rest…” he said, waving outward.
“You’ve never… you know… since then?”
“No. I won’t say there haven’t been low moments. Meds and therapy help, but they aren’t a cure-all. But my lows never got that low again. I’ve really tried to dedicate my life to staying out of the dark.”
“Does it make it difficult when you have to work dark cases? Or cases like mine that remind you of all that stuff?”
“Some cases can be difficult, but I try as much as I can not to take it on personally. But if you mean was it hard for me to be here for you after your hold, then no. I was the only person on the team who could possibly understand what you’ve been through. I think having that knowledge has been an asset.”
“It did help to feel understood,” I agreed, thinking of the talk in his bedroom.
“So, now the question remains…” he said, making me ask.
“What question?”
“Are you an apple pie kind of girl, or a chocolate sundae kind of girl?”
“Is that really a question?” I asked. “If the machine is even working,” I said, glancing back at it.
It was just… such a perfect time that I’d actually forgotten all about the damn envelope until we were nestled in the car again.
“Don’t let it ruin the night,” Brock suggested, wrapping an arm around my shoulders.
But as we walked through the lobby and rode up to my apartment, it was all I could seem to focus on.
“Tweezers, right?” I asked as Brock set it down on the table.
“Yes. And do you have gloves?” he asked.
Supplies gathered, I met him back on the table.
The apartment was painfully silent, so quiet that I could hear the ticking of a clock I’d never noticed before.
Tick-tock, tick-tock.