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grace

noun. an eponymous note, indicating non-essential musical ornamentation.

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"POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER?"

Florence nods, sliding an informative pamphlet across her desk to me. I shake my head, still not understanding. "But I was fine growing up. I wasn't hurt or starved. Foster care was lonely, sure, but I wasn't abused."

In the brief silence that follows, I can hear how shrill my voice became.

"Trauma doesn't need to be like a lightning strike, Bay. Sometimes trauma is a single drip on a rock, eroding it over time."

I've been seeing Florence roughly every two weeks. The Halston University healthcare scheduling system won't allow me to make multiple counseling appointments, so I have to just attend each one and book immediately after. It's slow, and without band filling my days like it used to, I feel restless, walking around in skin that feels too tight.

Florence explains that traumatic events are less about what goes on 'out there' and more about 'in here' (placing a palm on her heart). People who have witnessed car crashes have come away with PTSD, apparently, and people who have survived car crashes have recovered completely. The human brain, clinging to outdated evolutionary foibles, remembers negative experiences way better than positive experiences as a way to keep us safe. Don't fall in tar pits, don't pet saber-toothed tigers. That's why children can remember instances of being yelled at in great detail, even if their parents only ever lost their temper once in eighteen years of childhood. We're a terrified species.

"You spent your entire childhood expecting loss, expecting your home situation to turn on its head," she says, "and you responded the best way you knew how, by going on the defense, avoiding attachments, and scrutinizing the people around you. Hypervigilance is a way to keep you safe."

I slide my forefinger under the cover page of the pamphlet, feeling the sawdust-y edge of the paper where it's been guillotined.

"PTSD just means that even when the stressor has been removed, your defense mechanisms don't switch off." Florence has me read the non-exhaustive list on the fourth page and 'just sit with' the symptoms I relate to. I feel like the list was written about me. Irritability, hostility, hypervigilance, self-destructive behavior, social isolation, mistrust, loneliness, emotional detachment. When I say I'm done, she nods contemplatively and reminds me, "There's no timeline on healing. You can take as much time as you need to process. The ultimate goal of PTSD treatment is to get you feeling safe and in control in your surroundings again, so we won't broach anything before you're ready."

I leave that appointment early, not prepared for any more touchy-feely shit within the span of an hour. On the walk to my next lecture, I put my face into my hands and push out all the air in my lungs. My brain spits words at me, I am broken, you are broken, and I have to fight it back consciously, I want to get better.

I want to be better.

The last time I met with my counselor, we spoke about interpersonal relationships. In hindsight, I can see how some of the things I said clued Florence into my PTSD---my suspicion and self-imposed isolation and lashing out. Her advice was that, while avoiding pain is natural, "you will always experience some sort of pain if you have relationships. You would also experience pain if you spent the rest of your life tiptoeing around people. Pain is inevitable. You can't exempt yourself from life because of it. You need to stock up on things that can help you through. Does that make sense?"

Florence asks that at the end of every monologue she has, like she wants to be fully absorb her words. Does that make sense? Are you hearing me? She gave me an exercise to do: list absolutely anything that recharges me. I don't have to show anyone; I just need to check in with the list whenever I feel stressed. I made the list. Sex was the first item, then music, then hanging out with Renata, and if I was really honest with myself, anything in Callum's company. Lying on the floor. Being outside at sunset. Wearing warm clothes while walking through snow. In the end, I had over twenty items of varying significance. Many of them were either art-related or people-related.

Florence said that while people can totally exhaust me, they can also fill me up---they can give me support and confidence and happiness. I just need to figure out how to set up healthy attachments and maintain them.

Easier said than done, let me tell you.

The other outcome of counseling is regret. It stains every part of my day, this growing desire for absolution. I feel like the first step in fixing myself is to fix the damage I did to one of the most important people in my life. I treated Callum so badly because of my old fears. I insulted him and pushed him away, and he didn't deserve that.

That's why I'm going to put my big girl boots on, tuck away my pride, and apologize.

Not wanting to spring myself on him, I send a text once classes let out for the afternoon.

Isabella: hey, i was wondering you had time to talk this evening. i will be nice, i promise.

No reply.

Even though I left the Halston University musical ensembles Facebook groups and group chats, I still follow everyone's social media. I know today was the local high schools recital, and I know because of that the usual after-class rehearsal of the Halston Student Orchestra is canceled. Callum is theoretically free, but with so many friends and pastimes, he could be skateboarding or getting drunk or studying late at the Engineering building.

Or he could be ignoring me.

Which is totally plausible, and totally fair.

Hoping by some mad stroke of luck that he's just at home practicing his drumming, phone silenced while his music blasts, I walk to his house and knock on the door. One of his housemates opens the door, and I brace to explain myself, but she seems to recognize me. "Oh, Bay, right?"

"Yes," I smile weakly. "Is Callum home?"

"He's not," she says, leaning out past the threshold to check the front yard. "Yeah, his car's gone. I don't know where he is, but feel free to wait in the living room, if you like. He probably wouldn't mind if you waited in his room, either."

Oh, he totally would. He hates me now.

Her generosity warms me to the core, and I choose the first option. I unpack my laptop and my Geometric Algebra textbook and work on an assignment, cross-legged at the low coffee table. Over the next hour, two other house mates wander in from classes and shoot me briefly perplexed looks, like they can't imagine the miscommunication that would leave me, Callum's booty call, waiting on the living room carpet.

Isabella: by your roommate's supreme hospitality, i'm at your place. should i wait for you?

I answer for him. I wait. I want to wait. The sun sets, no Callum. Dinnertime passes, no Callum. When the housemate who let me in comes downstairs in her pajamas, clutching a mug of tea, my welcome has definitely been overstayed.

Isabella: heading home, hope to catch u another time

"Sorry for monopolizing the living room tonight," I apologize. "I'll head out now."

"Are you sure?" she says, flicking a concerned glance at the windows, which are dark and reflecting the light of the house's interior. "Will you be okay getting home?"

"I will," I say confidently. "Thanks for letting me stay so long."

I pack up my school supplies and tug my coat back on. It's a fifteen minute walk to my residence hall. The air is lethally cold by now, but at least it's not raining. I hunker down and focus on my footsteps, watching for uneven cracks in the pavement.

Minutes later, I notice a car approaching. Glancing back, I feel a shiver of apprehension. Girl is abducted from campus after walking alone at night. The headlights are two bright moons, washing out any identifying features of the car. I turn back around and start walking even faster, sticking close to the houses in case I need to scream. The engine cuts off, and the door opens.

I'm nearly sprinting.

"Bay!" Callum yells. "What the hell are you doing?"

Joy, relief, hits me like a kick to the center of my chest. Whirling around, I can see Callum striding towards me under the warm yellow glow of the streetlights. His breath is mist trailing behind him.

"Do you see how dark it is?" When he reaches me, his hands habitually go to cup my face, and I nearly sigh in gratitude. "Do you feel how cold it is?"

"Not really," I mumble. "Not right now."

Callum brushes my cheekbone with his thumb then steps away, remembering himself, gesturing with a tilt of his head for me to follow. "Alright. Get in." It's warmer inside his car, almost toasty. "I only just got your messages. I went home after the recital, and then I didn't check my phone as I was driving back. Sorry."

"I'm the one apologizing," I say, shaking my head. "I'm sorry for being an ass. When we met, I had already survived a pretty rough upbringing. I was lonely and neglected and mostly unloved. I had nearly nothing left in me, and whatever was left I guarded with more hostility that was warranted." In the darkness of the car, Callum turns his head to me, his dark eyes reflecting the light from the streetlights outside. "I thought you were only going to hurt me. Either I would have been one of your party flings, or---"

"Whoa, okay. What if we were more than that?" he interrupts.

"It still would have hurt. My brain connects emotion to threat. It's just how I'm wired. I've never felt safe around other people, because if I'm around them it means I need to anticipate their departure," I try to explain. "There's nothing to lose if I have nothing to lose, you know?"

There's a flickering warmth behind his guarded expression, almost like hope. "And now?"

"Now I think I don't want to live the rest of my life in survival mode, keeping people out, guard up all the time, constantly looking for defects. I'm trying to be better."

Callum lowers his hand from the steering wheel to his lap, his thumb turning the ring on his forefinger around and around. "What does that mean exactly, for us?"

My eyebrows furrow. "I'm apologizing to you for how I behaved these last four years."

"Is that it?"

"What else would there be?"

Callum scoffs harshly, turning his head to the driver's window. Ah.

"I'm a mess," I admit softly. "I've got so much baggage to process, you can't even imagine. I'm not going to hurt you anymore by putting you through---"

"The only thing that's ever hurt me in the last four years is thinking you hated me. Not our fighting, not our fucking, not any of the times you tried to provoke me. I don't need it to be nice or easy or predictable or stable. I just need it to be you. You, Bay. Everything else we can figure out."

I make a plaintive noise. "I'm not fit to date, I promise you that. It's not that I don't care about you." It's the exact opposite, which is why I know you deserve better. "This is me trying to do the right thing."

Three beats of tense silence follow.

"I kind of want to say 'fuck the right thing' but part of me is happy for you," he whispers eventually, smiling sadly. I struggle to reply, but he breaks the solidifying quiet by clearing his throat. "Here."

Callum pulls a key on a chain from his coat pocket, pressing it into my hands.

"What is this?" I clarify, "Figuratively, not literally."

"It's if you ever need to wait for me again. It's come over whenever you want. It's use my drum kit to practice if you need somewhere to play," Callum says, turning to stare out the windshield. He looks tragically handsome in this lighting, shadows over half his face and anguish over all of it. "It's move your stuff in, or don't move your stuff in, or meet my house mates, or stay over on rainy weekends, or all the weekends. It's whatever you want it to be. Make a home out of me, Bay."

My breath catches in my throat. When he looks at me again, my pulse pounds, furious and insistent, against my ribcage, like my heart is trying to rip out of my body and fall into his hands. I want to, I want him, but---

"In January, you said if I could explain how you extended my life, you would come back to band and go on one date with me," Callum continues. "And I'll exploit the fact you never set a limit on how many attempts I have---"

"---wow," I snort, tamping down the wild butterflies in my stomach. Callum's gaze slides sideways to me, the effect of his heavy eyelids getting me way too flustered.

"---so here goes attempt number two of how ever many it takes. Aside from being smart and strong and resourceful and aside from being a great leader and being a safe space that I overlooked the first hundred-something times," he says, voice steady with conviction, "you help me articulate feelings I didn't even know I had, and you challenge me to be vulnerable. I'm not afraid to slow down and look inside myself when I have you. There's no-one else who fits me like you do, Bay. That's why I want a chance. Please."

If I had to answer the same question, I'd say that Callum makes me kinder, softer, and see magic everywhere. It's okay to get my hopes up. It's okay to be happy. There was nothing that could compel me to actually live my own life instead of witnessing it until he came along.

A persistent thought has been sprouting in me lately: the hardest thing about Callum was never going to be leaving even if I wanted to stay, like when our enemies with benefits arrangement came to an end.

It's staying even when I want to leave.

Because my instincts are defense mechanisms that haven't deactivated.

Because my fears aren't my reality.

Because not every person is going to leave me, or hurt me.

Even if they do, even if life takes and takes, I will find the parts of life that give and give. I fall and I rise and I survive.

The key rests with a comforting weight in my palm. I trace the jagged edge of it, and give Callum a conspiratorial smile. "You don't need a chance," I say, soothing the flash of pain that crosses his face, "You know I already love you, right?"

Callum's jaw drops, his lips stretching into a wonderstruck grin. "I didn't know that."

I shrug, nonchalant despite all the flames going up inside my body. I'm on fire, I'm burning, it's casual, I'm all good. "I didn't want you to know it."

"I love you, too."

Giddiness floods my system, the butterflies break free, the fire collapses the last of my defenses. It still doesn't feel natural---all this confession, admission, vulnerability, unfamiliar but beautiful like Renata said---so my instinct is to swat all the emotions away and run for the hills. See this through, I tell myself, to the bitter, messy end. Love or hate. Callum's it. He's it.

However, my body's knee-jerk reaction is to blurt, "Shut up."

Callum laughs at me, reaching over to slide a hand against my cheek. His fingers are cold, calloused, so familiar. He draws my face closer and whispers, "You promised to be nice."

"I know," I return apologetically. "Old habits, I'm sorry. Say it again. I'll be super nice."

Callum turns my face to the side so he can kiss my cheek, my jawline, the pulse point underneath my ear. My eyes flutter shut. "I love you. I'm insane about you, Isabella," he says into my skin. "Bad behavior-type of insane. Now, will you please go on a date with me?"

I wind my arms around his neck, and say, "Absolutely."

Callum grins. I watch his intoxicating brown eyes search my face, reverently memorize my expression, and finally bore into mine. He strokes his thumb across my lower lip. When our mouths finally meet, gentle and careful, it is just as electrifying as the first time we kissed, as the first time we fucked, probably more, because everything sharpens. Everything feels real, like I'm a person, flesh and bone, and not an abstraction.

This isn't like our constant tension has spilled over and resulted in a clusterfuck of hormones and orgasms. This is mutual and conscious, this feels like love even though I don't have too much familiarity with it. It is, isn't it? The thing that holds people together, the catalyst of healing, the seed of the all best music in the world. No matter how cold we become or how hard we push it away.

Love.