The Way We Learned to Love ✓

14 - lily

june 2014 : 6 years and 3 months ago

This was the most exhausting week of Lily's life.

Her skull throbbed as she trudged out of her therapy appointment, feeling even more lost than she did when she went in. For the past forty-five minutes, she was asked to recount every single little thing that might have been off with her over the past few months, exactly when it started, and how long it lasted.

Have you been spending more time alone than usual? Having trouble concentrating? Strong emotions? No emotions? Uneasiness around others?

To call it overwhelming would have been an understatement. She wanted to scream, I don't know! and run out of there. How was she supposed to know what was and wasn't normal teenage moodiness? Did no one understand that she would have done something before now if all of this was so black-and-white?

Her throat was tight and her eyes brimmed with the tears that she had been trying to hold back this whole time as she rushed to the front door, staring down at the floor so that no one in the waiting room would see her about to cry. Her parents were supposedly coming in to talk to her psychiatrist about a plan for her, but she would rather sit on the curb in the sweltering heat and wait for them there than spend one more minute in that building than she had to.

The mid-afternoon sun was bright - too bright - in Lily's already-watery eyes as she stepped outside. She wiped at a stray tear, her lips pressing into a thin line when she looked up from the ground beneath her feet. Her mom's car was there in the parking lot, but so was Henry's Jeep.

He wasn't supposed to be here, but there he was, leaning against the driver's side door and scrolling on his phone. She reluctantly approached.

"What are you doing here?" she asked quietly.

He had that same small, sad smile on his face that she'd grown accustomed to in the two days that had passed since the incident. That smile that screamed, I'm internally freaking out but I'm not gonna let it on because I don't want you to feel bad.

She wasn't blind. She could tell how much he was stressing about her and she didn't know what to do about it. Henry was trying to be there for her and the selfish part of her really, really wanted him there. She wanted to make him keep hugging her and telling her that it was all going to be okay because it was the only thing keeping her head above water right now. But she could see that it was tiring him and that he was worrying an unhealthy amount. He was trying to take on more of her pain than he could actually handle and the only way she could think of to stop him from doing that was to push him away. She didn't want to push him. But she couldn't let him drown himself trying to keep her afloat.

"I asked if I could pick you up."

Out of the corner of her eye, Lily spotted her parents getting out of the car, but they appeared to be giving her and Henry their space to talk and heading inside.

She worked to prevent her tone from sounding too defensive. "Why?"

He gave a small shrug. "I figured you could use a McFlurry."

Keeping him at arm's length would be infinitely easier if he wasn't so nice. If he wasn't the kind of person who bought her ice cream when she was sad. If he wasn't endearingly dorky, his big blue eyes watching her from behind that new pair of glasses he got after he broke the last pair fighting Ben.

The remainder of her willpower to oppose him crumpled. She feebly, silently nodded and opened the passenger door, tucking her knees up to her chin after she crawled into her seat. Lily didn't want to look at him, or anything for that matter. She closed her eyes and pretended that her problems could just melt away for a few minutes while the steady motion of the car and quiet hum of the air conditioning soothed her.