Into You

Chapter 26

'I'm standing in your driveway
It's midnight and I'm sideways
I have to find out if you feel the same
Won't be easy, have my doubts too
But it's over without you
I'm just lost, incomplete
Yeah, you feel like home, home to me'

She sat in the car, parked around the corner from Camila's building once again, nervously twiddling her fingers waiting for inspiration to strike her the sound of Lifehouse bellowing out of the speakers.

She and Joanna had talked for a long time in that room and she'd been deliberately cagey for most of it. She'd asked about her mom and she'd simply told her she'd died; she asked about friends and she'd told her that they were either dead or she had lost touch. She asked her about her best friend and she told her she'd lost him in Afghanistan. She asked her about Sinu and she told her how cool she thought she was, and how helpful she had been to her; and then finally, she asked her about Camila and she told her she was just her package.

Almost inevitably, Joanna hadn't believed her.

o+o+o

"What does that mean, Lauren? Why do you call her a package?" Joanna asked sitting back into her chair.

"It means she's the thing I have to protect, that's what we called them in the Army. They're not people, they're packages."

"Why do you call them that? It's a very dehumanizing phrase."

"Exactly!"

"How so?"

"You can't think of them as human. You can't like or dislike them. You just have to keep them alive. It's like moving a parcel; you don't have to like it, you don't have to feel anything for it, you just have to move it from one place to another without dropping it."

"So is that why it bothers you that you care about Camila?"

"Yes, that's why it fucking bothers me..."

Joanna smiled at her as she realized what the woman had done and tried to clam up.

"Come on, Lauren. Remember, this is our safe place, you can talk about anything here. We're going to talk about some of those difficult memories soon. I think it would be useful to start with how you feel now."

She glared at her, not believing how easily she'd got past her. Safe place, indeed. Jesus, it was just as well she didn't go to her fucking 'safe place' during her interrogation training or she'd probably have spilled her guts when they started with the interrogator's version of 'hello, how are you'.

"So how do you feel about Camila? And please, Lauren, for your own good, don't lie to me; these sessions can only work if you tell me the absolute truth that's in your heart."

"Why's that?" she asked, trying to deflect again.

"Because it's not about telling me; it's about allowing yourself to tell you. If you won't admit things to yourself, this is all useless. I ask you to tell me the truth because admitting the truth is the first step to understanding how you feel and when you understand how you feel; we can help you deal with those feelings."

"I don't do feelings," she told her firmly, sitting back and folding her arms.

"That's a lie, Lauren. Of course, you do feelings. If you didn't, you wouldn't be with me now. You wouldn't have nightmares. In fact, you wouldn't be able to function normally in society the way you do. You might not like admitting to having feelings or even to admitting to have certain, very specific, feelings but that's a different thing altogether and not unusual in people like you."