“Go for it.” She grins with exaggerated glee, the tears still in her eyes. My heart breaks for her, yet I don’t know what to do to help her get over this awful pain. For the moment, we ignore the elephant in the room.
“Turns out I’m a nicer person than you,” I call out to her as I walk down the hall to my bedroom.
“You just keep telling yourself that.”
I turn my desk light on then lie down on my bed and listen to the ping of the rain on my window, taking a deep breath. I try to do my relaxation exercises every night to help my overall anxiety, and the soothing sound of the rain helps.
One of many godsends about college was my access to free counseling. After struggling to control my anxiety since the sixth grade, I was grateful to find ways to not only cope with it, but improve my life. I can thank Caroline for making me go only a few weeks into our freshman year after she found me lying on my bed struggling to breathe during a panic attack.
My therapist taught me to use guided imagery to help reduce anxiety before a potential situation that makes me nervous, but I also like to do it after situations that upset me. I relive what happened and reimagine how I wanted it to go. I focus on the incident in Western civ and how I should have appropriately responded to being late—walking in without feeling embarrassed. When people turn their attention to me, I smile and walk to my seat. But when I think about how I should have reacted to running into Tucker, my anxiety rises. I know the situation would have been humorous to anyone else. Why do I have to make such a big deal of it? But whenever I try to relive how I should have handled it, I see Tucker’s face in the student union. The disinterest. The sadness in his eyes. I hardly even know him so I’m not sure why I care.
Perhaps it’s because I see the same expression every morning when I look in the mirror.
With a sigh, I sit upright and take my long, dark hair out of its ponytail, then run my fingers through the strands. I’m imagining things. That’s the thing about people: you never really know where they stand. You have to rely on gestures and social cues, and still, you really don’t know.
I move to the desk and get out my homework. Anxious prickles have poked the back of my neck since I began thinking about Tucker. I pull out my book and study the equation for my linear algebra class. As I write the numbers onto the paper, my shoulders begin to unfurl, my tension fading away. Some people knit or read to relax. I do math problems. My mother and little sister never let me live it down when I was younger, making fun of my love of arithmetic. With math, as long as you have all the necessary factors, you can find the answer. Life, on the other hand, is so much messier.
I stay up another two hours working on my equations before I quit for the night. When I go into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, Caroline’s exactly where I left her hours ago. She doesn’t comment when I pass her on my way to the kitchen.
I grab a pint of Ben & Jerry’s from the freezer along with two spoons and sit next to her on the sofa, throwing the afghan over my legs. I toss the lid onto the coffee table and hand Caroline a spoon.
She digs in, eating several bites before she finally talks. “I saw him today. With someone else. It’s been three months, Scarlett. Why is it so hard to see him?”
I’ve never been in a relationship that I wanted to stay in, but I know the pain she went through when they broke up. The pain she still goes through. “Three years is a long time to be with someone, Caroline. I’m sure it takes time to get over it.”
“I don’t like feeling this way. It hurts too much.”
“Maybe you should start dating again.” I’m not really sure it’s an appropriate response, but I can’t stand to see her this miserable. This moping person isn’t the vivacious girl that took the campus by storm her freshman year. The girl I knew when we grew up together. Hiding out in our apartment for the last several months has made her more like me, a terrifying thought. “If nothing else, you need to get out and at least go to parties again.”
She sits up and points her spoon at me. “You know, Scarlett. I think you’re on to something. It just so happens I’ve been invited to a party at a guy named Kyle’s house Friday night.”
“Well, there you go. Tina was invited to the same party.”
Her eyes light up. “Oh really? Then the fates have aligned. I’m going to the party, and you’re coming with me.”
My breath caught. “What? Oh, no. No way.”
“Yes! Come on! You never go to parties. You need to loosen up and have some fun.”
“I do have fun.” Caroline went out all the time when she was with Justin. Our freshman year, she invited me to parties, but she soon gave up after my many refusals. Plus, Justin began to suck up more and more of her time, and my lack of a social life was simply accepted.
She scrunches her nose. “With math problems. Don’t you want any boy problems?”
“Look how well that’s worked out for you.” I immediately regret my words, but they are at the root of my hesitancy to date. I can’t afford to get close to someone, to let him get close to me, only to have him break my heart. I’ve made too much progress over the last two years to throw it away over the risk of potential heartbreak. But Caroline thrives on human contact and connections. Staying holed up in our apartment is making her worse.
Tilting her head to the side, her lips pucker. “True. That’s because I stuck with one guy for so long.” Her eyes widen with excitement. “Let’s make it the semester of boys. We’ll go out with a different boy every week.”