Reaching Out

Later that night, I thought about the video I watched of Leah and Armadillo as I wandered around the community, doing my nightly check. It felt wrong to spy on them, but I couldn’t help it. The entire walk back to my office drove me crazy. I didn’t know what to think or what to do. I was absolutely furious that Armadillo had made his intentions for Leah even clearer than they were the first time he had mentioned wanting to initiate a relationship with her. And just like the first time, I was pissed off. It wasn’t like I could just tell him to leave her alone. Everyone knew that I didn’t date. Within the community or outside of it. Not that I left often. My foot hit something hard, and I cursed under my breath as I looked up at the house I was standing in front of before stepping back.
“Fuck,” I muttered as I tried to move even further away.
Sugar started barking, and I spun on my heels to hurry away from Leah’s house, shaking my head. Fuck. I had it bad. Every single time that I got lost in my thoughts, I found myself at her doorstep. God, she was going to think I was a stalker.
“R.H.M.?” She called out.
I froze. Fuck. Busted. I slowly turned around to look at her.
“Hey, Phoenix. Are you alright?” I asked.
She tilted her head as Sugar glared at me from her side. “Are you?”
No, no I wasn’t. “Yes. I’m just doing my nightly check of the community,” I told her, fisting my hands in my pockets.
“Oh. Alright. I thought—never mind, it doesn’t matter. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Phoenix.”
She flinched before going back inside, trailed by Sugar, who paused at the door to look back at me, baring her teeth at me. I sighed as soon as the door was shut before continuing on my way. An hour later, I had finished my check and was heading back to my office so I could listen to my recording and lay down not to sleep. I found myself pausing beside Leah’s house again to study it. It was fully dark inside, without even a flicker of a candle to light it, but outside the front porch light was on, illuminating a piece of paper taped to the front door. I glanced around before curiously approaching the door silently, careful to avoid making any noise so I didn’t set Sugar off again. I lifted the top half of the paper up to see what she had written on it.
*‘I had high hopes for you. I guess I was wrong.’*
*‘Not Your Princess Anymore,’*
*‘Phoenix’*
My jaw clenched tightly as I read her words before spinning on my heels, leaving the paper taped to her door. She may not have said a name, but I knew that stupid fucking note was meant for me. I turned my head to glance back at the house, and I could have sworn that I saw the living room curtains move, so I stopped to watch them for a moment. When I didn’t see any other movement, I jogged back to my office. To say that I was even more pissed than I was when Armadillo staked his claim on her was definitely an understatement. I settled into my office chair before pulling up the voicemail.
*“Brennan? Help me, please. I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m so sorry. For everything. I’ll go to rehab. I’ll go to NA. I’ll get clean. I’ll do whatever you want me to do. Please. I’m scared.” I closed my eyes in preparation for what came next. “Girls, tell Daddy we’re on the way home and that you love him.”*
I paused it right before the breaking of glass and the crash to close my eyes while the sounds of my girls’ voices floated around in my head, taunting me with everything I wanted but knew I would never have. A few tears escaped from my eyes, and I sighed. God, I missed them. They were the people who I loved the most, and now they are gone. Fuck. I hated this. Every night it was the same thing. I would listen to the recording and cry over not having them. Maybe everyone was right. Maybe this was unhealthy. I just didn’t know how to let them go. I picked up my phone to call Ramira.
“Hello?” She said sleepily.
“Hey, sis,” I told her.
“Brennan? Are you alright? Is Leah? Do you need me to come to Eden?” She asked, and I could picture her sitting straight up with a worried look on her face.
“Everyone at Eden is okay,” I told her softly. “But I was wondering if you had time to talk or if you had Dale over.”
“Dale is here, but it’s okay. I can talk. What’s going on?” She inquired softly.
“Am I wrong for holding onto Diadra?” My words hung in the air, and I started to get a little anxious as the silence dragged on. “Mira, did you fall asleep?”
“No, Brennan. I was going to my office. And no, I don’t think it’s wrong that you are holding onto her. I think how you are holding onto her is wrong,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“You hold onto her as a way to keep women at arm’s length. You use her memory as an excuse to not fall for someone. You use the memory of your girls as another reason to not live your life. You never let anyone in to try to help you. You can be happy, brother. It’s not wrong to want to be happy. Just like it’s not wrong to still grieve over the family you lost. We all grieved for them. Just like we all want to help you. It’s not something we can force you to do. You have to want to heal. You have to actively work on your healing. It’s not something that will happen overnight. It will take months, maybe years, of hard work. You will have setbacks, and you will be hurt, but you will heal. You will get to the point where you are not consumed with guilt. You will start to remember the good times. You will start to be able to think about them without crying.” She paused to take a deep breath. “But like I said. It’s something that you have to be willing to do, and until you are 100% ready to work on it, you will not be successful.”
“Hmm,” I said as I pulled up the video stream from Leah’s room so I could watch her even breathing. “And what is the first step to healing?”
“Talking about them. It doesn’t have to be to me. It can be to anyone that you trust. If you want to talk to me, I will make time for you. You know that. All you have to do is let me know,” she told me.
I sighed as I picked up a pen to tap on my desk as I continued to watch Leah. Fuck. What was I doing? Was I really willing to open up about all the things that I had kept buried because Leah was angry at me? Or was I just tired of feeling like I did? Could I really heal enough to be happy? And if I did, would I be able to move on enough to let myself pursue Leah? Or was I going to just continue being a coward and let her go?
“Brennan?” Ramira called my name softly.
“Yes?”
“I asked you if we were having this conversation because of Leah.”
“Umm, no. Maybe. I don’t know!” I huffed.
“You shouldn’t make this decision because of Leah. You should make it because you want to heal. If you make it because you want to be with her, it could backfire on you,” she warned me.
“What do you mean, it could backfire?” I asked.
“It could seem like you are making progress, but it might not be true progress. It might end up causing other issues, like anger, possessiveness, depression, or worse,” she told me.
“What do you mean by worse?” I questioned, frowning.
“It might make you resentful of her. You might turn obsessive over her in an attempt to keep her with you to avoid something happening to her, and that in turn would make her resentful of you. I saw how you looked at her; I know that you don’t want her to be resentful of you.”
I sighed as I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. “I understand the risks. But I still want to give it a try.”
“Because of Leah?”
“No, Mira, because of me. If I get Leah in the process, then fine. If I don’t, I already knew she deserved better than me,” I told her.
“Alright. When do you want to start?”
“Whenever you are available,” I answered.
“Wednesday at 9AM?”
“That’s fine.”
“Okay then. We’ll speak twice a week for an hour at a time, okay? We’ll do Wednesday and Friday of this week, and starting next week we will do Monday and Thursday. How does that sound?”
“Sounds good. Thank you, Ramira.”
“Don’t thank me, Brennan. You know I will always help you. Call me if you need anything between our visits.”
“I will. I promise.”
“Oh, and one more thing before I let you go, I would just like to say that whatever your reasoning is for wanting to try to heal, I’m glad for it. It’s been long overdue for this. If it is truly Leah, I’m just glad that you are accepting that you like the girl. Goodnight, Brennan. I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too, Mira.”
I hung up before looking back at the screen where Leah was still featured fast asleep. I raised my hand to stroke across her figure on the screen, sighing before laying my head down as the sound of her breathing started to lull me into sleep.
“I don’t know what you’re doing to me, Princess, but you’re doing it, and I refuse to let you give up on me. Somehow you got under my skin without me noticing. Now that you have, I’m going to do what I can to keep you there. I can’t send you away. Nor can I just sit back and watch you fall for someone else. And I plan on showing you just how much you are still my princess.”