Page 40 of Codename: Dustoff
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO
Distracted didn’t even sum up with accuracy how I felt. It was as if my brain were cable television, and my emotions couldn’t settle on a channel. I’d pick up my phone to call Amelia, to see if she had a moment to calm down and examine the situation logically and talk myself out of it.
She was right, I didn’t understand what it was like to be a soldier. I had no idea what she went through. I couldn’t fathom the strain it puts on someone psychologically to watch your best friend die. But, that didn’t mean that I didn’t want to be there to support her. To hold her when she was scared. To shoulder some of that burden that she carried alone.
“Henry,” I asked. “How do I know the difference between coping and care? If you say my coping strategy is adapt, but life in general requires you to adapt to various situations, how do I know when I’m doing it for good and when I’m doing it wrong? Because right now I feel like I’ve failed at everything you’ve tried to teach us.”
Amelia didn’t show up for group. Everyone noticed her absence. Though no one said anything to me directly, I could feel them all staring at me. I could sense the judgment in those looks, silently blaming me. They could stare at me all they wanted. I didn’t care. My concern was Amelia and whether she’d get in trouble for not attending her required meeting, all to avoid seeing me. I should have stayed home. Told Gemini to tell her that the meeting was hers.
“Why don’t you tell me what the situation is. It’s hard to be able to give you a clear delineation without knowing the situation.”
Everyone around the table perked up. Nosy assholes. I rolled my eyes and dove into our fight. I left out the sex, and all of the parts of our story from Saturday night that were wonderful but ours alone.
“Let me get this straight,” Nancy spoke up first, “you went behind her back, called her C.O. and RSVP’d for a wedding she explicitly told you she didn’t want to attend?”
I nodded. I couldn’t look her in the eyes. I already knew what her face would look like. The same way Gemini’s had, the same way everyone else whom I’d told looked at me. Like I’d been crazy, and overstepped, and that they would be pissed off too. Message received, loud and clear.
“I wanted her to stop resisting.” I explained, “I was trying to show her that her fear was unfounded. I didn’t want her to miss an opportunity to celebrate that she is in fact, alive. She made it through.”
“But you took away her choice,” Elyse interjected. “If you want her to go, fine—make it known that you object. Explain to her, over and again why you feel she isn’t acting in her best interests. But don’t force her hand. Especially when you two barely know one another. She had very solid reasons for being anxious to attend. You should have respected that.”
“How did you two leave things?” Henry asked. “I’m assuming based on her absence today, that things aren’t well.”
“She doesn’t want to see me anymore.” My throat closed, and a ball of emotion threatened to choke the life right out of me. “I messed up. I just wanted something good for her. I’d hoped that if she went to New York, saw Jones and the other guys form her unit, she’d realize even if it was in the smallest way, that what happened was unpreventable, not her fault, and that she had an entire unit who experienced the same things she did that she could lean on.”
The whole group debated my actions. I wished I’d have kept my damn mouth shut. I didn’t think I could have felt any worse than I had before the meeting started. Boy was I wrong.
* * *
“You been moping around here like a fifteen year old girl who ain’t got a date to the prom.” Finn pushed the back of my head as he walked through the kitchen on the way to front of house. He looked at me over his shoulder, and apparently didn’t like what he saw because he did an about face and pulled up a stool next to me at the prep table.
“What’s up?” he asked, taking a knife and the peppers I’d been washing and began slicing.
“You know what’s up.” Instead of sounding frustrated, too much emotion came on the heels of that statement, making me sound like I was on the verge of tears. “She doesn’t want to see me anymore, Finn. She didn’t want me.”
Either.
It was on the tip of my tongue to say, but bit down on my tongue to keep it tucked inside. I never thought this would be how our relationship ended. If it was even a relationship. Maybe I’d been so desperate to be in a relationship that I’d fooled myself into believing I had one when I didn’t.
“Except she did, Stubs.” Finn collected all the peppers he’d sliced and dumped them into one of the prep bins. “She did want you. You pushed. You pushed so fucking hard that you pushed her away.”
His words stung. No they hurt. Burned even. I opened my mouth to explain, but he pointed his chopping knife right at me, continuing.
“You sure do think pretty poorly of yourself. For someone who everyone thinks has it all together in terms of living life regardless of the one arm and everything, I’ve never seen anyone think so little of themselves.”
“The second the going got tough, she bailed, Finn.”
“The going got tough because you made it that way. And she bailed because you didn’t listen to her when she told you that attending that wedding was too hard for her.”
“Isn’t being in a relationship all about helping people see when they’re making a mistake? Pushing them out of their comfort zone because you know that the thing they fear isn’t as scary as they’re making it out to be?”
Finn set his knife down, wiping his hands on the towel on the table. I tracked him as he got up and poured himself a cup of coffee, taking his sweet time making it the way he liked before coming back and sitting down. Even still he pulled at his beard between sips, watching me instead of saying anything.
“Remember when Gemini left?” he finally asks. “She left that damn Dear John on my kitchen table and just took off. Imagine what would have happened if I hopped a flight to Chicago, stormed her sister’s house, forced her to pack up her bags and come back right that instant because I knew that I loved her so damn much and that she loved me the same. Do you think me forcing her hand would have made her very accepting of our relationship?”
“Since you didn’t even know her area code, I’d think finding her sister’s house in a city as big as Chicago may have proven a bit of a challenge for you.”
Finn huffed, squinting his eyes at me, letting his coffee cup clank into the bottom of the sink as an exclamation point to his annoyance with me.
“Point being, she came back on her own. She had to work through her own shit. I missed her something fierce, and thought about her twenty-four seven, but I knew I couldn’t force her to come to a decision. That’s what you did to Amelia. You’re trying to force her to snap her fingers and suddenly see things as you do. She’s got a lot of things that need healing, Emmett—not just that leg, or in her mind, but also in her heart. She’s seen more loss than any of us could probably tolerate. She saw it up close and personal, Emmett. That’s gotta do some bad shit to your insides. If anyone needs some grace and some space, it’s her.”
Grace and space. Even Finn was starting to sound like Henry. I could practically see that written up on a whiteboard at the next meeting after the holidays.
“Just like you need to give yourself some grace my friend. You are worthy of being loved, regardless of who it is you fall for. But Amelia and you, you fit. Give her some space. Let her work some stuff out. Don’t be pushy. And for god sakes, stop trying to force her to go to that wedding.”
He tapped on the top of the table as an end to the conversation. He grabbed a clipboard hanging over the sink, I assumed to go do inventory in the bar. Even after I only had the sound of the swinging door to keep me company, thoughts of Amelia still teased me.
I needed to find a way to make it right.