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Maybe she should have said yes, but she’d been feeling better after her medication kicked in. Maybe she would be fine.
She wished she was. She wished she was the kind of person who could do anything at any time and never get overwhelmed. It would make her life so much easier.
People were packed in, pushing Daniel and her close together. But his body against hers didn’t feel as good as it should. It felt like she was trapped.
Her hands shook, but she kept them out of her sight. She didn’t want to do this here. She didn’t want to panic or overreact.
She was fine.
Her mind flashed to a scene from long ago. A party Andrew had taken her to. She’d been having a day like this, where she couldn’t handle loud noises. He’d told her that she needed to buck up and deal with it.
And she told herself she could handle it. The night had ended in disaster. She’d found a room to hide out in, only for one of his friends to come in and hit on her. Andrew had been so mad. Not only that she had snuck away, but that she’d let someone else make a pass at her. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t wanted to be hit on.
It mattered that she hadn’t been stuck to his side. It mattered that she got overwhelmed. According to him, every mistake could be traced back to that.
But this wasn’t that night. She knew that. Yet every hand that brushed a part of her body felt foreign. It felt like that guy who couldn’t take a hint.
Amelia’s heart rate was through the roof. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think.
She could see her family, and they were all fine. None of them were bothered. Not even Daniel was. He was heading for them, seemingly unaffected by it all.
Amelia tugged out of his grip. She couldn’t go over there. It didn’t matter that they were her safe people. She didn’t want the questions. She didn’t want anyone to look at her.
Daniel noticed it instantly. He turned, an eyebrow raised again. At his gaze, her mind flashed to Andrew’s much crueler one.
And she ran.
As she did, a single word played over and over in her head.
Crazy.
“You’re just crazy, Amelia!” Andrew had said many years ago. “You’re making things up, just like you always do! You’re trying to throw me under the bus for your own problems.”
It didn’t matter that she was running because she was back in her old apartment, dishes piled high as she tried and failed to keep up on chores. Andrew didn’t help—his job was too demanding, and he wanted her to do it since she was only a full-time student. But she couldn’t. No matter how hard she tried, no matter what vile words he called her, she just fell behind.
She couldn’t handle it. She couldn’t handle anything.
Why else would she freak out while driving, unlike literally everyone else she knew? Why else would she not be able to handle a perfectly normal evening at a taco shop? Why else would she fake an entire relationship?
Amelia felt like she was being attacked, but it was in her own mind. Her breaths came out ragged, as if she had run for miles and miles without a break.
She headed for the beach, which had plenty of seagrass to hide in. She was secure and alone. It was the perfect place for her panic.
Here, she didn’t have to see her mother’s eyes widen and look at her with pity or see the way her dad jumped in to try and fix it whenever she freaked out. She didn’t want John’s attempted kindness or Daniel’s confusion on why she was upset.
She fell to her knees in the sand, her entire body shaking. Her face felt numb, like she couldn’t gulp enough oxygen. Her old therapist would say she needed to deconstruct what she was freaking out about one piece at a time, but she couldn’t. Not when every little thing was an opportunity to find panic.
“Amelia!” Daniel called. He was looking for her, but she mentally curled in on herself further, hoping he wouldn’t find her hiding spot. She heard footsteps nearby, so close that he had to have seen her. But she couldn’t look.
She couldn’t even look.
A warm, solid hand lay gently on her back. She jumped as if it were the precursor to something much more painful.
It should have made it worse. She could easily find so many things to worry about if she thought hard enough.
But Daniel’s hand felt different now that they were alone. The touch was enough to remind her that her thoughts weren’t real. She wanted to berate herself for needing this, for doing this in the first place.
Those thoughts then passed her by, and for once, she wasn’t dragged with them. They were like the current, always moving, yet she was planted in place.
