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He scratched at his jaw where the beard grew in especially thick. “How ya figure?”
“Crushes can sometimes—not always—be more about projecting certain values or characteristics onto someone else, especially if it’s a crush on someone you don’t know very well. That person could symbolize something to you, something you long for, maybe even something within yourself that you haven’t allowed to flourish. Something you’d like to be associated with.”
Okay, now she’d totally lost him. He frowned, trying to follow her words. Was she saying that he’d basically imagined that Brenda was the unattainable woman of his dreams?
She could have a point. But this was Brenda McMurray, and he’d been crushing on her from a distance for months now. He didn’t have that good of an imagination.
“Sounds like bullshit,” he muttered. “You don’t even know her. She’s extremely crush-able. And I know that’s not a word, or at least a good one.”
The therapist took no offense. “Let’s try this. What words come to mind when you think of this woman?”
“Some might be X-rated,” he warned.
“I’m a big girl.”
Okay, she’d asked for it. But when he opened his mouth, the words that came out weren’t the lustful ones he’d expected. “Harmony,” he said. “Calm. Like everything’s going to be okay.”
“That’s good. That’s good. From what you’ve said, those are qualities that were lacking in your earlier years.”
He grunted. Until he’d gone on his first hike into the backcountry, he hadn’t understood what “calm” meant.
“Is it possible that what you see in her is something you long for in your own life? That kind of feeling, that everything’s going to be okay?”
“But it isn’t. Hasn’t so far, why would it start?”
“Galen,” she said gently. “We all grow up with our own particular survival strategies that help us navigate circumstances that are beyond our control. Those strategies serve a purpose, but sometimes they linger long past the time that they’re needed. This idea that nothing is okay, would you say that’s still true about your life?”
He thought about it, looked at it from all angles. He liked his life. He had the best job in the world. He got to spend lots of time in the place where he felt the most himself. He got to live in a town that mostly accepted him. His brothers were nearby. Same with his friends. He planned to never leave Lake Bittersweet. He had so much to be grateful for. So why did he still have that fear that everything would get snatched away while he wasn’t looking?
“Maybe it’s not true right now,” he muttered. “But it could be. Anything can happen.”
“Like what?”
“Like what?” Sometimes his mind moved so slowly in these sessions. It was like navigating loose scree on an unfamiliar trail.
“When you think that anything can happen, what sort of thing do you picture?”
He fell quiet. The sort of thing he pictured wasn’t something he liked to think about. In fact, he avoided it at all costs.
Except sometimes, he couldn’t.
* * *
It sucked being the middle child. Thomas was his father’s favorite, Billy their mother’s. That left Galen scrambling for the leftovers. That was why he’d stayed up late four nights in a row working on something he knew his father would love. Marshall Cooper was a charmer, a talker, a partier. The one thing that always made him happy was beer. So Galen was making him a beer coozy.
Knitting one for him, in fact. Their neighbor had taught him how to do it. Galen and Billy usually went to her apartment when they came home from school because most of the time, Mom stayed out late. Since they’d gotten divorced, Dad only came around now and then, and Galen wanted to be ready for when he did.
The coozy was yellow with a black border, since those were his dad’s favorite colors. He was trying to figure out a way to put lettering on top of it. M.C., his father’s initials. What he really wanted was to write “World’s Best Dad,” but that was too many letters, and also a lie. His father didn’t spend enough time with them to be the world’s best, Galen knew that. But he loved him anyway. Maybe if he told him he was the best, he’d want to come home more.
Galen was the only one in the apartment who was awake that night. Thomas was staying at a friend’s, Mom was out cold, Billy fast asleep like the little kid he was. The sound of tapping on the window nearly scared Galen out of his skin. They lived on the ground floor, with a scraggly-grass strip of lawn alongside their three-room apartment.
At first Galen was happy when he realized it was his father out there. Then he noticed Dad was coughing, hacking, his entire chest heaving. Was he sick? He motioned for Galen to let him in the front door.
Once his father was inside the apartment, Galen saw that he was bleeding. Blood came from between his fingers, and Galen thought his hand had been cut. But then he knew it was his stomach, and that was much worse.
“What…what happened?”
His father shushed him, whispering, “Shut up and get the first-aid kit from the bathroom. You know where it is, right?”
