smiles at me. It’s been twenty minutes since I took the medication, and I have to say, my body feels pretty good. My legs are over the side of the chair as I rest my head against the back. My muscles that have been clenched for days are finally relaxed and loose.
“I know that missing James is a main source of pain for you right now,” Dr. Warren starts. “Maybe it would help if we talk about him.”
“And why would I tell you?” I ask dreamily, and look past her to where the sun is shining outside the large windows. “You don’t care about us.”
“Of course I do. I’m here to help you, Sloane. I’ve devoted my life to helping stop this epidemic.”
“Right.”
“I’d love to hear how you and James met,” she pressed again.
“He was best friends with”—I pause, a moment of raw emotion capturing me—“with my brother,” I finish.
“The brother who committed suicide?”
I nod, and slowly the warmth of the medication seeps back in and washes away my pain. I’m so numb it’s almost euphoric.
“Do you blame yourself for Brady’s death?”
I flinch when she uses my brother’s name. The fact that she even knows his name unsettles me. I don’t want to talk about Brady, and yet I find myself answering anyway. “Of course,” I say.
“Why?” Dr. Warren leans her elbows on the desk.
“I was there,” I say, trying to explain. “If I knew how to swim . . .”
“Does James feel guilty too?”
“Yes.” I remember how many nights I held James’s head in my lap, watching him cry. Listening to him tell me that he’d let Brady down. Let me down. I hate the image and I try to push it away, but it’s stuck on a continuous loop that I can’t stop. Like how I can’t stop myself from telling the doctor this, even though I don’t want to. I’m compelled to spill my guts—my ravaged, emotional guts.
“So you both took the blame,” she says. “Took the loss hard. I bet that built quite a bond between you and James. Is that how you got together?”
“No. We’d started dating before that.”
The doctor leans forward. “Tell me about it.”
Even though something in my head tells me not to talk about him, my emotions overwhelm me. I miss him, and I want to remember what it was like before. For the first time in so long, I’m allowed to cry. I’m allowed to let it out. So I close my eyes and lean my head back into the chair.
And I tell her about the first time I realized I had feelings for James.
“Let me get this straight,” the doctor says when I finish. “James tried to avoid the relationship at first?”
“Passive-aggressively, yes. We both loved my brother and didn’t want to piss him off.”
“Then how did you go from that to a relationship?”
“It took a while,” I say, glancing at her. “Even that first day was confusing. After we’d gotten back to camp, it was awkward. Horrible. I figured it’d pass eventually. Then that night, the three of us got into our tent, Brady on one side of me, James on the other. It was a huge tent, and Brady was curled away from us. But James lay right at my side, his arm nearly, but not quite, touching mine.
“It felt like forever. All I could hear was his breathing, my breathing. I tried to close my eyes, but my body was tingling. I sensed him looking at me, and swallowed hard, wishing I could be asleep already. And just then, his hand brushed mine, so lightly, it was like nothing at all. I hitched in a breath and turned sideways, only to find him staring back.” I smile. “His blue eyes were so confused, and I thought he was going to kiss me.”
“Did he?” Dr. Warren asks.
I shake my head. “Nope. Instead he swore and then climbed up, grabbing his sleeping bag and his backpack. He unzipped the tent flap and went outside. He ended up sleeping in the car that night.”
Dr. Warren pulls her eyebrows together. “Why would he do that? Were you upset?”
“Well, I definitely didn’t sleep well. I felt guilty and embarrassed. Later James told me that when he touched me, when I looked at him, he got a hard-on.” I laugh.
“So he’s a romantic?” Dr. Warren grins.
“That’s just James. He actually meant it as a compliment. But he was set on not liking me. So he went to sleep in the car. He was