Page 66 of All's Well that Friends Well
“You liked how I looked in your shirt,” she points out, and I roll my eyes.
“Yes, well, we’ve already established you’re beautiful,” I say with exasperation. “There’s a difference.”
“You think I’m beautiful,” she says gleefully, dancing on her toes.
“Cut it out.” I push the words past my lips. But I can feel the heat creeping up my neck, and my ears are starting to burn.
This woman is going to be in my office every day starting on Monday. She’s going to be following me around, helping me with everything, her scent all over the place and her hair gleaming in the corner of my vision.
She’s going to be smiling at me. Hitting me with her infectious, persistent cheerfulness. Edging into my space, asking me questions I don’t want to answer, breaking down my defenses with that innocent look in her eyes.
Her beauty is something I can resist. And her spark? Her sweetness? This incredible, inexplicable pull she has on me?
I’m going to have to resist those too.
JULIET
On Thursday Susan Miller—whoI’m learning is a jack of all trades, and who I’m secretly hoping will get together with Rod—gets me squared away with the new paperwork I need to change jobs. She informs me that part of my job will be reporting to Rod about Luca’s progress, since hiring a PR assistant was Rod’s idea in the first place. I suppress a smile at how Luca will take this news—the news that I’ll basically be tattling on him if he fails to improve.
It would make me feel kind of icky if I didn’t have complete confidence that Luca can change. I’ll get in there and help him, and everything will be great. I know he has a good heart—he just needs some fine-tuning externally.
Susan Miller does not seem to share my excitement. The entire time I’m doing my paperwork, she doesn’t smile—not even once. Like Luca, I think she’s someone who needs to be exposed to persistent sunshine in order to warm up. Luckily, that’s my specialty.
I just see no reason I can’t be friends with everyone who isn’t gross or actively mean. Everyone brings something to the table. Everyone has strengths and talents and wonderful facets of their personalities.
Well—maybe not Quincey Brewer.
He’s been acting very strange the last four days. I see him watching me out of the corner of my eye, but he startles when I look at him, his cheeks turning red, his shoulders curled in, and then he scurries away.
Even the sight of him is enough to bring his words back, ringing in my skull. As a result I haven’t slept well the past several nights, plagued by old anxieties.
I keep telling myself they’re nothing, but those emotions, the intrusive thoughts—they’re loud. I find myself avoiding reflective surfaces so I won’t fall down the rabbit hole of focusing on my appearance, but when it comes down to it, fixation is fixation. Thinking about my body in any capacity still feeds the shadows, and it’s starting to wear on me.
The shadows, of course, love when I start spiraling. That’s when I grant them power, when I let them convince me there’s no climbing out of whatever pit I might find myself in. They want me to hide, to wallow in shame, to feel weak and unredeemable.
I’m not sure how to control the shadows. I don’t know how to control my feelings or the lies my brain has started screaming at me. I do have a grasp on what behavior is healthy, though, so I follow that light blindly. I set a timer on my phone and eat when it goes off, healthy foods from the plan I made with my dietitian back in the day.
And for every lie my mind tries to tell me, I counter with a truth.
You need to be perfect.
This life was not meant for perfection. I am flawed like everyone else, and that’s okay.
You’re not good enough.
My worth is inherent, bound in my existence. There is no such thing as “good enough.”
People are judging you.
Their judgments have no impact on my life. Who are they that I should care what they think?
You should be ashamed of yourself and your struggles.
It’s this last one I have problems with. Because I say I don’t believe it; I tell myself I’m not ashamed. But I don’t follow through with my actions.
I hide. I haven’t told my sisters about the things I’ve been through, even though I know they would be my biggest supporters.
Maybe Ishouldtell them. What would they think?