Stars in Your Eyes(83)

Customers start to trickle in when Ashley flips the sign on the door. I make coffee with a smile. A real one. Maybe it’s ridiculous, that working in a coffee shop would make me so happy. There were days when I didn’t think I’d feel happiness again. There were multiple nights, when I arrived at the wellness clinic, that I considered suicide. But I was surrounded by a support system. I didn’t trust anyone at first. I thought that they—people who worked there and my roommate and other patients—were all plotting against me. Looking for moments to take photos and share my shit on socials. Took me a while to realize no one there wanted to hurt me. Took me even longer to learn it was okay, it really was, to talk about everything that’s happened.

I was in the clinic for a year and a half. There were days when I was screaming and fighting anyone who tried to talk me down. There were days when I sat in a circle that I’d started to not find cliché anymore and said that I would never know how to love. Days when I started to feel peace. Real peace.

After La Jolla, I spent time traveling. I wanted to get to know myself better. Figure out what I liked and didn’t like, away from LA. I ended up in Florida for a bit and visited my mom. “You look happy,” she said.

Yeah. I think I am happy. It’s not like the depression and anxiety has disappeared. It’s not like I can change the fact I was sexually abused and raped. But I’m feeling safer, I think, in my body. Enjoying that I’m still here.

Sarah leans against the counter beside me, bored. It’s amazing to me that she figured out her own dream and made it happen. “How’s the querying going?”

We’ve spoken a couple of times now about the fact that I’m writing. I don’t want to act another day in my life again. I’m not even sure I ever enjoyed it. But while I was traveling, I tried out some new things. Scribbled out a couple of screenplays. Yeah, I don’t know. I think something could be there.

“Heard back from an agent,” I say. I feel an old instinct to shrug rising, but as my therapist, Amy, called me out on, my shrugging is a defense mechanism. “They’re checking it out now.”

“That’s great,” Ashley says, coming around the counter. “Congratulations!”

“Thanks.”

Sarah pats my hand. We’ve flirted, on and off. I’m not sure it’s a good idea, sleeping with my boss. I’ve been on a few dates since I got to NYC. I’ve made it clear that I want to get to know the person over coffee or dinner or something, instead of having sex with them right away like I might’ve done a few years ago. Another defense mechanism Amy helped me see more clearly, even though I’d started to recognize it myself, too.

My brain learned from an early age that sex is how I connect with others. I’ve been in a mixture of freeze and fawn response. I offer people my body, hoping that this will placate them and that they won’t hurt me. I offered strangers and audiences my entire identity, letting them define me as an asshole and abuse me in punishment, thinking that this would equate to safety. Even if it hurt, it still felt safe, because that was all I’d known until Mattie. Everything new he offered—safety and love and real connection—felt scary and threatening and impossible because I hadn’t experienced it before.

God. I can’t believe I lived that way for most of my life, in a constant state of trauma response, but that was another biggie at the clinic. No point in shaming. We did what we had to do to survive. We figured out how to cope. “Good for you, Logan,” Amy told me. “You learned how to live in a world that was harmful to you. Now, it’s time to thank your younger self for helping you survive this long. Now, it’s time to find another way to exist.”

I’m lost in thought when the door opens again with a jingle. I look up, smile on my face, ready to take the next order. My mouth freezes, half-open.

Sarah whispers beside me. “Who is that? He looks really familiar.”

He hasn’t even seen me yet. He’s still staring up at the menu above the counter. He has his shades on, but it’s a pretty shitty disguise. Still, this is New York. Most people really don’t give a fuck about who you are.

He looks like he made up his mind. He steps forward, glances at me. “Caramel cappuccino, please.” He looks at me again when I don’t move or say anything, then stiffens.

“Hey, Mattie.”

Sarah snaps her fingers. “Matthew Cole,” she whispers.

Matt slips off his shades. “Logan?”

I raise my hands. “In the flesh.”

“What—what the hell?” He stares at me so hard that I’m not sure he believes what he’s seeing.

He looks good. He’s built out a little more. Must be for the last role he had in Fish Mate as that detective. I tried to distance myself from him. Not to look him up or follow him along in the news. It still hurt, no matter how much healing I’d done, the way things ended between us. But I was excited for him. I really was. A fucking Oscar?

“It’s good to see you.”

“What’re you doing here?” he says. “How long have you been in New York?”

“A few months,” I say. He looks shocked and amazed and maybe a little angry.

Sarah makes an oh sound, and I know another piece of information has clicked into place for her: this is a reunion between two ex-boyfriends. “Logan, why don’t you take your break early?” she says.