I can’t move. I can’t speak. My lips have frozen with my hope. Why would Lo even want to return home to me? He just escaped hell, who would want to enter another one?
“Lily! I’m not playing around. Open the fucking door.”
I open my mouth to reply, but words stick in the back of my throat, too strenuous to produce. Speaking takes strength that has eked away with my confidence. My bottled insecurities attack me like a parasite with no thought but to destroy until I’m weakened, withered and dead.
Moments later, I hear the door unlock. I assume he grabbed a key from somewhere. Maybe a steward.
“Jesus Christ,” he curses and kneels beside the bathtub. I blink slowly, still drifting. My cheek presses to the lip of the tub, but my arms still wrap around my chest. My last safety blanket is myself. Right now, that’s not very reassuring.
I listen to Ryke’s voice as he dials a number on his cell. “Dr. Banning?” What? Rose must have given him my therapist’s number. “I’m Lily Calloway’s friend…I found her in a bathtub. She’s unresponsive, and…” His usual stoic voice falters just a little. It should pull me up from my stupor, but I am so, so very lost. I just need to return home somehow. I need to find a reason to get up. “…I’m worried about her. Can you talk to her for me?” He pauses. “I don’t want to touch her, but I don’t see blood. I don’t think she hurt herself.”
I wouldn’t. Would I? No…
I feel the cold phone being pressed against my ear.
“Lily?” Dr. Banning’s calm voice fills my head. “Can you hear me? What’s wrong?”
Everything. This. I pray for strength, but it won’t come. I want to stand, but my legs won’t move. I need a reason to continue… “I’m sorry I woke you up,” I barely whisper. The words burn my throat, and I shut my eyes as a couple tears escape.
“Don’t be sorry, Lily. That’s what my emergency line is for, okay? Can you talk to me? What are you feeling?”
“Embarrassed.” I squeeze my eyes with two fingers. I’m so ashamed of what I am and what I do. How can I ever stop? It seems…like a mountain I have not been tasked or equipped to climb.
“What else?”
“Tired. Ashamed. Upset.”
“You’re going through a lot right now, Lily,” she tells me. “It’s normal to feel these things, but you have to stay strong. Before you feel out of control, you need to talk to someone and tell them what’s bothering you. It doesn’t have to be me, but I’m always here. How did this start? Is it about Loren?”
“Yes. No…I don’t know,” I mutter. I pause and open up a little, forgetting that Ryke squats by the tub only a foot away. As I talk, a weight begins to slowly （very slowly） rise from my chest. It’s still there, but it lessens just a little. “I’m going to have to stop masturbating, aren’t I?” I lick my chapped lips and cringe at my own words.
“Do you think it’s unhealthy or a gateway into other compulsions?” she asks, her tone serious.
“I do it,” I choke, “and I always want more. It’s never enough.”
“Giving something up isn’t the same thing as losing control. It’s the opposite, Lily. You’re taking back control.”
I try to relax by her statement. While powerful, the full force of it breezes through me and then drifts away. I imagine Rose saying something similar. I hear them. I see the strength in the words. I feel it, but I can’t hold onto it and believe it the way they can. I don’t know why that is.
“Everything is going to be okay,” she emphasizes. “I know it may not feel like that right now, but in time, everything will be okay. You have to start believing you can make it there.”
“I know.”
“Okay, good. Can you give the phone back to your friend?”
Ryke peels the phone from my ear and presses it to his own. I watch his face as he listens to Dr. Banning. I can sit up now. Even if everything still hurts, I try to numb the pain with her encouragement. Be strong, Lil, Lo would tell me. When I come back, I’ll be strong with you. I wipe the rest of my tears, imagining those last words. Praying that’s what his response would be and not the awful your problems are too much for me right now. God, please, let him come back to me.
“Yeah, I can do that,” Ryke nods, his eyes falling to the tiled floor. “He’ll answer. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. You have no idea.” He hangs up the phone.