The Fray Theory: Resonance (8 page)

Dylan grips the back of her neck
and pulls her in. And Neve loses her conviction as his body heat seeps into
her. Though he still smells the same—like green apples—he feels infinitely
stronger than he used to. So steady and unyielding.

Incredible, what time can do.

“It’s so easy to do away with things—or
people—that you don’t understand,” he mutters. “To just cast them aside, so you
don’t have to deal with them. But just because science can’t explain something,
doesn’t mean it’s not real… and it sure as fuck doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.”

Welling up, Neve pulls back and looks
up at him. And her lids fall shut as he kisses the crease between her brows—just
like he used to whenever she was upset. And surely enough, true and
time-tested, her frown melts beneath the warmth of his kiss, and her soul is no
longer heavy.

But when he pulls her back in, all
Neve can think of is how she would dream about him almost every night like
nothing’s happened. And how when she’d wake up and remember that he’s gone, it
was like losing him all over again.

“It’s been three years for me too,
you know,” he says, the gravity of his sincerity a complete shock to Neve’s
system. And before she can wrap her head around what that really means, Dylan’s
phone rings in his pocket, shattering the moment.

As their bodies part, Dylan rushes
to silence the call, but hesitates at the sight of the caller’s name. He stares
at his phone’s screen for a few moments, and then much to Neve’s
disappointment, picks up.

“Alex, hey…”

Great
, Neve thinks. What better excuse for Dylan to keep
avoiding the giant elephant in the room.

She starts to pull away with her
eyes on the front door, but Dylan’s hand clasps around her wrist.

“I’d really like that,” he says,
“but actually, Alex—I need a favor.” He locks eyes with Neve. “And I’m not
taking no for an answer.”

The hidden sun has tinted the clouds
a warm shade of gray. And although it’s hard to tell the exact time of day,
it’s far too bright out for no other cars to be on the road. But Neve doesn’t
mind. It’s been a long while since she’s had the road all to herself.

She cranes her left hand out the window of her white Fiat,
relishing the sensation of cool air weaving through her fingers. And although
she has no idea where she is, or where she’s going, she feels perfectly
content. Peaceful even. That is until an exit sign from further up the road
kindles her curiosity.

She squints to read it, but the letters seem garbled. So she flings
her focus onto the exit number instead.

‘EXIT 6’ she reads as the sign approaches. And the moment it
flies past her, Neve notices a young man sitting in her passenger’s seat.

He’s got a stunning profile: straight nose, high cheekbones,
and a chiseled jaw line. And his slicked-back, dark brown hair is resting on
his shoulders. He is wearing a loose, charcoal sweater and black fitted jeans.
And although Neve can’t imagine how, she feels like she has met him before.

“Hi,” she says, but the young man doesn’t respond. So she directs
her gaze back out onto the road.

Another highway sign is fast approaching.

‘EXIT 6’ she reads again as it swooshes past them. But this
time, Neve feels like she has just missed a second opportunity.

“Merge,” the stranger’s steely voice beckons her attention.

Neve braces herself to apologize for missing their exit—or
what she assumes to have been their exit—but the man’s indifference shatters
her resolve.

This time when she looks out onto the road, she realizes she
is speeding up a ramp—one she must have taken without even noticing.

She peeks over at the highway her path is converging into,
and her jaw drops at the sight of thousands of white Fiats idling bumper to
bumper. It’s like staring at a stream of white ladybugs in total gridlock.

“Merge,” the man repeats.

“There’s no room,” Neve feverishly scans the gaps between the
vehicles as the two of them continue to speed into peril.

“Merge.”

“I can’t!” Neve stomps onto her brakes to no avail. “Oh my God—”
she tries to pull the car over onto the side-road, but her steering wheel is
stiff as a rock.

“OH MY GOD!”

Neve awakens to
the sound of an early morning truck backing up. As the veil of her dream is slowly
pulled from her heavy lids, she arches her back and stretches the fatigue from her
veins.

It’s been two
days since Elliot’s celebration of life. And since Neve had a meltdown in
Dylan’s arms.

She’d hoped her
spontaneous visit would put it all on the table. That by standing her ground,
she could finally get some real answers and be one step closer to closure.

Instead, she
unravelled and wept in the arms of the very person who hurt her. She spilled
her closely guarded secrets as the walls she spent years building crumbled
around her.

And to this very
moment, she doesn’t know if her choice to leave was smart or stupid. Had she
stayed, maybe they would’ve talked until all the kinks were ironed out. But
would that have been the best time, given her state of mind?

She rolls to her
side and stares out her window, wondering why Dylan hasn’t reached out since.
But then again, he
did
insist that she calls him after her session today
with Alexander Galen. The emergency session he practically demanded of his own shrink,
barely five seconds into receiving a call from him.

If that doesn’t
show just how much he cares about her, then what will?

She sits up and
sinks into a wilting posture, trying to think of what to wear to her first therapy
session in years.

If Galen is
indeed the best psychiatrist in the city as Dylan put it, then who knows… A
quick visit just might prove to be worthwhile.

σ

Three
hours since she woke up from her highway dream, Neve sits by herself on a Victorian
loveseat in Alexander Galen’s office. She keeps tapping her foot as if it could
shake off her anxiety.

What’s taking him so
long
?
Is this his lunch break
?

She scans his spacious office,
which quite frankly, looks more like the lobby of a luxury hotel. The large floor
tiles are a soft cream color, and a thin strip of black stone is offset from
the ivory walls. The entire space is of a neutral color scheme.

She wonders if it’s
intentional.

“Thank you for waiting,” a
sophisticated African-American gentleman enters.

Neve’s eyes are immediately
drawn to his graying curls and silver eyes. In his beige tweed vest, white shirt,
and brown pants, he is reminiscent of a time long passed… when clothes were
less about identity and more about character.

It’s odd, meeting him. It
is rousing a deep sense of nostalgia. But for what?

A generation she never
belonged to?

“Hi,” Neve rises to
receive Galen’s hand. “Thank you so much for seeing me on such short notice.”

“It’s my pleasure. Any
friend of Dylan’s is family,” Galen smiles as he shakes Neve’s hand. “Please,”
he indicates the loveseat, and then takes his own seat in an off-white tufted
armchair across from her.

Neve retakes her seat and crosses
her hands on her lap. There is just something about Galen that makes her
compelled to impress him.

“I’ve looked over your file,”
Galen crosses his legs as he leans back in his chair. “It’s been a while since
you sought out therapy.”

“Honestly, I sort of lost
faith in the whole process after awhile,” Neve admits. “No offense.”

“It’s not for everyone,”
he puts on his frameless glasses and jots something down on his notepad.

Neve cranes her neck up to
sneak a glance at what he’s scribbling. What could he have possibly deduced
about her already?

“So what brings you in
today?” he looks up.

“Right,” Neve leans back,
her posture stiff. “I know Dylan made it sound like an emergency, but it isn’t.”
She drops her gaze and starts to scrape at her black nail polish. “The worst is
already over.”

“Which was… what?”

And it’s like the words have
wrapped around her tongue, holding on for dear life. “M—my best friend killed
himself. A week ago.”

“My condolences,” he jots
something else down.

Elliot’s somber words flood
Neve’s mind, and the depth of his despair finally dawns on her.

Is this what you get when
you finally summon the courage to seek out your last resort?

My condolences
?

“Suicide is perhaps one of
the most difficult issues to deal with,” Galen says without taking his eyes off
his notepad. “Even the thought of ending one’s life is unfathomable for most people,
which isn’t surprising given that death is the most universal fear known to man.”

“Right. Of course.”

“What do
you
fear
about it?” he stops writing and looks up at her. His gaze is so deep and
inquisitive, it makes Neve feel like she’s curled up at the base of a test tube.

“About death?” she asks.

“Is it the pain? The fear
of the unknown? Leaving everything behind?”

Neve ponders it. “I guess
for me it’s about… time? Or lack thereof, I should say.”

Galen’s unblinking stare prompts
her to go on.

“It scares me that one day
I won’t exist anymore,” she says. “I keep imagining myself on my deathbed, all
alone, with only a few seconds left. And it terrifies me that once I’m gone, I
won’t even be able to know that I
used
to exist.”

“And how do you cope with
these thoughts?”

“I don’t,
I guess. It doesn’t matter how many times I think I’ve come
to terms with it… after a while the thought creeps back and pounces on me like
a cheap jump-scare.”

He laughs. “An interesting way of
putting it.”

“Just to clarify, it isn’t
my
mortality
I’m concerned about. I just need to come to terms with my friend’s suicide.”

“Yes. Of course,” he nods
to himself. “Was there a note?” he glances at Neve over the rim of his glasses.

“No,” she shakes her head,
and watches him jot something else down. “Does that mean anything?”

Galen raises his head slightly,
but his eyes remain glued to what he’s writing. “There’s no formula, I’m
afraid. Everyone is different in how they perceive, perform, and react to
suicide.”

“But don’t people usually
leave a note?”

“If they have something to
say, yes. But for most people, suicide is simply a way out—a means to end their
suffering.”

Suffering
…

The back of Neve’s eyes
sting as she wells up. She swallows the painful pill in her throat, brows
knitted to combat her vulnerability.

“Are you angry?” Galen
asks.

“No,” she says. “Not at
him, anyway.”

Galen’s eyes narrow a bit,
so Neve drops her gaze and starts to fiddle with her jacket’s zipper.

This is it. If she’s going
to bring up her nightmare, now is the time.

“At yourself?” Galen asks
with a voice completely devoid of empathy, and diverts his focus onto Neve’s
history forms.

“I know people tend to
blame themselves in these situations, but in my case it’s warranted.”

“Warranted how?” he looks
up. “Did you know he was suicidal?”

“Of course not,” she
blurts out as though she’s just been condemned. “I mean—this wasn’t his first
bout of depression. He’d been battling it for years.”

“Then why the ‘warranted’
self-blame?”

The image of her eighteen outgoing
calls to Elliot flashes before her eyes.

“I don’t know,” Neve
shakes her head. “I guess on some level, I feel like I could’ve stopped him.”

“You just said you didn’t
know he was suicidal.”

How on earth is Neve going
to explain this to him? “It doesn’t make sense, but I feel like my mind—my
subconscious—somehow
knew
something awful was going to happen. I don’t
know how it’s even possible, but I had a dream about his suicide the night
before.”

“It’s not uncommon for deeply-brewing
concerns to surface when you least expect them. In your case, manifesting in
dreams.”

“But my
dream was too specific, almost identical to how things
went down.”

“And what was it about?”

Galen’s words sound inviting, but
his indifference makes Neve want to drop the whole thing.

She gets that he’s probably dealt
with hundreds of similar cases, but can’t he at least pretend to care?

“
I
was standing high up on a diving board, holding an anchor. And I jumped. And
the next morning the cops told me my friend tried to drown himself at the
university’s Aquatic Centre, chained to a fifty-pound weight.”

Galen’s stare deepens as his eyes
dart back and forth between Neve’s. “An anchor..?”

Neve nods once. “And I remember in
the dream it all made perfect sense. I knew exactly what I was doing. It was
like I’d already accepted my fate.”

Galen removes his glasses, folds
them gently, and slips them into his vest’s pocket. He puts his pen and pad away
and leans forward, his gray eyes filled with not just intrigue, but a deep
concern. “Have you ever had similar dreams in the past?”

“Dreams about death?”

“Dreams that manifest into
reality. Come true.”

A wave of optimism washes over Neve.
It’s like Galen has harvested her very thoughts. “I have. But just a few,” she understates.

“Can you give me an example?”

She’s already here. Might as well take
advantage of this opportunity. “I don’t know if this is relevant, but when I
was a kid, I had a dream about lying at the base of a pool.”

Galen leans back and crosses his
legs. “Go on.”

“I couldn’t tell if the pool was filled
or not, but I couldn’t move. It’s like I was dead, but still aware of everything.
And I remember this dark figure walking up to the edge, looking in.”

Galen rests his elbow on the
armrest and nestles his chin between his thumb and index finger. “Did this
figure frighten you?”

“No,” Neve admits right away. “I even
remember wanting to let her know I’m fine, but I couldn’t talk. I remember
wondering if that’s what death is like.”

“For everyone to think you’re
gone, even though your awareness remains?”

“You could say that,” she allows,
her focus sinking through the air. “It was nice, somehow, to know that even
though I’m dead, I can still see and hear. That I still have—” she searches for
the right words.

“A vantage point?”

“Yeah,” she looks up. “That I’m still
here
.”