Page 11 of When He Calls

An hour on the call. The phobia hierarchy comes out in pieces. What my siblings did to me under the guise of ‘fun’. Masks first. Then dark. Then sudden sounds. Then costumes. Then orange. Each one costs something to say out loud. Orange is the worst to admit. A color. A whole color, off limits, and saying it to another person, even a voice on a phone, makes my face hot. Eleven years of explaining and the humiliation hasn't dulled. If anything, it's worse. At six the fear was new and forgivable. At twenty-seven it's supposed to be managed, something a person has worked through, and the fact that a color can still make my palms go slick is the kind of failure that compounds every October.

Quiet on the other end of the line. His quiet is different from other people's quiet. Other people's quiet is dead air. His quiet has a direction to it, turned toward the silence instead of away from it.

"Halloween. Something happened on Halloween."

No follow-up. No what happened. No can you tell me more about that. He doesn't ask, and that's the right answer. It goes into my chest and sits next to the other thing that's been sitting there since last night.

"You don't have to tell me anything you're not ready to tell me," he says.

"I know."

"I mean it, we go at your pace. You’re not just a file number."

Not building a file or a diagnosis out of the pieces of a person. Just here. Just a voice.

Relief floods me and panic subsides as I try to open the box I’ve kept sealed.

"Eleven years," comes out of my mouth. "Eleven Octobers. Therapy, exposure work, EMDR, medication. All of it helps. None of it touches the body part. My brain gets it. My body doesn't care. I told you it started when I was six, but I didn’t start therapy until sixteen. Sometimes I wonder if waiting so long just fucked me up more."

"Everything happens in the time it happens."

"I was doing good, I really was. And then my therapist moved. She got it. She was the one person who didn't make me feel broken for being afraid of October."

"You're not broken."

"I'm on a hallway floor because of a movie trailer."

"And you called instead of sitting in it alone."

The call winds down. Heart rate normal. Hands the right color. Bean asleep in my lap, her body heat soaking through my sweatpants. The hallway floor is just a floor again. My body is just a body.

"Same time tomorrow?"

One beat. Two.

"The line's open."

"That's not what I asked."

"Yeah, Milo. Same time tomorrow."

The call ends. The hallway goes quiet. Five minutes on the floor, not because of the panic but because of what comes after. The space where his voice was. Bean shifts in my lap, sighs, resettles. My hand goes to her ears and she leans into it, the most uncomplicated thing in my life.

The laptop is dead on the couch. I'll deal with it tomorrow. The bedroom is dark, the bed cold. Bean jumps up, circles, presses against my legs. The warmth starts at my shins and works its way up.

A standing appointment with a crisis line operator. Neither of us pretending that's normal.

Phone on the nightstand. His number in my favorites. The favorites list has four entries: Noor, Bean's vet, the Thai place that delivers until midnight, and the Harbor Crisis Center. Three of those numbers connect me to people who know some version of me. One connects me to a person who knows the version that's real.

Thirteen more days until Halloween. The number should fill me with dread. Tonight it fills me with something else. Same weight, different temperature. Anticipation. Not for the holiday. For the calls between now and then. For the sound of my name in his mouth, the way it lands like it belongs there.

It takes up space that the anxiety would normally take.

I like that.

I like it more than comfort explains, and some nights, after we hang up, the thing I replay isn't the words. It's the sound.

Even if it’s only temporary and just for now.