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"This season is gonna be my last, Rebecca. I need to go back…to Kansas, I need to go home to Henry."
Back in her office she can’t recall what she said in response, all she remembers is her brain screaming at her to get out of there before anything started to spill from her mouth, incriminating confessions that she would never be able to take back. She thinks she nodded, not trusting her words, instead putting all of her trust in her legs to carry her back upstairs. She thinks she squeezed his hand, mumbled it’s fine, of course, I understand or something equally untrue and told him they would talk later. She’s certain he saw right through her, just like he always has.
She has no idea how long she’s been staring at the same email when she starts to feel it, the faint slither of panic moving into her chest. Oddly, she’s almost grateful for it, the stark reminder that it’s what she deserves for allowing herself to think his place in her life could ever be more than temporary. She feels the familiar tightness, the invisible hands gripping her lungs and squeezing hard enough that she has to close her eyes in an attempt to steady herself. Her stomach lurches and sits at the top of a rollercoaster, suspended in the terrifying millisecond before the inevitable drop.
I hope you realise, darling, that if you leave, you’ll always be alone…
Words she had worked hard to forget start to push inside her head and she squeezes her eyes even more tightly shut, feeling the burn of tears behind her eyelids. She wants so badly to fight against her thoughts, to stop them invading her brain after so long, but in a few short weeks there will be a gap in her life that Ted used to fill so thoroughly that she hears a traitorous voice in her mind asking if Rupert was right.
She breathes in, holds it, counts, exhales, repeats. She focuses on what she can feel under her fingers – the cool, hard desk. She considers what she can smell – the freshly cut grass of the pitch below her window, the distant scent of oncoming rain. She thinks about what she can taste – the remnants of her morning tea, the hint of bitterness tempered by the salty tang of the tears she hadn’t even realised were slipping down her face and moving uninvited onto her tongue. She fights to breathe. Five minutes pass, maybe ten, and her fingers curl into her palms, her nails pressing into the skin, the sharp sting of pain bringing her back to herself with a jolt.
She feels untethered, desperate, scared of herself, of what she might do, afraid she might get up and run out of here, certain she would never stop. It comes out of nowhere, the fear, and it’s not as common a companion as it once was so it startles her, unnerves her, fills her with guilt.
Are you feeling unsafe, Rebecca? Do you think you might harm yourself?
Questions from a time she was sure she had moved beyond, questions she answered with one lie after another because no, of course not, she was fine, she was always fine, absolutely fine. Memories of a hospital waiting area, alone because she had nobody to call, flashes of a treatment room, insisting it was an accident, it was probably her own stupid fault, she’s an idiot, a waste of space, a terrible wife, not much use to anyone, perhaps it would be easier if she just didn’t exist at all…
She takes another deep breath, desperately fighting against her own spiralling thoughts and reminding herself that’s not how it is now, that nobody in her life makes it their daily mission to hurt her, not anymore. She feels like she’s being ripped in two, like the hands gripping her chest are trying to wrench out her heart, likely a punishment for daring to open it again when it would have been so much easier to keep it locked up. The irony isn’t lost on her that the person she craves comfort from is the very same one who inadvertently broke her heart half an hour ago. God, she might laugh if she wasn’t a little busy crying. She reaches for her phone, finds the number she needs and hits the call button before she can talk herself out of it.
"Rebecca? Is everything okay?" She releases a breath on hearing her therapist’s soft, soothing tone at the end of the line.
"I’m really sorry to call like this but I wondered if perhaps you have any availability today. I mean, it’s not urgent, it’s…" She stops herself, catching her usual pattern and taking a deep breath in again before she continues. "Actually, it is quite urgent, I think. If I could possibly see you today, I really would appreciate it."
"Are you in any danger, Rebecca, are you feeling unsafe?"
"No, no, it’s nothing like that, it’s just…something happened this morning and it’s…I just really think I need to talk today."
"Bear with me for just a moment, let me check my calendar now…how soon do you think you could get here? If by any chance you could make it here by around eleven thirty I can see you. If that’s no good, I may be able to-"
"No, that’s perfect. I can definitely be there by then." She cuts in, glancing at the time and silently thanking herself for finding a therapist close enough to Nelson Road to make it possible. "Thank you."
*
In the car she sends a message to Higgins, telling him she’s not feeling too well so she’s heading back home and will work from there if she’s feeling better later. He replies telling her not to worry about work, he’ll handle her diary for the day and to call if she needs anything. She feels the sting of tears again as she slides her phone into her bag. She’s surrounded by good people, kind people, people who care about her, but today it doesn’t feel quite enough and she hates herself for the fleeting thought that she’d trade them all for the one person she’s about to lose.
In the months since she started therapy she’s worked so hard on breaking old patterns, to find different and healthier ways of coping than the post-divorce habits she had fallen into. Less wine, more mindfulness. Less meaningless sex, more yoga (actually no sex at all, but that’s beside the point). Some days she feels like such a walking self-help cliche she almost rolls her eyes when she looks in the mirror. She knows her self-destruct button still exists, she’s self-aware enough to realise that therapy isn’t a personality transplant, but she’s learning that she doesn’t always have to push that button. Sometimes though the old urges creep up on her without warning and it takes all of her strength to resist, to remind herself over and over of how much better she feels when she’s channelling her control issues into healthy behaviours.
She feels it now like a parasite moving through her veins, taking what it needs. When she first left Rupert she never understood why she needed to hurt herself when for so many years she was married to someone who was happy to do the job for her. The understanding dawned slowly, that it was an outlet for the lack of control she was afforded by the very person she should have been able to count on for support. She has a whole arsenal of tools and techniques now, with therapy to thank for that, albeit reluctantly as fuck to begin with. She remembers how she brushed off Ted’s questions about therapy, dismissing it as unnecessary, pointless. She remembers how proud she was of him when he turned to Sharon for help and she doesn’t know if she ever told him that, too busy feeling ashamed of her own ability to admit she needed help too.
Am I a mess? Of course you are, it’s why we get along.
She smiles thinking about that exchange, about the hurt in his eyes that made her want to scream at Sassy, not for the first time. People underestimate Ted, she knows that, she did it herself in the beginning. They see weakness where there’s only kindness, they see stupidity where there’s sweetness, flippancy where there’s concern. He’s smart, he’s funny, he’s generous, he’s forgiving, he’s so, so beautifully forgiving, and if he’s a mess it’s down to others, not him. And he’s a better person than her, a million times better than her, so much so that in her darkest moments she fears she’s only good when she’s around him, a terrifying thought now that she’s on the verge of a life without him in it.
The parasite keeps moving, slowly but with its customary dark purpose, and her fists clench in her lap, her hands tingling, her fingers yearning to grab something sharp, to break the skin, to release even some of the tension. She reaches into her bag and pulls out her notebook, tearing out a blank page and ripping it into shreds. Slowly at first, she tears long and equal strips, growing faster, reducing the page into nothing but small, ragged squares that she impatiently brushes off the seat and onto the floor, waiting for the sense of relief she craves. She feels despair rising slowly inside her as she realises it isn’t working, not this time. The release she needs is the kind she hasn’t sought out in so long, the very reason she finally gave in to therapy when the urge to hurt herself had returned after the disaster that was her and Sam, and had scared the shit out of her.
She slides her hand under her skirt and onto her upper thigh, scratching lightly with her thumbnail, hoping it’s enough to stave off the need to do more, the urge to cause the kind of pain that might restore her balance. The car comes to a stop at a traffic light and she catalogues her surroundings, realising she’s not far from her therapist’s office, and it reminds her that she reached out, she asked for help. It’s enough to convince her she can make it five more minutes without spiralling any further.
If she is learning anything from therapy, it’s the ability to sit with her feelings without acting on the urges they might trigger. She knows that when she’s overwhelmed she doesn’t need to add to the faded scars that hide beneath her perfectly tailored skirts. She knows when she feels anxious she doesn’t need to skip meals and await the feeling of calm as the inevitable dizziness sets in. Logically she knows these things but long-learned habits are not easy to break, years of reacting to Rupert hurting her by vowing that she could hurt herself even more, a twisted desire to regain her ever-dwindling power.
We can’t flip a switch and make those feelings disappear overnight. It doesn’t work that way. It takes a long time to learn how to treat yourself with kindness when it isn’t something that you’ve ever felt comfortable doing.
Of all the things she’s taken from therapy (and she can grudgingly admit now that there are several), this is the one she returns to most often. Yet again, she feels a knot in her stomach at the thought of living without Ted’s kindness.
She turns to look out of the window, remembering how the distraction of the world going by can help. Her eyes land on a woman wrangling a dog so large in comparison to its owner that she wonders which of the two should actually be on the leash. She silently notes what she sees, the little things, the details that can sometimes take her out of the dark tunnel she has a tendency to slide into.
Large brown dog. Deep red collar. Petite blonde woman. Pretty green jacket. Blue front door. Bright yellow flowers. Six stone steps.
The light turns green and she feels better, marginally less frantic, at least for the moment and when her driver pulls up outside her therapist’s office she feels a modicum of success simply for making it there. She tells him not to wait, she’ll make her own way home, and she watches from the doorstep as he drives away, taking a deep breath as she rings the bell.
*
"Would you like to tell me what happened this morning?"
"Do you remember the first time I came to see you and what I…well, what finally made me realise I needed some help?"
"I do, yes."
"Well, this morning is the first time in a while, a long while, actually, that I felt…" She stops, feeling suddenly like she’s back where she was a year ago, feeling stupid, worthless, hating herself all over again. "Afraid. Of myself, or of what I might…what I could do to myself."
"Can you tell me what triggered those feelings this morning?"
"I…" That moment flickers in front of her eyes, the look on his face as he told her, and she swallows around a lump in her throat. "It’s Ted, he’s…he told me today that he’s going back to America at the end of the season, and I just…well, I panicked."
"Was this unexpected news?"
"Yes?" She’s not sure why she’s questioning her answer, she’s not sure it was unexpected, not entirely, it’s more that she refused to ever think about it. "Well, I suppose in the back of my mind I always knew it was a possibility, I just…I thought the chances of him deciding to stay were equally high. I thought he might have made a life here that he would want to keep living."
"Did you express that to him?"
She lets out a small huff of laughter because no, she expressed nothing of the sort, she barely kept it together long enough to get back to her office before she started to fall apart.
"I don’t really remember what I said, if I’m honest. I probably managed something reasonably appropriate but I couldn’t think of anything beyond the fact that in a few weeks from now he’ll be gone." She pauses as a box of tissues is pushed across the coffee table towards her, her fingers reaching up to find yet more fresh tears sliding down her cheeks. "Thank you. I can’t do that to him, anyway."
"You can’t do what, Rebecca?"
"I can’t make him feel guilty for wanting to go home to his son, I won’t be that person. Even if I do think he might regret it. Not being with Henry, he’ll never regret that, I just think…I don’t know if he realises how important he is to us here, how much I…how much we all love him."
"You’ve talked about Ted in a lot of our sessions, it’s clear he’s very important to you. It’s not a bad thing to tell someone how much they mean to you. You can tell him that without feeling like it’s an attempt to make him feel guilty for his decision."
"I don’t think I can." She shakes her head, the very thought sending a wave of panic through her. "I can’t stand in front of him and pour my heart out only for him to walk away anyway, I can’t do that. I won’t do that, I just fucking won’t."
"You sound angry, Rebecca."
"I am, and I hate myself for that. What kind of person is angry at someone they care about for choosing to go and be with their child? I didn’t think I was that person anymore, not to that extent, anyway. God, I’m trying not to be angry, I really am."
"Feeling a negative emotion doesn’t make you a bad person, Rebecca. Why do you think it is that you won’t allow yourself to feel anger?"
"Because anger has never really served me well. When I was married, if I ever got angry, Rupert’s anger was always so much bigger and I hated that. I hated that even my anger wasn’t enough, I couldn’t even beat him at being angry." She lets out a long breath, swipes a thumb across her cheek, briefly wondering if she’s ever going to stop crying.
"If we remove your former husband from this thought process and you take a moment, can you tell me what’s making you angry? Or who?"
"I’m not angry with Ted. I’m angry that he’s leaving, but I’m not angry with him. I suppose it’s the situation, the way that this is how it has to be, how it was probably always going to be."
"Ted is leaving and you think it was inevitable?"
"His son is 4,000 miles away and even though Ted is a wonderful father even with that distance I don’t think he believes that. So yes, I was an idiot for ever daring to think for a minute that he might see London as home."
"It sounds to me, based on your reactions earlier today, that perhaps some of that anger is directed at yourself."
"Of course it is. I’ve been so stupid, again. I never learn, I just keep opening myself up to situations that will only end up making me miserable. I should have kept him at a distance, seen him as nothing more than a colleague, an acquaintance at best. Then I’d have been sad to see him go but I wouldn’t have felt like…"
"Take a moment, Rebecca. Just breathe and tell me what it is you’re feeling whenever you’re ready."
She takes another breath and wonders for a second if this is how he felt in Liverpool when he asked if he was going crazy. Maybe he was, maybe she is, maybe they’ve both been propping up each other’s craziness all along. She thinks about their first meeting and how she found herself grinning at him, making a silly joke, completely blindsided by the warmth in his eyes, the openness in his smile. It should have been obvious then that she wasn’t going to be able to use him as the pawn in her filthy plan.
"When my marriage ended I thought what I felt then was heartbreak but looking back I know now that it was humiliation, shame, and sadness at wasting so many years with someone whose vows meant nothing to him in the end. What I’m feeling now is what feels like heartbreak."
"And as you know, all feelings are valid feelings."
"I just feel so…stupid, I suppose."
"It’s not stupid to want someone important to you to remain in your life, Rebecca."
"It feels like more…I know how dramatic this is going to sound when I say it, but I can’t imagine my life without Ted, I…" She swallows hard again, yet more tears burning behind her eyes. "I’m not sure I even know how I’m going to survive without him."
"Besides feeling angry, if I asked you now what word describes best what you’re feeling, do you know what that would be?"
"Scared." It hits her like a truck, the fear, the weight of being unable to picture her days without him. She knows the sound of his footsteps on her office stairs, she knows the exact placement of the stubborn lock of hair that tickles his forehead, she knows the sheen of his eyes when he hasn’t slept well. She knows it all, she knows him, despite how hard she really tried not to in the beginning.
"I’m scared that we’ll swear to keep in touch but that once he’s gone, once there’s a distance between us, we’ll drift apart and the occasional message will be all it is, and then eventually there’ll be nothing, I won’t mean anything to him anymore, and I’m-"
She can’t say it, she can’t push the words out past the lump in her throat, she tries to take a deep breath but she can’t do that either. Her chest burns with the effort and tiny black spots start to dance in front of her eyes. As she feels a gentle hand on the back of her neck, easing her head down between her knees, she thinks of the kick Rupert would get finding out she died on the floor in the middle of a therapy session. If she could breathe, she’d chuckle at that, she really fucking would.
"You’re okay, Rebecca. That’s it, another breath, just like that, slow and steady. There you are." She feels a comforting hand on her back, a soothing voice in her ear, and she breathes again. "Stay right where you are, I’m going to get a glass of water for you."
The glass is on the table in front of her as she slowly sits back up, feeling like she’s been wrung out, like every ounce of strength has been squeezed from her, leaving her empty, hollowed out and cold.
"God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what happened." She reaches for the glass and takes a gulp of water, her shaky hands almost failing her as she returns it to the table.
"You have nothing to apologise for." There’s concern in her therapist’s eyes but not pity, and she’s thankful for that. "Take a moment, Rebecca. Or we can stop here, if you feel you don’t want to talk anymore today."
She wishes suddenly that her therapist knew Ted. She’d see then why the thought of being without him is tearing her apart, she’d see what he is, who he is, why he’s so special, why he means everything to her. Without really knowing she’s going to, she finds herself finishing what she started to say.
"I’m scared that once he’s gone we’ll never see each other again, and I won’t ever have told him."
"What won’t you have told him?"
"That I thought he might stay, that I hoped he might stay…for me, because-" Oh. The timing of this realisation could not be worse yet here it is, her head and heart finally in sync on her therapist’s couch, of all places. "Because I love him."
*
She steps outside and the warmth catches her off guard, the surprise ambush of a pleasant April day that feels at odds with her turmoil, the rain clouds that had looked so threatening earlier long gone. She reaches into her bag for her phone but stops herself, deciding instead to leave it turned off for a little while longer. She starts to walk, focusing on her breath, taking as much air into her lungs as she can, a vain attempt at making up for her earlier panic. She has to talk to Ted, she knows that, she has to tell him how she feels, that she supports his decision if it’s what he really wants, but that her heart is breaking. She’s not sure how long she’s been walking before she starts to regret not changing her shoes before leaving the office. Walking home might be just what she needs to clear her head but she can’t do it in these heels.
It’s not a bad thing to tell someone how much they mean to you. You can tell him that without feeling like it’s an attempt to make him feel guilty for his decision.
He would want her to be honest, he would want to know how she’s feeling even if it changes nothing about his decision. She walks as far as the next bench and sits down, sighing as she takes her phone out of her bag. Two missed calls from Keeley, a text message from her mother, and one from Ted. Her heart lurches as she opens it.
‘The Higster says you headed home sick. I hope you’re okay. Let me know if you need anything and I can swing by. After training, obvs, wouldn’t want my boss on my case! 💜’
She doesn’t reply until she’s got herself an Uber arriving imminently and knows she’s on her way home. Then she sits in the back of the car without a clue what to say. Her thumb hovers over the call button but she hesitates. He’s in the middle of training, if she calls he might not pick up or if he does pick up he might think it’s urgent. It might be ‘my heart is breaking, I think I might die without you’ urgent but it’s not ‘in hospital, come quickly’ urgent. Hard to believe that he’s the one who thinks he’s a mess when she’s here in full disaster mode.
‘I’m okay, thank you. I don’t need anything but if you don’t have plans, do you think you could call in after you finish for the day? Only if you’re not busy 💜’
‘Never too busy for you, Boss. See you later!’
She doesn’t think telling him how she feels will change a thing, not really, but after everything he’s done for Richmond, for her, she has to try. If Ted Lasso is about to walk out of her life, the least she can do is make sure he knows he has her heart, her love. She climbs out of the car and allows herself just a few seconds to hope that maybe she has his too.