Chapter Text
Eddie is coming off from an exhausting 12-hour shift when it happens for the first time.
His shift was non-stop calls all day, so all Eddie wants is to get home, greet Christopher, scarf down a quick dinner, then go to sleep. He unlocks his front door, expecting to see Carla packed up and ready to go home. What he sees instead is Marisol sitting with Christopher on the couch with his school work strewn out on the coffee table in front of them.
“Eddie! You’re home,” Marisol says brightly, then gets up from the couch to greet him at the door with a kiss on the cheek.
Eddie breaks out from his haze to ask, “where’s Carla?”
“I told her to go home early. I thought it would be nice to surprise you. Plus, I got to spend more time with Christopher.” She doesn’t seem to notice how thrown Eddie is by the change of plans from his quiet night alone.
“That… sounds good. Thanks, Marisol,” Eddie says with his best smile, trying to sound genuinely grateful. He should be grateful; his girlfriend wants to spend extra time with him and his son. He doesn’t know why it feels so suffocating, he tries to push those feelings as far down as possible.
“Oh! You must be hungry, there’s leftovers in the fridge. I made some enchiladas.” Eddie hears his stomach rumble at the sound of that. “Christopher and I can sit at the table while you eat, make it a nice family dinner.”
The suffocation that Eddie tried to push down then comes back with full force at the word family. Marisol probably didn’t mean a thing by it, but Eddie is suddenly transported back exactly to where he was with Ana only a couple years ago.
Family.
It feels like an accusation, he hates it. His breathing starts to shallow feeling like something is sitting on his lungs.
“Dad?” he hears Christopher ask from the couch, reminding him that Christopher is still in the room. He can’t be here anymore, he doesn’t want to scare him again.
“I- I need a second,” Eddie gasps out and stumbles towards his bedroom. He thinks he can hear Marisol call something out from behind him but everything has gotten so blurred that he doesn’t know what she said. He locks the door behind him then slides down it. Each breath is getting harder, only tiny gasps of air getting in.
This is a panic attack, he tells himself, you’re not dying. But even that knowledge is little comfort because it only sparks the question of why.
His heart is beating out of his chest, thundering in his ears, blocking out anything else around him. He tries to grasp at the carpet to ground himself, but it does little to help. His mind is roaring in a jumbled mess of anxiety and he cannot do anything to stop it. He can only keep taking his gasping breaths and ride it out.
A couple minutes later the worst of it passes and Eddie finally feels like he can breathe again. His heart is still racing but it serves as a reminder that he’s alive.
He hadn’t had a panic attack since breaking up with Ana. And now their back. Because of his new girlfriend. He puts his head in his hands in anger. He wants to break something, punch something. Anything to get it out. His eyes drift over to the wall across from his bed and is hit by a wave of guilt for those instincts. Remembering the way he completely lost control and smashed it up. He swore that he wouldn’t ever let himself get that violent ever again. It had scared Christopher half to death.
Oh god, Christopher.
Christopher is still out there, probably worried out of his mind at the way Eddie locked himself in his room. Eddie can’t afford to be having panic attacks, more for Christopher’s sake than for his own. He needs to figure his shit out so he can get them to stop once and for all.
He needs to go see Frank again.
Fuck.
~
The chairs in the waiting room outside Frank’s office haven’t gotten any more comfortable since Eddie was there last. He squirms, both because the chair is uncomfortable and because he wishes he didn’t need to be here at all. The chair squeaks accusingly at him.
Things were going fine. Good. He thought maybe his panic attack was a fluke. Just a temporary slip up because he really isn’t the type of man to panic. He was able to manage it just fine on his own thank you very much. But the panic attack with Marisol – it snuck up so suddenly that he couldn’t just keep everything under control.
And he scared Christopher in the process.
So, he’s here, ready for Frank to fix whatever is wrong with him.
Frank’s door clicks open and the woman who had been talking with Frank before him quickly leaves. Eddie looks down to avoid eye contact.
“Eddie?” Frank asks and Eddie looks over at him, “Come on in.” The chair squeaks again and Eddie stops himself from scowling back at it.
Luckily, the chair in Frank’s office is a cozy grey armchair. Eddie doesn’t let himself sink into it, though. Instead, he perches on the edge of the chair with his hands clasped in front of him and his foot uncontrollably tapping away on the ground.
“I haven’t seen you in a while, what has brought you back now?” Frank asks.
“I had another panic attack,” Eddie sighs. He doesn’t look Frank in the eyes as he says it, worried that Frank will be disappointed that he failed. Eddie looks at the plant sitting behind Frank.
“I see. Can I assume that this is the first one in a while?”
“Yeah. I thought I had gotten over them, I was doing so much better.” His annoyance unconsciously seeps into his words.
“Do you remember me telling you that panic attacks never really go away? They can happen at any time, they don’t necessarily mean that something is wrong.” Eddie nods but still doesn’t look at Frank, keeping his eyes on the plant, instead. He feels uncomfortable under the earnestness of Frank’s gaze.
“I think something is wrong with me, though,” Eddie admits. He knows that the panic attack wasn’t random. Frank shifts to lean forward.
“What makes you say that?”
“My panic attack. I think it happened for the same reason I had my first one. My girlfriend, Marisol, she surprised me the other night, she had cooked dinner and wanted to spend time with me and Christopher. It should’ve been a nice evening, but something in me just freaked out. I felt so suffocated that I couldn’t breathe.” Eddie feels guilty admitting that out loud, it sounds crazy to him.
“Your first panic attack, am I right in remembering that it was related to a fear of commitment?” Eddie nods. “And now you’ve had another because you feel suffocated by your girlfriend.” Eddie thinks that if he stares at the plant any harder it will set on fire. Lucky that he’s already a firefighter.
“It sounds so stupid when you say it like that. I want to be dating again. I want a long-term girlfriend. I want a complete family again!” Eddie feels himself getting worked up, he clenches his jaw and takes a deep breath. “I need to figure out how to make the panic attacks stop. Both for myself and for Christopher.”
“While I can’t promise to make your panic attacks stop, I can certainly help you to figure out where this panic is stemming from.” Eddie should have expected that Frank doesn’t have a magic cure for panic attacks, but it still annoys him all the same. But any help is better than none. “Why don’t we start by talking about what you mean by wanting to have a complete family again.”
***
Mother’s Day had rapidly become Eddie’s least favourite day of the year. It had been less than a year since Shannon had died, and Eddie felt completely helpless in how to help Christopher. When he got home and Christopher had told him that they had made Mother’s Day cards in class today Eddie felt his heart fall out of his chest and shatter on the hardwood. It only got worse when Christopher shyly brought out the card and the words “I MISS YOU” were printed in bright pink block letters on the front.
Eddie had no idea what to say, mostly frozen in the moment before eventually stumbling out a “this is beautiful” and planting a firm kiss on Christopher’s head. That had been about 10 minutes ago, and Eddie now sat at the kitchen table, glaring accusingly at the card he had propped up across from him.
How was he meant to do this alone? He was just one man; he could never fill the gap that Shannon left in both his and Christopher’s lives. At least when she had left the first time, he had known that she was just existing somewhere else, as mad as that had made him. And now? Now she was just gone. Forever. Dead.
He almost wished she had never come back. At least then Christopher wouldn’t remember her like he does now.
It’s easier to miss someone who was always a ghost than one who suddenly became one.
But that’s not fair. A boy should remember his mother, even if only for a short time.
He could not keep staring at the offending Mother’s Day card, it wasn’t doing him any good. Instead, he steeled himself to go and talk to Christopher. This was not something Eddie could sweep under the rug; the pain would never go away, and he would not be able to live with himself if he allowed Christopher to sit with this pain. He is far too young to cope with something so large. Especially not alone.
Eddie quietly knocked on Christopher’s door before peeking his head in. Christopher looked up from the toy dinosaur he had been playing with on his bed.
“Hey buddy,” Eddie said as he took a seat on the foot of Christopher’s bed. He felt so inadequate, he had no idea what he could say that could fix this. Nothing he could say would ever be enough to fix this. That was exactly the problem.
“Are you sad?” Christopher asked.
Eddie considered lying for a moment on instinct, but he shoved that urge back. “Yeah, I’m sad. Your card is beautiful, I hope you know that I miss your mom too.” He needed Christopher to know he wasn’t alone, that if he ever wanted to talk about it that Eddie would be there.
“I wish she was still here like all my other friend’s moms.” Christopher’s voice was so small and sad. Eddie took a breath to stop himself from crying. This is the one thing he can never fix. Everything is broken and it cannot be put back together. Nothing he could say could make it better because Christopher was right, it wasn’t fair that all his other friends got to keep their mothers while Christopher lost out.
“I know, me too.” Eddie leant over to press a firm kiss to the top of Christopher’s head. There was so much that was unspoken because it was just too painful to speak of. And Eddie was meant to be the adult in the room, he was meant to be the strong and reasonable one. Instead, he just felt helpless as their shared pain overflowed into the room. “I love you so much, Christopher.”
“I love you too, dad.”
***
Eddie recounts the memory of that day to Frank, stressing how unfair and hopeless everything felt.
“Shannon dying… it broke things in a way I can never fix.” Frank nods understandingly. “But I want Christopher to have some sort of mother figure in his life. No matter how hard I try to be a good father to him that’s the one thing I can never do.”
“You think that having a girlfriend will fill that role?” Frank asks as if it isn’t the obvious solution. This gives Eddie some slight pause.
“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. It’s not like Shannon can come back so it’s the next best thing.”
“Relationships shouldn’t be built on only being second best, Eddie.” Even though its not Frank’s intention, it feels condescending to Eddie and he has to stop himself from instinctually lashing out. He knows that Frank’s not wrong, but it feels wrong to be exposed like that. What is he meant to do instead? Raise Shannon from the dead?
“I know that. It came out wrong. I just mean,” Eddie pauses not actually certain what he means. There’s no doubt that whoever Eddie dates will always being fighting for her place against the ghost of Shannon, but he also knows that isn’t fair. “I mean that I want to be able to make a relationship work without having a panic attack, that’s all.”
“Alright. We can start there.”
~
“Goodnight, buddy,” Eddie tells Christopher as he finally makes his way to his bedroom. It was a long process of convincing him to get to bed as it always was when Buck was over. Christopher would always ask for another round of whatever video game he was obsessed with at the moment and Buck was seemingly chronically incapable of telling him no. Soft-hearted bastard. “I need a beer, do you want one?” Eddie asks while walking over the kitchen.
“Sure, if you’re offering,” Buck replies, sitting with his arm hung casually over the back of the couch. Eddie grabs two beers and pops off both lids.
“You really need to stop giving into him when he wants to play another round,” Eddie says with faux exasperation. He sits on the couch next to Buck, who takes his beer with a smile.
“Who could say no to that cute little face!” Buck protests.
“Don’t let him hear you say that,” Eddie says with a chuckle, “he’s not cute anymore remember? He’s too old for that.”
“Oh of course, how could I forget his protests. He’s basically an adult already, he’ll be giving you grandkids before you know it,” Buck jokes. Eddie drags his hand down his face and groans.
“Don’t even joke about that. He’s already growing up too fast.” Every day it seemed like even more time had passed than the day before. His life was whipping by, leaving him behind while everyone else grew up around him.
“Oh, I know, it feels like just yesterday he was wanting me to read him a story before he went to sleep,” Buck says fondly. Eddie smiles, Buck always was better than him at story time. Apparently when Eddie did it, he ‘couldn’t get the voices right’. He feels his cheeks getting warm and takes a big swig of his beer to cool them down.
“Maybe someday you’ll have kids of your own and you can force them to listen to you read them a story.” Buck, who was mid-drink, sputters and coughs. Eddie doesn’t know where that came from, Buck doesn’t even have a girlfriend at the moment. Who can he possibly be having kids with?
“What?” Buck asks once he gets his coughing under control.
“I don’t know. You’d be a good dad, that’s all.” Eddie has very suddenly lost control of the conversation, speaking without thinking. He curses himself for becoming weirdly sentimental.
“Oh. Um. Thanks,” Buck says, clearly as thrown as Eddie. When Buck regains his composure, he jokes back “or you could just have another, and I can just poach them like I have with Christopher.” Eddie wishes he could evaporate on the spot.
“Yeah, right,” Eddie says sarcastically.
“I don’t know. Maybe if things go will with Marisol…” Buck wiggles his eyebrows but his light-hearted nature is undercut by Eddie groaning at the memory of his panic attack. “Oh. Sorry. Is something wrong?”
“No, nothing,” Eddie lies at first before chastising himself. It’s just Buck, why is he trying to deflect? “Actually, that’s not entirely true. I had a panic attack a few days ago.” Buck sits up from where he was slouched against the panic of the couch, his face filled with concern.
“You had a panic attack? And you think it was about Marisol?”
“Calm down, Buck, this isn’t a big deal.” Eddie doesn’t want Buck to worry about him, he feels analysed under Buck’s concerned eyes. He chooses not to tell Buck that he’s gone back to therapy, not wanting to stress out Buck than he already has. It would seem like a bigger deal than it actually is. “She just surprised me after a long shift and it caught me off guard. Something in my head just, burst, I guess. It was nothing. But now everything feels awkward.”
“Hey,” Buck says, shifting slightly to knock his shoulder against Eddie’s, “don’t beat yourself up about it, brains are weird sometimes, it’s not your fault.” Eddie smiles at the reassurance, enjoying the comforting warmth of Buck’s presence. Buck was just a very comforting guy, nothing more to it.
“Yeah. Thanks.” Buck grins back at the smile Eddie shoots him.
~
The next Wednesday Eddie finds himself back in the squeaky chairs in the waiting room to see Frank. He considered not returning, just giving up so he doesn’t have to sit through the discomfort of being analysed for his deepest flaws. Exposing himself like that feels so unnatural, he’s always been the type to grin and bear it. Until he completely breaks down.
He doesn’t want to break down anymore. He wants some sense of security over himself. And he certainly doesn’t want to have another breakdown where Christopher can see.
So, he’s back.
It isn’t long until the door to Frank’s office opens up and Eddie makes his way inside, once again making sure not to look at the client before him.
“Last week we discussed how you want to find the roots of your panic attacks, isn’t that right?” Frank asks after Eddie takes his seat in the armchair. Eddie nods.
“Yeah, and how I want to make them stop.”
“Why don’t we start by you telling me again about the first time you had a panic attack.”
***
Eddie’s head dropped back onto the hospital pillow. A panic attack? He hadn’t been lying when he said he doesn’t panic. How can he panic at nothing in a clothing store when he held people’s lives in his hands every day with no problem. The idea that it was about the sniper was, frankly, ridiculous. He had been to war it’s not like the sniper had been his first time getting shot. And it was far from the most stressful thing he had ever experienced.
Also, the sniper attacks had been months ago, why would he only panic now. In a clothing store. But the nurse had seemed to think that made sense and Ana had looked over at him with such pleading pity in her eyes that he couldn’t help but to agree.
The nurse left the room and Eddie turned his head to look Ana in the eyes.
“Edmundo,” she said, clasping her hands around his.
“I don’t want to worry you,” Eddie said, “either of you.” He shifted his gaze to look at Christopher. “I’m sure this was just random; I promise you this is nothing.”
“You said you thought you were dying!” Ana protested.
“And now I know I wasn’t, I was just being dramatic. Anyway, on the off chance this happens again I’ll know that I’m not dying, and it will be fine.” Neither Ana nor Christopher looked convinced. He couldn’t even imagine how terrified Christopher must have been. He had already lost one parent, he doesn’t deserve to go through the fear of losing another. The guilt bubbled up inside him seeing the fear behind Christopher’s eyes. “Hey Christopher, go find my wallet and buy anything you want from the vending machine,” he said with a smile. He needed to get Christopher out of the room.
“Really?” Christopher asked, his face lighting up with a smile. Eddie smiled back and motioned his head to where he assumed his wallet was lying. Christopher found it quickly then went to leave the room. “Thanks, dad!”
As he left, Ana moved into his chair, closer to Eddie’s head.
“You know he’s going to buy the least healthy thing in that machine, right?” Ana said with a smile and Eddie let out a small laugh. Leaving Christopher unsupervised around snacks was always a dangerous game.
“I know, I just wanted to see him smile,” Eddie admitted, “I hate seeing him worried like this. I don’t want to scare him.” Ana looked at him sympathetically and brushed her hand lightly through Eddie’s hair. Eddie made sure to not shrink away from her touch.
“If you don’t want to scare him a good place to start is not acting like you’re having a heart attack in the middle of a store.” Her tone made Eddie feel as though he was one of her students. Eddie groaned and closed his eyes. “You need to talk to someone, I hate seeing you like this, you really scared me back there. It’s not normal to get shot on the job of course it’s affected you!”
“You’re right,” Eddie agreed even though he still didn’t believe that it had anything to do with the sniper. Things had been going well, he certainly hadn’t felt overly stressed. He tried to think back to what had happen in the store right before he started panicking. That clerk had thought Ana was Christopher’s mother and he had just– lost it. It was like he was some sort of sleeper agent and that word had activated something deep in his subconscious. His body and mind had temporarily been not his own. He certainly couldn’t admit that to Ana though. Tell her what? The thought of building a family with her was so offensive to his subconscious that he literally felt as though he was going to die?
“You’re right,” Eddie said again, “that sniper must have affected me more than I thought.” He knew it was a lie when he said it, but it felt safer. It was easier to let Ana believe that was the truth. Or maybe Eddie was wrong, it really was just about the sniper and what that clerk had said didn’t have anything to with his panic attack. He hoped that was the case.
***
“I knew at the time it wasn’t about the sniper, despite what I tried telling myself and others,” Eddie tells Frank, “it was so clearly about that man calling Ana Christopher’s mother and yet I still made the attempt to convince myself that wasn’t it.” Frank nods understandingly, as he had while Eddie was explaining his memory of the day.
“Why do you think you were so resistant to admitting at first?” Frank asks, Eddie shrugs.
“It was easier, I guess. I knew it wasn’t normal to be having such a strong reaction to the thought of commitment and I wanted to hold onto our moment of peace for a little bit longer.” It was also easier on himself trying not to think about that. Not feeling broken for a little while longer. Not feeling like a failure to Christopher.
“But that didn’t work. It wasn’t much longer until you broke it off right?” Eddie shakes his head.
“No, that was only a couple weeks later. I was living in constant fear of another panic attack, and I would hate to scare Christopher like that again.” Every day felt like he was looking behind him, watching just in case he could see another panic attack before it hit him again.
“It was just about Christopher?” Frank asks, but Eddie can tell by the tone of his voice that he already knows the answer is no. Eddie sighs.
“I felt so guilty for scaring him that I would do anything to make them stop. Including breaking up with Ana. But also… Christopher loving having Ana around was probably the only reason we stayed together as long as we did.”
“So you knew the relationship wasn’t working even before the panic attack?” Eddie stops himself from making a face of annoyance. He hates admitting that because it feels so irrational, there was nothing wrong with their relationship that would have made him feel uncomfortable in it. And yet, he did.
“I didn’t know why, but yes. The relationship was never going to work out. I never loved her like I was supposed to,” Eddie admits. It was easier at the time to believe that going through the motions was enough, especially since it made Christopher happy. But as soon as he finally broke it off, he couldn’t help but feel as though a weight had been lifted off his shoulders, even if it made him feel guilty. Things would have been much easier if he could have just loved Ana like he wanted to.
~
After Eddie leaves his session with Frank, he can’t stop turning over in his mind what they talked about. He feels like a failure, like something is wrong with him at a core level. He just wants to be a good boyfriend, not some weird shell of a man going through the motions of a relationship.
He’s acting off at work during the week. He obviously doesn’t let it impact his abilities as a firefighter, throwing himself into all of the calls, as he always does. He wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he let his personal life affect saving the lives of other people. But he can’t help but act more withdrawn back at the firehouse. Whenever anyone asks if something is wrong, he blames it on feeling tired or thinking he might be starting to get sick.
His home life isn’t much better. He’s pulling back from Marisol, and she’s started to get annoyed, not understanding. Eddie can’t explain why because all of his excuses feel either cheap or far too revealing. His relationship with Ana just slipped through his fingers, and now his relationship with Marisol might be going in the same way.
He doesn’t have a healthy medium in his relationships. Either he tries to jump in all the way, before it is reasonable to do so, or he is withdrawn and dismissive. He feels uncomfortable trying to naturally let things grow and take their course.
All he does in his relationships is lie that he’s all in, then act shocked when it falls apart.
The swirling mess of thoughts in his head at least mean that he has a lot to talk to Frank about.
~
“I just don’t understand why I can never seem to make a relationship work! It’s not like I don’t want to try,” Eddie says.
“What spurred you into these relationships in the first place? Why don’t you start with Shannon,” Frank asks.
“I mean Shannon was…” Eddie starts but then can’t seem to find the words to continue. It feels too big to put into words. “Shannon was there, and then things got all too serious and suddenly we were married with a kid.” Eddie shifts uncomfortably in his chair; he doesn’t want to talk about Shannon yet. It’s a road littered with landmines he can’t step on. Frank clearly senses his discomfort and takes pity on him.
“Alright, let’s put a pin in Shannon, what about with Ana?” Eddie is relieved. He can leave that untouched for a little while longer. Ana, she’s easier.
“Everything just seemed to line up so perfectly with Ana. It had been a couple years since Shannon had died, anyone with eyes could see that she was gorgeous, and Christopher already loved her. It was so easy to slip into that relationship.”
“But what about how you felt?” Eddie pauses, not entirely understanding the question.
“What do you mean how I felt? That is how I felt.”
“No,” Frank says gently, “that seemed like a lot of external factors but what about what you wanted, internally?” Eddie turns Frank’s words over in his mind. Internally? He was relieved he supposes, that the stars aligned for him in a way that he didn’t have to try. That’s the cliché, isn’t it? That love will find you when least expect it? Except it didn’t, because Eddie didn’t love her enough to commit.
“I suppose I didn’t feel much of anything, only that it was what I should be doing.” The next logical step.
“Healthy relationships aren’t built on reluctant agreement, Eddie.” The way Frank says his name makes Eddie squirm; it feels too exposing. “It doesn’t sound like you ever wanted to date her much at all.” It makes sense when Frank says it, but that doesn’t mean Eddie has to feel happy hearing it. If it was anyone else he would immediately push back at the accusation, but he doesn’t think that Frank will believe him.
Eddie’s always tried to write off those dramatic and passionate love affairs as things made up for fictions and fantasy fulfilment. Nobody ever actually has a storybook romance like that. But that doesn’t mean all relationships are built out of logical convenience either. His mind drifts to Maddie and Chimney. It certainly wasn’t convenient for them to start dating, not with the dark cloud of Doug looming over their heads. They both nearly died for it. And then again, when Chimney left to find Maddie and bring her home from Boston. That isn’t something you do for someone you’re just dating out of convenience. It would have been a hell of a lot more convenient for Chimney to stay at home rather than trying to live out of a car with a baby.
“I dated her because it was the right thing to do.” Frank looks unconvinced at this and Eddie can’t blame him.
“Right. What about Marisol? Did you start dating her for the same reason? Because it felt like the right thing to do?” Eddie wants to protest. The situations were entirely different. But the underlying drive… perhaps it wasn’t as different as it seemed.
“It was… I let my Tía Pepa get in my head,” Eddie admits.
“What do you mean by that?”
***
Eddie gripped the steering wheel harder than he needed to as he pulled out of Pepa’s driveway.
“It breaks my heart to see you alone,” she had said, “It’s been too long. You need to do something or you’re going to be alone forever.”
His knee-jerk reaction was annoyance. It’s not like it’s his fault that he’s alone. Shannon had died, there was nothing he could do about that. Plus, he already has a son, so he’s never really alone. Things had been going well, he had found his footing and settled into a comfortable rhythm. And yet Pepa was so convinced that he must terribly lonely.
Is it possible to be lonely without even realising?
Alone forever.
Those words felt so bleak. So big.
They also felt completely false.
Even so, maybe she was right. But a blind date? Really? Is there anything more mortifying than apparently looking so sad that his own Tía has to step in and take matters into her own hands?
He needed to figure out a way to let Vanessa down easy.
~
When he left the restaurant, the first thing he felt was relief. He hadn’t even needed to awkwardly let down Vanessa, she had totally stolen his thunder.
The second thing he felt was dread when the reality hit him that one unsuccessful date wasn’t going to stop Pepa on her crusade to cure his apparent chronic loneliness.
So what? He’ll just go on another date and let her down easy again. Or maybe they’ll let him down first again, that would make his life easier.
~
He couldn’t do it anymore. The dates were exhausting, they always felt like such a performance even when he had no intention of them working out. Moreover, he couldn’t take seeing Pepa’s disappointed face every time he had to tell her that it wasn’t going to work out. Each time he saw it he regretted letting the date slip away from him. Maybe she had been right and he was lonely, it had started to feel as though he was standing in his own way trying to figure out how to end the dates before they had even begun.
Why was he being so resistant to the idea of getting into a new relationship? It had been years since Shannon died and even though it hadn’t worked out with Ana, they had broken up well over a year ago, plenty of time to get over whatever hang ups had been bothering him so much.
He needed to open himself up to the next opportunity that came along.
He just hoped it wasn’t a blind date set up by his Tía, that wasn’t a story he wanted to tell on a regular basis.
***
“I suppose you’re just going to tell me some therapy speak about ‘external factors’ again aren’t you,” Eddie says when he finishes. It doesn’t sound great all laid out in the open like that.
“I don’t think I have to; it seems like you already know,” Frank says and Eddie purses his lips. He doesn’t need Frank to tell him all the things he’s done wrong, he can do that just fine on his own.
“Yeah alright, so I only started dating Marisol because I was tired of being called lonely and hated going on blind dates. So fucking what?” Eddie doesn’t mean to get annoyed with Frank, he’s only doing his job. The point of therapy was to talk about his problems even though explaining them made him itch from the inside out. He hates shining a light onto this part of his life, it’s almost as if there is something hiding beneath the surface that doesn’t want to be found.
No. That would be crazy. There’s nothing there.
“Don’t you think that being motivated by others rather than yourself is a contributing factor towards your panic attacks?” Right. The panic attacks. That’s why he’s here isn’t it? To make them stop? Still, Frank spelling it out so obviously – it irrationally makes Eddie feel as though he’s being coddled. He hates being coddled. But maybe it’s what he needs, he’s finally getting somewhere in therapy to solve the problem he had in the first place.
Eddie takes a breath to centre himself and calm down. Frank doesn’t need him lashing out, he’s just doing his job. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Eddie admits with a sigh. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get annoyed.”
“It’s alright, that’s a very natural reaction to confronting uncomfortable topics in therapy. You’re far from the first person to get worked up in a session.” That helps. Frank’s probably seen people at their most extreme, a little annoyance wouldn’t have even registered. Eddie reminds himself that he’s here out of his own choice. He wants to be here. He wants to get better.
Even if that means looking where he doesn’t want to.
~
During a lull in the middle of his shift Eddie finds himself sitting at the kitchen island while Bobby busies himself preparing dinner. If anyone can help Eddie figure out the mess of feelings that therapy has stirred up in him, it’s Bobby. Bobby understands loss. And he understands building himself back up and finding peace and security.
“Hey, cap?” Eddie says and Bobby pauses what he’s doing to look over at Eddie.
“What’s up?”
“How did you know you were ready to start dating Athena?” The question clearly throws Bobby off guard for a moment and Eddie wishes for a moment that he could take it back. He worries that Bobby might have found it too personal. Bobby sets down the knife he was holding to walk over to face Eddie, giving him his full attention.
“Where is this coming from?” Bobby asks in a concerned tone.
“I’ve just been… thinking recently. About my relationship with Marisol. And about Shannon.” Bobby nods understandingly.
“Have things not been going well recently?”
“They’ve been alright.” Eddie knows this isn’t the whole truth. Things have been getting worse recently, he’s seeing her less and less often and when they do spend time together it’s increasingly brief. Eddie is spending his time trying to find reasons to stay. “I just don’t think I got into the relationship for the right reasons. I worry I’m just trying to fill a Shannon-shaped hole.”
“That feeling will never go away, Eddie. Grief isn’t something you can ever truly move on from.” Bobby has experienced more grief than Eddie can even imagine. And yet here he is, the strongest man Eddie knows.
“Then how do you do it? How can you feel like Athena isn’t just a replacement wife? That May and Harry aren’t just replacement children?” It isn’t a delicate way to put it and Eddie can’t help but notice the way Bobby slightly flinches. He wishes he thought more before he spoke.
“Because what I have with Athena, May, and Harry is something new. They can never replace what I had back in Minnesota, nothing will ever be able to fix that pain. But Athena makes me want to be a better man. She makes me feel like every new day is one worth living and not one where I want to pick up a bottle and drown my pain and grief.” That makes Eddie smile, but it’s a smile tinged with sadness. He doesn’t know the feeling of finding a girlfriend that drives him to be better.
“Thanks, cap. That helps.” It helps point out what Eddie is missing.
“You’ll be alright, Eddie. You’ll find someone who makes you feel like that too. Just be sure your open to them, whatever form they come in,” Bobby says and gives him a pat on the shoulder. Whatever Bobby was trying to hint is completely lost on Eddie. He gladly accepts the reassurance anyway, there was something about Bobby’s confidence that made Eddie really believe what he said.
~
When Eddie returns to see Frank the next week, he didn’t even consider not going. He’s settled into a routine with Frank, it will feel wrong if he gives up now. Besides, he has too much on his mind.
“Do you think I should break up with my girlfriend?” Eddie asks after he sits down in his usual chair.
“I can’t tell you what to do, I can only help you decide what you want, Eddie. I know we talked last week about the pressure you felt to begin dating again, is this related to that?” Logically Eddie knows that Frank would never have just given him a solid answer, but it still annoys him slightly anyway. But it’s probably not a good sign that he would have just agreed if Frank said yes.
“Yeah. At least a bit. I’m just not sure the relationship is working but I don’t know why. It’s not like there’s anything wrong so I should want to stay and make it work, right?” He doesn’t like being the type of guy to give up, he’s a fighter.
“Looking back can help us figure out what is going wrong now. How did the relationship start in the first place?”
“I technically met her on a call. Her brother got trapped in her attic and we basically had to destroy her house to get him out. So the rest of the team and I came back to help repair all the damage we’d done. That was meant to be the end of it, we didn’t even exchange numbers or anything. But then when I was out shopping I saw her in the same store and it felt like some sort of sign. I went up and talked to her, we gave each other our numbers, and it just fell into place from there.”
“Do you think the pressure you’d already felt to get into a relationship spurred you to talk to her in the store?” The obvious answer is yes. Eddie is not a superstitious guy, he doesn’t like to believe in fate and signs. And yet he was so willing to believe that running into Marisol again actually meant something rather than being random coincidence.
“Yeah. Definitely.”
“You said that things fell into place, what do you mean by that?”
“I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Christopher was the one who finally gave me courage to actually call her. She was so excited when she picked up the phone, telling me that she was about to call herself, so things just felt right. We arranged a first date right then.”
“And the first date went well? It made you want to pursue a relationship with her?” Eddie almost rolls his eyes. The fact that he’s dating Marisol should be a clear enough answer. But then his mind starts to actually drift back to that night.
***
Eddie arrived at the restaurant 20 minutes early. He couldn’t stomach pacing around his room for a single second longer. He sat in his car and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath in.
This is a good thing. He reminded himself. This is what you want, this is what Christopher wants, this is what your family wants.
Marisol was going to arrive soon, and he wanted to be inside already, waiting at the table for her. Trying to make a punctual impression on the first date. He’d spontaneously stopped for flowers on the drive, not letting himself over think it. Bringing flowers is what a good date does, and he needed this to work out.
Tía Pepa’s voice was ringing in his head “you need to do something or you’re going to be alone forever”. As soon as she had said it he couldn’t forget it.
Alone forever. He shivered.
And he wasn’t just doing this for himself, he needed to do this for Christopher’s sake as well. Christopher had been the one to encourage him to pick up the phone. He surely must feel an incompleteness in his family without a maternal figure. No son would be so invested in wanting his father to date without some sort of subconscious drive. He would do anything for Christopher and Christopher had wanted him to pick up the phone, so he did.
And Marisol is a good choice. She’s nice, she’s pretty, and she seems not to mind that he has a son. Maybe things can’t work out when he gets set up by his Tía, but Marisol wasn’t like that. It can’t have been a coincidence running into her again at that hardware store. Maybe that was an act of divine intervention an opportunity at partnership landing in his lap like that.
He needed this to work.
He wanted this to work.
He took another deep breath, picked up the flowers, and walked into the restaurant.
~
The date was fine. Good. It was a good date. Nothing had gone wrong and Marisol was just as nice as Eddie had remembered.
Marisol had looked flattered by the flowers just as Eddie had hoped. She had laughed at all his jokes and had asked follow up questions when he talked about his job or about Christopher and he had done the same with her when she had talked about her life and family. When the date was coming to an end Eddie had paid for the whole bill without a second thought. Every step of the performance was done with such accuracy it would seem that Eddie had rehearsed this dance a thousand times rather than the scrambled improvisation it had felt like with his woeful lack of experience.
They walked out of the restaurant together, Eddie walking with her to her car.
“That was really nice,” Marisol said with a smile “I hope we can do that again sometime soon.”
“Definitely,” Eddie agreed “I’d love to see you again. I’ll call you.” He felt frozen to the ground, unsure what to do next. Was she expecting him to kiss her? But what if he had misread this, he doesn’t want to catch her totally off guard. She looked up at him through her eyelashes and gave him a small smile. She didn’t get into her car. She’s not moving either, she’s definitely expecting a kiss, so Eddie leant in and she happily leant up to meet him.
The kiss was sweet and relatively brief. A nice note to say goodbye on.
Marisol broke away and stepped back. “Call me,” she said before she got in her car and drove away leaving Eddie feeling paralyzed in the parking lot.
This is what you wanted. She kissed you, that means it went well he reminded himself. His feet unglued themselves from the asphalt and he walked to his car filling the pit in his stomach with reminders that he was meant to be happy.
***
Eddie looks down at his hands helplessly. He turns the memory over and over in his mind trying to find evidence of autonomy. Everywhere he looks all he can find are actions he took for the sake of someone else, whether that be Tía Pepa, Christopher, or Marisol herself. He let himself be carried into the relationship. And now he was drowning in the consequences of his own actions.
“I think I’ve made a mistake,” Eddie tells Frank, eventually, putting his head in his hands. Frank looks at him sympathetically.
“In what way?”
“I’ve backed myself into a corner. I never should have started dating Marisol in the first place, I knew it wasn’t what I wanted at the time. And yet I still went along with it. It’s not fair to her to make her stay in this relationship when I know that I will never be fully present. I’ll never be able to fully commit in the way she’ll want me to, at least not without panicking. But I let it go on for far too long, there’s no way to break it off without hurting her. And hurting Christopher too to make it worse. Except she’s done nothing wrong, she doesn’t deserve to get hurt by being caught up in my mess. I feel like such an idiot!”
“You’re not an idiot, Eddie. It’s not your fault that you always did what you thought was the right thing in the moment,” Frank reassures. “What do you think the right thing is now?” Eddie can’t keep stringing her along, making promises he knows he won’t be able to keep. There needs to be a clean break.
“I need to break up with her,” Eddie says, definitively. It makes him feel guilty because he never should have had to make this decision in the first place. But it also gives him a sense of relief at finally making a decision for himself rather than the easy answer of succumbing to the wills of others.
~
The evening after his therapy session is when Eddie finally musters up the courage to call Marisol. He was pacing around second guessing himself all afternoon, thinking that he could just try harder and things would work themselves out. But him and Marisol have been on a collision course since the panic attack. Or before that, if Eddie’s being truly honest with himself.
When he calls her, he asks her to come over, that there’s something he wants to talk to her about. In person. He wants to do this right, let her see his face. Maybe that will help let her know that he does genuinely feel bad.
By the time Marisol shows up at Eddie’s door she’s already annoyed, clearly knowing where their conversation is going.
“Look, Marisol, I’ve been thinking,” Eddie starts but Marisol cuts in.
“You think we should break up.” Eddie nods apologetically as Marisol sighs. “I’m not going to say I didn’t see this coming. You’ve been distant for the past few weeks, not wanting to meet up. And when we do spend time together it’s like you’re somewhere else.” Eddie can’t deny it. He was already pulling away. He can only apologise.
“Look, I’m sorry. I promise it’s not you, it’s me.” Marisol laughs at the cliché, but it is true. Marisol hadn’t done anything wrong. Eddie had just been stupid enough to get into this relationship for the wrong reasons and now his body was screaming at him to get out.
“Promise me you’ll answer this question honestly,” Marisol says and Eddie agrees, confused. “Did you cheat on me?”
“What? No!” Eddie is offended at the suggestion that he would. Sure, he had been a bad boyfriend recently, but he would never. That’s not even factoring in that the idea that its laughable that Eddie would even be able to find someone to cheat with. Cheating on someone requires far more competence in attracting a relationship than Eddie has.
Eddie’s immediate refusal does help to mollify Marisol at least. “Okay, good.”
“I really am sorry to do this to you.” Eddie feels like he led her on without even realising until it was too late.
“Thanks. Have a nice life, Eddie. I hope you manage to work whatever is going on with you out.” And then she leaves, closing the door behind her a little harder than necessary. Eddie is left standing there helplessly, both wishing he could have explained himself better and knowing that he doesn’t have a good excuse.
He’s startled out of his thoughts by the sound of Christopher coming into the room.
“Was that Marisol?” Christopher asks.
“Yeah, we broke up. I’m sorry.” Eddie is back exactly where he didn’t want to be. Letting another woman into his life, into Christopher’s life, just for her to leave again. He cannot let this happen again; Christopher deserves better.
“Oh, why?” Christopher sounds disappointed and Eddie hates that. But he also knows he won’t be able to explain it properly to Christopher, there are things he cannot put into words yet. Especially not to his son.
“It’s… complicated,” he says and hates how much of a cop out answer it is and Christopher looks rightfully unsatisfied with it. “But it had absolutely nothing to do with you, I swear.” Eddie cannot allow Christopher to think even for a second that he did a single thing to cause Marisol to leave.
“Okay. Whatever.” Christopher sounds annoyed and Eddie feels helpless.
“Hey, I really am sorry. I wish it didn’t have to go this way. But it did. I can’t fully explain it, but some people just aren’t meant to be in each other’s lives.”
“I guess I knew it was never going work out anyway.”
“What do you mean by that?” Eddie asks, confused. Could Christopher have possibly known how resigned Eddie was to the relationship? Had he sensed it?
“Just… never mind, it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry you had to break up, for whatever reason.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry too.”
~
After breaking up with Marisol, Eddie’s mind inevitably drifted back into thinking about Shannon again. She is so easy for Eddie to throw under the bus for all his relationship problems, but she also doesn’t deserve that. His relationship with her was anything but smooth sailing, and yet those rare glimpses of comfort are the only ones he wants to remember.
It’s not by accident that Eddie has been deliberately trying to skate around the topic of Shannon in his therapy sessions. He knows that once he unloads his mess of thoughts and feelings, he won’t be able to stuff them away again.
Each day they’re creeping closer to the surface, though. Eddie knows he’ll need to talk to someone, sooner rather than later, if he doesn’t want to explode. And Frank is quite literally paid to listen to Eddie’s mess of ramblings.
Rather than sitting in the usual squeaky chairs in the waiting room outside Frank’s office, Eddie paces instead. He has never been this raring to go for a therapy session before. Frank clearly notes this in his surprise when he tells Eddie to come in.
“Come on in,” Frank says and Eddie makes a beeline through the door. He doesn’t take a seat, he continues pacing from all his pent up energy. Frank calmly takes his usual seat, seemingly not thrown by Eddie’s frenetic energy. “So–”
“I want to talk about Shannon,” Eddie blurts out, cutting Frank off.
“Alright,” Frank says calmly, “where do you want to start.”
“I don’t know. It’s all so complicated.”
“Ok, so start at the beginning.” That makes sense. Eddie tries to find his way through his thoughts to find the beginning. The very beginning.
“We met when we were kids, you know, middle school. I don’t remember much from back then; I’d barely even hit puberty. We ran in similar circles though, or as much as you can in middle school. I remember one of my friends at the time telling me that he heard she had a crush on me. I’m sure I was flattered at the time, I don’t know. Nothing ever came of it.” Eddie suddenly stops pacing and looks at Frank. “Why am I even telling you this? Does this even matter? This is kid shit!”
“Well, this is the beginning, isn’t it?” Frank asks, “if this is where it begins, then it matters to you.” Eddie begins to pace again.
“I suppose. There’s not much more for a few years, we went to different high schools until she transferred to mine in senior year. Maybe it was because I felt bad for her, transferring to a new school in her last year. Maybe I felt some sort of weird connection because I sort-of knew her in middle school, but I really tried hard to be her friend in high school. And she was great, we loved so many of the same things and she made me laugh like no one else could. It was just fun whenever we spent time together.
“I’m not sure when the friendship turned into dating. I guess it just kind of happened. Just fucking typical of me, right? We were hanging out at her house like we did all the time and she just leant in to kiss me. And I was happy, of course I was happy, this beautiful girl wanted to kiss me. What teen boy wouldn’t be thrilled?
“Things just escalated from there. We were just meant to be having fun! We were teenagers, we were living in the moment! And if we got a bit lenient about using protection while having sex it shouldn’t have been a big deal. We thought pregnancy was rare enough that we’d be fine and then… you know.”
“Christopher,” Frank fills in.
“Yeah,” Eddie says with a sigh, stopping his pacing again, “Christopher changed everything.”
“Was Christopher the reason you decided to get married?”
Eddie laughs.
“Decided is a generous way of looking at it.”
***
Eddie closed his eyes and leant his head back on his bedroom door.
There’s no avoiding this. You have to rip the band-aid off.
Shannon. Pregnant. Fuck.
His parents were going to be so mad. He could hear their upcoming yells ringing in his ears. How could he be so stupid. What were the neighbours going to think. What was the church going to think.
But there was no avoiding it. Shannon was adamant on keeping the baby and he was not going to be the type of man to abandon his child without a second thought.
He took another deep breath and left his bedroom. He found his mother drying dishes in the kitchen while his father pretended to read a book at the dining table.
“Hey,” he said with a serious tone of voice. It was enough that his mother put down the plate she was drying and turned to give him her full attention. “Can you come sit for a minute, I need to talk to you both about something.” His mother dried her hands and came over to take a seat at the dining table where Eddie had just sat down.
“What’s wrong?” his mother asked, concerned. His father had completely given up the pretence of reading his book, instead closing it to devote his full attention to Eddie.
“Well, um…” Eddie tried to start but he felt transported to being a child again, under the scrutinising gaze of his parents. He determinedly started at a whorl in the table, deliberately avoiding looking into either of their eyes. “You know my girlfriend, Shannon?”
“Yes, of course,” his mother said, uneasiness dripping in her words.
“I, uh, well,” Eddie cleared his throat, “she’s pregnant.” He forced the words out so quickly he wasn’t certain his parents understood until he finally flicked his eyes up from the whorl on the table to find both of them slack-jawed, eyes filled with shock and disappointment. He went back to staring at the whorl, this time hoping to burn a hole through the table with the intensity of his stare.
“Edmundo Diaz!” his mother finally exclaimed, abruptly standing from her chair to pace around the room. Eddie winced at the sound of the chair scraping against the wooden floor. “I cannot believe you would be so reckless! I thought you’d grown out making such idiotic decisions!” she yelled, exasperated.
Eddie opened his mouth to yell back in anger but instead found his words completely blocked in his throat. In a naïve moment he looked at his father, trying to find reassurance. Instead, he found his father’s head in his hands, shaking it in disappointment.
“I’m sorry,” he said, meekly, feeling the exact same as he had when he was eight years old and his baseball had smashed through the kitchen window.
His father finally looked up. “You have to marry her,” he said, coldly.
“What!?”
“He’s right,” his mother said, “there’s no other way.”
“What do you mean there’s no other way? I can be a father without needing to get married!”
“I am not having a bastard grandchild!” his mother yelled and Eddie shrunk in on himself. His mother yelling always felt like a punch in the gut and he wished he could just hide away to nurse the pain. She sighed and closed her eyes. “I apologise for yelling like that,” she said. Her eerie composure almost made Eddie miss the yelling.
“What your mother is trying to say, is that it is important to us that you do the right thing and get married to Shannon. If you are old enough to be a father, you are old enough to be a husband. If you don’t like it, too bad. You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.” His father stood up from his chair to walk over to his mother, putting a comforting hand on her back.
“But why. Why is it more important to you that I get married than it is to just help me!” They hadn’t said word of reassurance.
“We are helping you,” his mother said, “we’re helping you not bring more shame on this family than you already have. We’re going to be a laughingstock. I don’t even want to imagine the whispers we are going to get at church. I won’t even be able to face Father Gomez.”
Eddie seethed. He had always suspected that his parents cared more about the opinions of others, especially the church, than they had about him. But to hear it laid out so clearly? It was like a slap in the face. He wanted to scream, to fight, to finally break out from under the weight of their expectations. But instead, he betrayed himself.
“Okay”
“Okay?”
“Okay, I’ll get married.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth Eddie felt a stone drop in his stomach. Maybe it was the pride he just swallowed.
“Thank you,” his mother said, relieved, clearly sending up a prayer while doing the sign of the cross on her chest. Then she leant over the table to grab the back of his neck, pulling him closer to give him a firm kiss on the top of his head. Eddie knew it was the only piece of parental affection he was getting. Possibly for a long time.
“You’re doing the right thing,” his father said. If he was doing the right thing, why was everything inside screaming that this was wrong?
***
Eddie is crying and slumped over in his chair by the time he finishes recounting the memory to Frank. He felt like his whole world ended that day, his life had just been laid out in front of him and it was going to be a slow death march to an early grave. It wasn’t as if he didn’t love being with Shannon. When they were just having fun it was great, but everything fell apart the moment it became all too real. The actual wedding was a whirlwind ceremony in the backyard only a couple months later so Shannon wouldn’t have a noticeable baby bump.
“I had never felt so helpless in my life. That moment changed the entire trajectory of my life. I didn’t even want to get married to her and now it feels like it’s the one thing holding me back! How can that even be possible?” Frank doesn’t respond immediately, and Eddie looks up at him with pleading, teary eyes. He appears to be taking a moment to carefully consider his response.
“It makes sense that that moment was so integral to your life, you were only a kid and were faced with very real adult responsibilities. You were still growing up; you didn’t get to explore who you are and what you wanted as you grew up because it was always shaped around your marriage and child. Do you think the reason you’ve felt so held back in your relationships in the past is because of Shannon specifically or just what Shannon represented in your life?”
This really takes Eddie aback. Had he been using Shannon as an easy scapegoat because that’s what he’s learnt to do his whole life?
“Are you saying that my problems aren’t actually about Shannon?”
“Of course, Shannon is a part of it, but maybe she’s only one piece in a much bigger puzzle to find the roots of how you’re feeling.”
“What if I don’t know how I’m feeling?”
“That’s what you’re here for isn’t it? You wanted to figure out the roots of your panic attacks, discovering the feelings you’ve buried away because you were never able to explore them when you were younger is how you do that.” The thought of that is daunting. Digging into old wounds he never wanted to touch again.
“But how?”
“You’ve built yourself a very specific identity for yourself. It’s time to deconstruct that. I can guide you through that process.”
The thought of that level of vulnerability terrifies Eddie. This is his last chance to back out, continue hiding in his shell. Except, he finds that he doesn’t want to. What he has to gain is far larger than what he has to lose.
He nods and takes a deep breath.
This is what he needs to do.