"Hey…. Water, not breadsticks." Greta snaps me out of my daze, and I look down and realize I am filling a glass pitcher with them instead of liquid and sigh at my stupidity. Tutting outwardly and dragging them back out. We have been open again for a few days, getting back into the swing of things, and yet it feels like two years ago again when I was learning the ropes.
"What's with you lately? You're distracted and vacant most of the time. Are you feeling unwell?" She leans over and presses the back of her hand to my forehead to check my temperature, and I wave her away. Knowing I'm not ill and my temperature is average.
"I'm fine; just a little tired, is all." While working here, I haven't been energized, splitting my time between Jyeon and Greta and not sleeping enough. A lot of shit has been going through my mind the past few days, and I can't explain it without sounding like a freak. It's messed up my head a little.
"Maybe you should go upstairs and take a nap. You do have dark circles and seem wiped out. Me and the twins can handle the lunch rush if it gets busy. Go, while it's still quiet."
"No, Jyeon's coming in soon to eat and work at the window table. I haven't seen him since yesterday."
He took Bryant home last night and had to stay in the city to do a few things with Yoonah concerning OLO. Something he couldn't ignore or avoid, and I had a night all to myself for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. Greta and I watched a movie and went to bed early like we used to. It was weird and made me realize how dependent I have become on him again, his presence and how unsettled I was without it. It's not a good thing.
"Jyeon is a big boy and will manage fine without you watching over him. He practically lives here nowadays."
"Ummm, I could say the same about Bryant." I point out. Calling the pot black too.
Since the two of them christened our kitchen, they have been an unofficial couple who apparently have fun and see how things go. That's Greta's way of saying he's her boy toy, and she's not committing until he proves himself worthy. On the other hand, Bryant is already referring to her as his girlfriend and can't seem to keep his hands to himself when he thinks no one is looking.
"Hmmm, I was trying him on. Have to get a lot of use before deciding if you like it." She smirks, then winks at me, and I grimace in disgust.
"Eww." I flick her in the head and try to push that visual out of my mind's eye. I am cringing at the thought of those two and any kind of trying one another on. I don't need that kind of trauma in my life.
"Go… take an hour even if all you do is lay down and stare at the ceiling. I'll come to get you when the lover boy shows up. I'm sure he'll be desperate to see you given how obsessed you are with each other since consummating your relationship." She grins at me, and I thoroughly regret giving her the gory and private details of our sex life. She likes to make crude jokes and references much like this.
"Okay, but come get me if it gets busier." I bop her on top of her head, silently relieved she insisted because I feel like death.
My sleep pattern has been messed up to hell, and my dreams and nightmares of the crash have been haunting me something awful since we came home. Almost like I have gone back in time and dealing with the emotional mess from nearly two years ago.
I don't know what it is about being back here, but the happy, seemingly straightforward, and calm emotions of everything falling into place dissolved pretty quickly. The honeymoon period isn't exactly over, but all my gooey rose-tinted visions are dissipating. Doubts crept in and torture me endlessly.
Many little things I ignored in the city have started to scratch at me, and I'm having a more challenging time dealing with them than I thought I would. Maybe because I came home to my haven where I don't need to put on a mask and pretend everything is okay. Or perhaps it was coming back to real life and analyzing what my future might look like from now on.
"You're daydreaming… hey. Earth calling Sohla!" Greta clicks her fingers in front of my face, startling me out of my blank expression, and I exhale heavily as I catch her eyes on me. That swirling sense of uptight plagues me again, tinging with a sickly weirdness.
"Do you think I moved too fast and didn't think things through properly? That this is all going to end in tears, and I'm an idiot for thinking I could make it work?" It comes out in a trembling and pathetic little voice, tears close behind, and she frowns at me. She sees the inner war going on with me and knows me better than most. Her entire cocky and happy manner sobers down, and she narrows her gaze at me, looking like a mother hen in a flash.
"Okay….you and I, upstairs. Come on. It's girl talk time." Greta puts down the trays and towels she had been cleaning and folding and takes my hand. Pulling me with her to follow her to the kitchen and our secret stairway. I don't refuse or fight it because I think I need this deep down. I've kept it bottle dup, even from jyeon, because I don't want him to think I'm trying to find reasons to break up with him again. I don't want to. I just don't know how to navigate my feelings.
"Take over while it's quiet. We will be upstairs if you need us." She calls to a twin in passing, whom I can't figure out which is which since they started wearing a uniform, and allow myself to be guided out of sight, like a child being ushered by their mommy.
"Okay, got it." The girl calls cheerfully after us, and I follow Greta with silence and apprehension. I know she has sensed I have been off the last few days, despite my happy act, and kept giving me weird glances, but she probably assumed it was down to learning to find balance with Jyeon and being home.
"Did you two fight?" She asks me as she makes way to our small upstairs apartment, leading me in and ushering me to sit on the edge of my bed before she turns and draws the blind to cut out the blaring noon sun. I obey quietly, being an obedient puppy while shaking my head.
"Nope."
"Then what is it? Are you having doubts about you two? About going home? What? …. I can't know if you don't tell me. You know that keeping it inside isn't how we deal with our problems." She sounds exactly like Greta of old, when she first started trying to pull emotions and thoughts out of me back in my icy silent stage. It's reassuring and comforting to be back here, with her retaking control of my head mess, like déjà vu.
"I don't know why, but I've been so anxious and feel strange since we got home. The first couple of days felt like a vacation, and we had some fun with Jyeon and Bryant, but now, there's this constant cloud hanging over me, and I don't understand it. I keep asking myself if I made a mistake going there."
Greta ponders my expression for a long moment, considering it and adequately thinking it through. Chewing on her lip as she dissects what I said and sits her butt down on the floor in a cross-legged fashion. The pose of wise mother Greta when she's getting ready to talk something out. This girl brings calm and sense to my chaos when I start falling apart.
"I think maybe it's fallout from the last month, and now we stopped, gave you your breathing space back in your haven. You're experiencing it as you should have in the city." She shrugs as if that's the best answer she could come up with.
"It all felt easy and clicked into place. Me and Jyeon, Yoonah, mother… it felt like many loose ends were tied up, and I should be happy, so why this? Why do I keep finding a reason to feel mad for nothing?" I have every possible thing to be on top of the world for, but instead, I'm depressed, lacking a better word to describe what I'm feeling.
"I think you're grieving, weirdly. You held onto so much for two years and pushed it all down to not affect you. Going there brought it all up and fixed a few misunderstandings. Everything you held onto so tightly solidified your decisions, hatred, and fuel to steam ahead into the future you planned…. It all collapsed."
"I don't understand why that would make me grieve?" I blink at her, not getting what she's trying to say, and am frustrated with becoming this person. I have always been strong and able to handle anything, so it makes no sense that now of all times, is when I crumble.
"Because you lost two years of your life and your marriage without knowing you didn't have to…. Two years of everything…. because of misunderstandings. I think you're grieving the loss now you know you made choices that weren't based on fact. Maybe regret….remorse… what you lost. Who knows? And you haven't dealt with anything related to your family and what happened, the deeper relationships,….all of you sort of glossed over the past because you were all wrapped up in the happiness of getting back together. Of them finding you again. All of you. I think you have so much you need to work through, and it'll take time."
I curl my hands together in my lap, pulling my legs up to mirror her and think about what she's saying. Knowing it's true. I did allow myself to get swept up in the romance and the forgiveness without actually touching on anything from two years ago, not dissecting the problems we had as a family back then. I just assumed time meant we had all laid it to bed, and there was nothing to bring up. I am so naïve to think that time cured it all and I could bypass this stage of hurt and facing scars.
"I see how you watch Jyeon when he's working on his laptop downstairs. When pretty girls approach him and try to flirt….. you are not fully there with trust or security. His affair is still eating you up inside, and you need to address that with him so that it doesn't fester."
I falter and blink at her in surprise that she even picked up on that. Knowing I can't deny it because every time I see some young and pretty local or tourist sliding his way, I have a weird painful heaviness and fear that churns up my stomach. She's right. I don't trust him yet because I don't think I have let what happened with Claire go yet.
I'm insecure about his feelings for me now that we're mingling with other people in my space, not his. In the real world and living everyday life. Where he's not the intimidating Jyeon Park but just an approachable hot guy in a village diner. Where all I have to anchor him to me is his declaration of love because here we don't work together, he doesn't rely on my skills or spend every waking second with one another, now the shack is up and running again.
"I keep asking myself if the novelty will wear off, and he gets bored or fed up again. I know it isn't that simple, but I'm scared of repeating history. That I'm not enough, especially if I choose to stay here and he has to split his time between this and OLO."
"That's understandable. Given your past and how he made you feel, is it also why you keep refusing to overlook the OLO papers when he tries to encourage you to look at how your company is doing. Are you scared it draws you back to wanting to be there again and turns you into Sohla of the past?"
It hits a nerve, and I choke on the lump in my throat, knowing I have been avoiding looking at the reports or contracts he keeps waving my way for this exact reason. A tiny part of me longs to pick it up and see if I still have the skill, but I'm terrified of going backward and losing what and who I have become. It feels like everything is dangling by this thread that is so easy to sever. That my entire life can go up in smoke for a second time if I'm not careful. I have a deep-rooted fear from it happening once and knowing how easily it can all implode, and I end up alone and struggling to survive again.
"I feel like I was saved from being her….. and if I put the pieces back, maybe she'll consume me again. I know it sounds stupid, but what's to stop me from falling back into old habits if my old life is back in place? If my pain from his affair seeps out, eats at me, and makes me like that again? If I lose a second life along with the first. I don't have it in me to start again."
It wasn't until this moment I realized how deeply the fear is ingrained that I will lose all of this and everyone by becoming the person I was before. If I allow things to suck me backward. If I end up diving off another cliff in despair and find myself back on that beach and that darkness to walk endlessly. It makes me shiver to the core, and I'm swept with a coldness that has me cringing.
"Do you have so little faith in yourself? In us? Can't you see how different you are and how different things are with Jyeon and your family? You weren't the only one who had a major shakeup that affected your entire outlook. No one will allow history to repeat itself, let alone me. You won't either because you are not the same."
"I'm scared. It seems too good to be true, and I keep waiting for the 'but' moment." My eyes blur as tears prick, and I swallow hard to soothe down the choking ball of pain growing inside of me. Something I have held down for so long, I almost was capable of ignoring it altogether.
"Jyeon loves you. He knows it now, and he won't let anyone or anything drag you back to that misery. I love you, and I will never allow you to return to that...You are stronger than you were, and you know that you don't have to be who you were to have their love, your old job, or anything that's rightfully yours."
Greta's words pull the tears right out of me, and I start to sniff as this pain consumes me, heart and soul, silently. I'm feeling stupid at verbalizing all of this, but it's been circling deep down for days and eating me raw. To the point, I keep getting tearful around Jyeon and having a flash of anger and then jealous insecurities about women talking to him. I'm so messed up.
"You need to start by doing what you never did in the past. Talk to your husband and say all this to him. He can only help if he knows what's going on in your head. That's the first step in not returning to who you were." Greta gets up and comes to me, sliding onto the bed beside me so she can wrap her arms around me, and hugs me tight. "Sohla Park acted tough and strong and showed no emotions, even though she had plenty of them. She let her problems eat at her in silence, and it led to this broken shell who didn't have any faith in love or people anymore."
"I know."
"See… step one to recovery is identifying your problem and admitting it." She mocks me and squeezes me, pulling a small chuckle from me. "In all seriousness, Sohla, you've been through a lot, and you wouldn't be human if there weren't a hella of a head mess to come from it. Jyeon is making you feel vulnerable because he's the root of all your pain in the past. You know you're opening yourself up to the possibility of heartbreak again, and he's got you running scared the harder you fall for him."
"What do I do?" I wipe my snotty nose and drenched face on my sleeve and rest my head against her shoulder, needing her hugs more than air right now. Reverting to the girl she picked up off the diner floor the night I finally broke and let out everything I could over Tia.
"Maybe you two need some professional counseling. Like I don't know… marriage counselor, therapists…. It's not like you can't afford it. And this is way over my level of expertise."
"Because I'm so good at going to one of those." I point out, knowing fine well the past two years she had tried to make me talk to the island counselor, and I point blank refused.
"I guess you have to tell your husband instead and see what wisdom and solutions come out of that very sometimes intelligent brain. You have me, him, your family, and even that asshole Bryant rooting for you. Stop being scared and start facing the past. It's the only way to let it go."
I blink at her and swallow hard to curb the onslaught of tears while exhaling heavily and knowing she's right. I spent all this time pushing it down, running away from it, and denying it ever happened. I thought I could use a band-aid and slot back into something new where we all play happy families and begin again, but it seems my own psyche was telling me how ridiculous that was.
The only way to stop myself from repeating the past and letting it continue to hurt me is to face it head-on and put it all to rest.