Chapter 7: Keeping the Promise

It turned out that ‘a lot to talk about’ barely began to cover it. When she tried to talk about it with him on Saturday morning, he pretty much brushed the subject off. Larissa was pretty dismayed, but she knew that she couldn’t push it, couldn’t rush him on it. Still, it would be good if he was at least willing to talk about it. What should she do? She decided to put it aside for a little while, and just concentrate on enjoying what they did have, building as good a relationship as she could and blowing his mind off the earth whenever there was a chance. It was a good thing that she just wanted more of what she had.

They spent Easter together continuously, studying, exercising, hanging out, and making love. Friday was a glorious day, maybe the last of summer, and they spent the day chilling on the beach, and jumping off the pier. On Saturday night, they went to a party Maria begged them to go to, to meet her new man Aaden. Julian had talked about going to his family’s place to sleep that night, but he folded. Too easily? Larissa pursed her lips but went with it. Then they got up early Sunday for family breakfast at his home, church, and another picnic. Yeah, she liked his family, but did she feel some reserve there? She decided she’d try harder to dress conservatively next Sunday, maybe that would help? Then Monday afternoon at the beach with her friends, and dinner, before Julian went back home. Then he slept over again Tuesday night, after lots of comments from their Taekwondo friends, who figured it out. Lovely. They didn’t see each other until Friday evening, and she was getting needy. She tried not to let him know how much, but he figured out by how tightly she held him, and they naturally ended up in bed straight away. After that, she could think and function properly, and they went off to a party, though she held him tightly whenever she could. More underwear dancing and hugging, holding everyone tight. And most of all, Julian. Lovely, until the end of the party.

She hugged a girl named Gail who fairly quickly fell into tears, and the two of them ended up in the corner sitting closely, having a long deep and meaningful about how to deal with rape and abuse. Gail’s story wasn’t too different from her own, really. The conversation was just getting intense when Julian found her and said it was time they said to go and was extremely ungracious when Larissa didn’t do what he said. Embarrassing, really, since she’d just been telling Gail about how lovely he was to her. She held him off for a few minutes, but he just wouldn’t budge on it, so she never finished talking to the girl.

That burned. Deep and bad, and Larissa was heartsick. Too upset to even be able to express how she felt, and she decided to sleep on it. Maybe that was a mistake, because as she lay in his arms after they made love, she was uncomfortably aware that she had not blown his mind that night – her heart just wasn’t quite with it. Should she say something? What? But she’d raised the living together thing one more time, carefully, and got the same brush off. After he fell asleep, she sat on the floor at the end of the bed, and quietly made a video for Sal, to try and sort out her feelings. She’d fallen off doing them when Julian was sleeping over, so it helped. A little. She decided to pursue the idea of moving in with his family if he didn’t want to move in with her. She’d see how it went the next night, since she was sleeping over at his place for the first time.

Julian had a nice place, a comfortable home. And she loved the family dog, Nala, who wanted to cuddle as much as Larissa did. Dinner with his family was nice, and she made sure to wear plain clothing, not as fashionable as she usually would. And they were all doing their best to make her feel welcome, she could tell. And she did her best, and really, it was pretty good. They spent some time playing Mario Kart as a family, and she got teamed up with Xander. They hammered Julian and Jaiden, and she was so excited she piled on Xander and kissed him. Yeah, well, perhaps that was a mistake – Steph didn’t react that well. She slid off him as quick as she could and jumped on Julian instead, and made sure she stayed attached to him as much as she could.

Bedtime, and she realised that she forgot to bring anything to wear for sleeping. Naked, see. They made passionate love as quietly as they could – not something she had much experience with, but she made up for the night before, and blew his mind extra hard with a pillow over his mouth. Yeah.

But then it all went to shit again. She lay in his arms afterwards and asked a couple of leading questions about his stuff that hinted at living in this room. That went down like a lead balloon too. She didn’t sleep well after that. Early in the morning, too early for anyone else, she gave up trying to sleep, threw one of Julian’s t-shirts on, and went to the kitchen to make herself a coffee.

She didn’t feel like going back to the bedroom, so she sat at the kitchen bench trying to psych herself up for the day, just looking at her coffee, and holding Nala, having nice cuddles with her. Suddenly a voice behind said, “Not sleeping well?” and she turned to find Sophie looking at her sympathetically.

Larissa frowned, but didn’t really want to talk about it, especially not to Julian’s mother, of all people. She was likely the real problem here – claws deep into Julian. Probably happy he was screwing her, so long as it didn’t cause any waves in her paradise. She shrugged, and said, “Nah, not so much.” Then she watched as Sophie made her own coffee and then sat next to her.

“Julian really thinks a lot of you,” she told Larissa after she’d had a sip. “That’s something really quite new for him.”

Larissa smiled at her as enthusiastically as she could. “I love him too.”

Sophie pursed her lips and sipped her coffee again. “Julian tells me stuff, you know. I know that you made love for the first time last weekend.” She smiled at Larissa, “Julian didn’t tell me much about it, but I could tell it meant a lot to him. Thanks for making him happy. I got the impression that it was a very big deal for you too.”

Larissa looked at Sophie, quite surprised.

“Oh, I love having a close relationship with my children. They tell me things other children don’t, perhaps. And that’s because they know that I’m on their side. He really wants things to work out with you, and so I’m going to do my best to help him on that. And this morning, you don’t look happy at all. You don’t have to tell me about it, but you can if you want.”

Larissa wasn’t sure if she wanted to, or how to say what she was feeling. She didn’t say anything, so Sophie continued, “OK, here’s my guess, based on what Julian has said. You want to move things along, and move in together, and he’s resisting.”

Larissa looked at her, surprised. It was that obvious?

Sophie hugged her, and suddenly Larissa held her tight. It was really nice that she did that, and she took a deep breath and leaned into the hug. While they were hugging, Sophie said, “I can see, from the little I’ve had to do with you, that you feel your emotions really strongly, and wear your heart on your sleeve. And when I heard how big a deal sleeping with him was for you, I knew that you’d feel very strongly about moving the relationship along once you had.” She paused, but Larissa said nothing. So Sophie tightened the hug and then let go.

“It’s totally expected that you’ll feel like that. You’ve been alone, I mean, away from your family for a while, Julian hasn’t. So you’re much more aware of the significance of that. But don’t worry, Julian will understand. He still lives at home, so it’ll take him longer. And he’s a guy; sleeping with someone is a lesser deal than moving in with them. But he’ll get there, and I’m helping him along.”

That prompted Larissa to say something. “I thought you’d want to keep him here?”

Sophie pursed her lips. “I do like having him here, yes. But much more than that, I want him to grow up and become a man, and that means finding his own space, and his own woman. I’m on his side, and so that means, I need to make his dreams come true, not mine. That’s what being a mother is about.”

“Really?” Larissa asked her bitterly. She was going to say more but stopped herself. Best not go there.

“Yes, really.” Larissa could see in Sophie’s eyes that she was quite aware she’d cut that subject off. “And if I’m on Julian’s side, and you’re on his side, then we’re in this together, right?”

Yeah ... and it helped, actually. Sophie gave her a hug, and Larissa hugged her back. “Thanks, I really appreciate it, and I really am on Julian’s side. I really want this to work too – it’s very new and special for me too,” she said. And what Sophie had said really had helped.

“Now,” she said quietly, “it’s nearly time for more of the family to wake up, and you probably don’t want to show your buns in Julian’s t-shirt to some of them.” She smiled at Larissa’s surprised look over her shoulder to see how much she was showing. “I think it’s cute, but maybe you should get changed.”

Yeah, that smile, and what she said, it helped a lot and Larissa made it through the day. Nearly.

They spent the day together, and then they made love in her bed, and it was good. Great. Then they went out to sit in the lounge and plan their week and say goodbye till Tuesday. This was getting harder for Larissa. She just really wanted to know that he loved her enough to move in and said, “This planning would be a lot of easier if you just moved in here.”

“Oh, no, we’re not ready to talk about that yet.”

Larissa was cut. She was desperate to talk about, so he couldn’t speak for ‘we’ like that. “If you love me, we’ll talk about it now, because it’s a really important next step for us.” Why couldn’t he see that?

“Oh, no, it’s not important now. We’re just getting to know each other.”

Fucking Fucking Fuck. Larissa completely lost it. “You don’t really care about me, you just want to fuck me and fuck with me. Just like you cut me off on Friday night when I was talking to that girl, and then last night in bed, and you just don’t care and I can’t cope with it and why don’t you think I’m important and FUCK YOU.” Her anger was feeding on itself, and then she literally screamed at him, she was so upset.

She saw the total confusion in his face and knew she had screwed up badly, but fuck she was fucking furious, and she just couldn’t do this anymore and suddenly she was just empty. She collapsed on the floor, sobbing.

After a few minutes, Julian reached out to touch her, and gently said her name but she moved away from him and screeched at him to fuck off.

Yeah, figured, she heard the door bang, and he was gone. Now she really felt wretched, and she fell apart on the floor moaning. The best thing she’d ever, ever had and she’d fucked it up totally. She should just give up on living right now. And she couldn’t even drink? Fuck, why live?

Gradually, she realised that she was sitting on Fiona’s lap, and Fiona had her arms around her, holding her tight. She tried to get off, to get her to let go, but she couldn’t, and she realised Alan was holding her too. Then she just cried.

She didn’t know how long it took her stop crying, but Fiona was there for all of it. And she’d heard the whole thing too, so no secrets. “What did I do? What do I do?”

Gently, Fiona asked her, “Do you love him?”

Larissa wailed again, “Yes, I do, so much. So much I can’t cope with it.”

“Yeah, and he does love you. You’ll sort this out, really, you will. I know it feels awful, but you can, and you will. We’ve all been there. Remember how you felt after your mum? And what Sal said about having so far to fall?”

Yeah, she did, and she was right. This was a very big fall indeed. And it really felt like there was no way to climb back up – just too far. She said so.

Fiona nodded. “Yeah, I really think you need help this time. Time for Julian to meet with Sal and you tomorrow morning, yes?”

Yes, that did give her hope. And Sal ... yes, Larissa had said that her life was all sorted and she didn’t need to meet Sal anymore, and Sal had smiled gently and said that she thought it would be good for Larissa to do it a few more weeks yet. Did Sal know this was coming? She might, her guardian angel. Fiona really was an awesome friend. Larissa found her phone on the floor.

A single message from Julian, just a few minutes old: “Call me.” Yeah, typical guy. As if the world hadn’t ended. Well, maybe it hadn’t for him, that was something. It had for her. If there was anything after this, she’d think of it in terms of ‘before atomic bomb’ and ‘after atomic bomb’. But what the heck had happened inside her? Yeah, she had some concerns leading up to it, but she really couldn’t relate to the explosion that happened inside her.

Call him? No, she felt that it would all go wrong if she tried to talk to him. She just didn’t know how to deal with how she felt, or what had happened. But she could be honest, so she sent him: “I’m lost and scared. Afraid to talk tonight. Meet with Sal in the morning?”

Instant answer: “Y”. And then, to her surprise, a few minutes later: “I still LOVE you. We’ll work this out.”

That helped a lot, and she could sleep, though the video she made for Sal trying to explain was the hardest she’d done so far. She really hoped Sal had time to watch that one before the morning.

Larissa was at the café before it opened, and Sal turned up not long afterwards. She had time to fall apart in Sal’s lap and bawl her eyes out before Julian turned up. But she did feel better, almost as if she might be able to think about being ready to maybe face Julian. And then he was there, and without any thought, she was in his arms, crying again. She just needed him so much. She knew, even while she was doing it, that she was being way too emotional about this. But how to pull it back?

Sal let her cry herself out again, and then she gently asked Larissa to sit on her own seat. Once Larissa had done that, she said, “Thanks for coming, Julian. It’s great that you care enough for Larissa to be here after something last night that sounds pretty difficult for you.” He just nodded. “What happened isn’t anything unusual in a relationship; you’ll sort it out. I’m going to teach you what Kat taught me about this.” She gave them both a pad and a pen. Then she said, “Each of you have your own experience of last week, that led to last night. I’m going to ask you to tell each other your story. You can’t interrupt, or disagree, or anything. You have to listen. But you can put your hand up and ask the other person to stop, so you can write something down that you want to talk about. Then, when you’ve both finished, you can take turns talking about the things you wrote down.”

She got Julian to go first. It wasn’t really a story: “had a good week, had a great time at my house, and then bang! Larissa exploded.”

Larissa nearly exploded again, but Sal held her own hand up. “Julian, you need to do better than that. Tell me more.”

“OK, Larissa wants to talk about living together, but we’re not ready to talk about that. It’s only been a few weeks! Then she blew up about that.”

Yeah, Larissa nearly exploded again, but Sal made her take ten deep breaths. “Now, Larissa, tell your story, calmly, and slowly.”

Yeah, she did. Sal did have to interrupt her twice to get her back to calmly and slowly, but she did get better at that. Julian was looking at her in amazement. He had no idea.

“Neither of you wrote anything down to talk to each other about,” said Sal. “You really need to learn how do this, so you can communicate with each other when you disagree. Fortunately, I wrote a few things down. But there’s two very obvious things here, very important. The first, Julian, is that you had no idea about any of Larissa’s feelings. But it was a very big deal for Larissa to the point that your mum noticed straight away.”

Julian’s face fell. “Yes,” he said in a small voice.

Sal nodded. “Yes. Welcome to your first serious relationship. Every guy I’ve ever known goes through this. Guys are mostly simple. What you see, that’s what you have. Girls, a seething mess of emotions under the surface. That’s a simplification, but it’s mostly true, and there’s a definite age thing – at your age, guys are behind on emotional maturity, and bang, here you are. Julian, if you love Larissa and you want a real relationship with her, you can’t afford to not be tuned to this stuff, for her sake. We’ll talk about this more.”

“And Larissa, most of your problems were because you couldn’t explain your feelings to Julian. You’re so upset that he didn’t validate your feelings, but you didn’t begin to explain them. Take that Friday night thing with the girl, I bet Julian doesn’t have a clue why that’s such a big deal.”

They both nodded. Julian clearly felt that was weird. No clue, for sure.

“Julian, imagine this, you’ve found some little kid being beaten up by a big guy, and you’re in the middle of confronting the big guy, and Larissa says, ‘time to leave’ and makes you walk away. You happy?”

“Hell no, no way. There’s no way I’d ever walk away from someone who needs help!”

“But you made Larissa do just that on Friday night! And given her history, she does and should feel that just as strongly. In fact, she felt it so strongly that she didn’t know how to deal with it. But Larissa, much better to explain than to burn, right?”

Julian was shocked, and suddenly extremely sorry. Larissa was just as surprised at how easy it was to explain. She’d never thought about it like that.

“OK, so you both really need to learn to validate each other’s feelings. It’s the single most important relationship skill there is. And you’re both not doing it, and in fact, you’re not even sharing your feelings with each other so you can validate them. Julian, Larissa really, really wants you to move in with her. We’ll talk about why she feels so strongly about that. But when you say, ‘we’re not ready to talk about it,’ what are you saying about her feelings when that’s all she wants to do? And Larissa, when you say, ‘we have to talk about it or you don’t care about me,’ you’re disrespecting his feelings just as much.”

She watched them think about it. Then both of them said at the same time, “So do you think we should move in with each other?”

Sal laughed, and then they did too. And straight away, Larissa felt better. Yeah, Sal was a magician.

“No, I have no opinion about that. My strong opinion is that you need to honest with other, and value each other’s opinions, even when you disagree with each other. You need to like it when you have different ideas. Otherwise, why have a relationship at all? Just love your own hand, and life is simple, right?”

She laughed. “You’re shocked. But tell me I’m wrong.” No, they didn’t do that.

“If you want to have a relationship, then you need to able to talk about everything, and you need to understand each other better. So, Julian, a couple of weeks ago, Larissa poured her heart out and told you her terrible story. And you said it was all OK, and that you loved her anyway, and wanted to heal her. When you said that, did you think that meant that all that happened to her was wiped clean, and no longer relevant to her life? Did you think that just having sex with her would heal her completely, make her life right?”