Breathe in.
Breathe out.
In the quiet room, she focused her attention on the air whistling between her lips because that was supposed to help when she felt like her skin was too tight and her heart was working too hard.
A momentary calm spread through her. Today would be different. Today she would laugh and smile and talk and maybe even flirt. How hard could that be?
She would not hide in the bathroom. She would not throw up on the sidewalk.
Thinking about throwing up made her stomach turn.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
He was standing beside her now. She turned to look at him and the air settled back into her chest.
He was really here. Not an imagined version of him. Him. His whole frame still and focused, he seemed familiar and strange at the same time. A conversation that she was in the middle of but couldn’t remember starting.
She wanted to make him laugh, or at least look at her, but it was so quiet and her heart was beating so loudly. The silence thickened and choked her. Too much time to think. She felt herself losing his attention. He drifted from her side and she felt panic rising in her throat.
B r e a t h e.
In the space before the exhale, her mind calculated a hundred possible scenarios that ranged from getting in her car and leaving him there to resting her head on his shoulder just to see how it would feel.
Instead she did nothing. She just stood still and silent, hoping her inaction translated as calm.
Breathe out.