Alex dropped onto the couch as soon as they got back. “Adrenaline crash,” he explained.
“Want anything? A drink?”
“Since you offered, some water would be nice.”
Tom got them both a glass and sat down on the other end of the couch so he could see for himself that Alex wasn’t going to panic again.
He had no frame of reference for any of this. Not for the panic attack, or the fear of driving, or anything else which got Alex worried. One part did make sense to him, though, and that was how ashamed Alex looked.
Tom and shame went way back to when he was in kindergarten and the problems with dyslexia started making themselves known. He was over that now, but a person didn’t spend fifteen years being ashamed of themselves without becoming intimately familiar with how it could make anyone fee
