PoweR

Chapter 2: Rule #2: If You Have to Tell People You Are. You're Not.

Beatrice.

Abby insisted on dragging me to this lunch date with her new boyfriend. I had every intention of staying home curled up with a book avoiding the world. Abby didn't know the pressures I had looming over me that I was avoiding. My father was breathing down my neck. He had given me enough of a leash.

Enough of a leash to hang me on and I could feel the ever-tightening of the collar around my neck. The time was running out, and eventually, my own father's patience for me was going to run out. He gave me liberties, and allowed me this lifestyle, it wasn't because I deserved it, it was because he felt guilty.

Abby was unaware of the looming doctor's appointments that I had coming up, and the anxiety that they had naturally triggered. Abby didn't know any of these things because Abby didn't like it when I talked about all of my many problems. Especially not around her new boyfriend.

So I lived in a coffin of my own mind. Sealed up tightly with the guilt, trauma, and pain. Alone. With no one. Not even my own father to talk to about what scares me.

My father lived and breathed guilt, his life choices were all rooted in that very emotion, all because of one choice he made. My brother. Gerard, my mother was unhinged, she was ironic and romantic, when she found out she was pregnant she couldn't cope. When she found out she was pregnant with twins, one being a boy, and one being a girl, she became even more unhinged. She'd name them the most romantic names she could think of.

My father blames my mother for the death of my brother. After he was killed as an infant my father put my mother away, sealed her up in a padded room, and for the last twenty-six years that's where she's been.

"Now I'm not the only one being quiet," Beau said from the other side of the table pinning me with a bright grin.

Abby was a serial dater, she had the worst taste in men, but she swore to me that he was different. She of course, met him in the same dating app she met all the others, Ted, Sam, Alex, Gunther... Ahh Gunther, he was a peach. They were all different but they were all Abby's type.

But this Beau guy was not her type, mostly because he had a personality. It seemed he wasn't interested in her simply for s*x. I could see him almost internally repel every time she tried one of her signature Abby bedroom eye looks on him.

Of course, Abby didn't see it, all she saw was his dark hair, and bright blue eyes, his muscles, and tattoos. He seemed put together in a sense. He could speak in complete sentences but somewhere hidden in all of those muscles and good looks, there had to be something off. Something odd. Why else would he be willingly sitting here eating chicken salad with us on a Thursday afternoon?

"Sorry." I finally realized he was talking to me, not Abby.

"Bea doesn't do well in social settings baby." Abby loved to explain me to people as if I was her pet project, and when she was trying to impress someone her southern accent thickened up to a point of sounding ridiculous.

"Oh, no?" Beau looked interested, but I wasn't completely sure if he was interested in me or if he was just trying to get the attention off him.

Beau took a long sip of his iced tea, I suddenly realized who he reminded me of. My dad. He postured like him, in the same way, he does when waiting for me to give him my answer.

"It comes with the territory, I'm afraid." I hoped my answer was sufficient.

"Sheltered upbringing?" He assumed setting me off wondering what Abby had told him.

"Sick." I caught him off guard and he paused for a moment, "I've been sick since I was a kid, it's caused my father to be... overprotective for lack of a better word."

"Terminal?" Beau the king of one-word questions fired back.

"I won't die from it, but I won't recover from it either. Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy."

His eyes basically glazed over with the long name of the heart disease that has been plaguing my life for as long as I could remember. I smiled at him, believing he'd want to move on, he wasn't here for me.

"Hyper..." He tried to remember the rest of my diagnosis, it was sweet.

"Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. It's a mouthful, try learning how to say it when you're eight." I offered him a smile, praying he would tell me he was sorry so we could move on. Abby was bristling with literal annoyance as the conversation wasn't on her and I wanted to crawl under the table.

"You were diagnosed when you were eight?" His interest peaked enough to sit up straight in his chair placing his glass of tea down.

"Yeah. The formal diagnosis was when I was eight, but I had been sickly really since birth. I got sick around the age of two... that was the first time I had fainted, they thought it was just RSV, this respiratory virus that's awful in children. So I was hospitalized and put through all these tests, poked and prodded, from two until about eigh, when they discovered that my heart had become thickened without any cause. Relapsed when I was sixteen and now it's controlled with medication. I won't bore you with all those details..."

"Trust me it's detailed." Abby interrupted.

Beau shot her a side-eye that would impress the best of moms, and she silenced herself and tucked herself back into his arm. He was stiff with her, his eyes returned to me genuinely interested. Abby wasn't concerned that I was going to steal her new boyfriend because of my looks. No, Abby only saw me as competition when it came to something she didn't have. Sympathy. Men in the past have catered to me because of my health, and Abby's hated me for it.

"I'm not bored," Beau said as he nodded his head for me to continue.

"Well, the abridged version is most people who have HCM spend most of their life asymptomatic, but for some of us we have fatigue, leg swelling, shortness of breath, or when it's really bad faintness and chest pain."

"Treatment?" He asked, carrying on his one-word question approach.

"I get my medications switched regularly due to drug resistance, but basically the medications just to keep the patient comfortable, beta-blockers, calcium channel blockers, diuretics, to keep us from feeling the symptoms of our swollen hearts. But with everything in life, it's learning how to cope, what I eat, what I drink, how much water I drink. All of it is a part of my treatment. Stress has a huge impact on how I feel."

"She's been very stressed out lately," Abby said, sipping her tea while clinging to Beau's arm.

"Jesus, Abby." I choked reaching for my own tea, begging her to stop but I knew by the look in her eyes that she was pissed at me, and that look meant she wanted to pee on her territory.

"Sorry! Beau baby should know!"

"Know what?" He said, seeming okay with changing the subject.

"She's engage...."

"...Okay, Abby, I think that's enough of spilling Beatrice's secrets." Beau interrupted as he shook her hand off of his arm as it slowly crept towards his face.

"You know what," I said, suddenly feeling awkward. "It's okay, I'm tired anyway. I'm encroaching on your couple time."

I got up from the table and gathered my purse, placing some money on the table to cover my portion of the bill. "I'll talk to you later, you guys have fun, it was really nice meeting you, Beau," I called out over my shoulder in a rush running out of the cafe and totally making a scene I was trying to avoid.

I exited the adorable café. The smell of fake roses still lingered as the cafe door shut behind me as I took a step back onto the autumn sidewalk. South Carolina was frigid in October, but this year seemed to be even more outrageously cold.

"Beatrice!" a voice called out after me.

My steps stuttered to a halt, debating if I should turn around, or if I should pretend I didn't hear him and continue walking. I didn't storm out because I was embarrassed of my upcoming wedding. I was avoiding it. Literally. Running from the sands of time that were quickly fading out.

"I wanted to give you this." Beau's voice was rapidly closing the distance I had put between myself and the cafe. I turned around and saw that he was holding cash out in his hand. "It's on me. I'm sorry about that... If I made you feel awkward."

"Oh no. Please don't apologize." I said taking the cash from him "It wasn't you, and it wasn't Abby. I swear, it was me. It is me. I have an appointment I need to get to, anyways."

"Are you being forced to marry him?" he asked.

"No," I said forcefully, caught off guard by his forward suggestion. "It was my idea. Have a nice day Beau. It was really nice meeting you... Oh, and Abby is a good person, as her best friend I feel like it's my responsibility to tell you that she likes you, and if you hurt her... well, I might look harmless..."

I walked away from Beau, letting my threat hang in the air, it wasn't necessarily an idle threat, I may not be able to physically do anything to him, but that doesn't mean I didn't have the resources to hurt him.