"You look tired," Toby commented as we jogged next to each other.
"Nightmares."
"Dreams are a reflection of our unconscious mind... stressed?"
"Fuck work." Vague but true. "How was your *meeting or whatever* last night?"
"I know you prefer to deflect, and that may be part of the problem."
My heart skipped a beat and I glanced over at him. "There's just a lot going on. I'm halfway through my contract with Gabe and I dunno if I want to renew or not. And I legit want to know about your *whatever*." Sometimes I conned people without even intending. Out of everyone, Toby was the only person I'd consider opening up to about my true in-the-moment feelings, but that was as close as he was getting.
"What are the pros and cons of staying and going?"
"You expect me to make a list while we're exercising???" By now we'd both slowed to a speedy walk, and we'd had plenty of deep chats in this condition, I knew Toby wouldn't buy the excuse. "Pros of staying — good money, good co-workers, everyone likes me." It's scary how quickly I can slip into character without realizing it... "Cons — I kind of suck at the work, we don't even know if Gabe will want to keep me, some of the clients are awful and disgusting..."
Toby cut me off. "Something happened with one of the clients. What was it?"
I almost stopped in the middle of the track, not appreciating his psychic abilities. "He's a disgusting, creepy old guy who was hitting on me..."
"Seems to be something deeper, but I'll entertain that. What did he say that bothered you?"
My entire face burned red, not just from the sun beaming down. For a moment I considered what I could say, eventually settling on, "I don't wanna talk about it."
Now he seemed deep in thought, probably psychoanalyzing me to figure out how far he could push. His methods of extraction were more subtle than Izaak's, more intuitive. We sped up a little to make the silence less awkward. We'd jogged nearly a full lap when he decided to speak again. "Did you have nightmares as a child?"
"Oh yeah, all the time. Especially when parents split — but that was probably more because my mom put me in the middle of their drama..." Oof, I didn't like the feeling that memory gave me. "But eventually my dreams became more useful, gave me solutions to my school problems or whatever."
"What was your mom like?"
Another topic I didn't want to touch, but at least she didn't affect my life so much anymore. In fact, I'd pushed away most of my memories of her, so it took me a minute to figure out what to say about her. "Unpredictable. There were definitely good times, but I only remember the constant fighting. Her yelling at us. Threatening to leave. Until one day she finally did, and had the nerve to think I'd want to go with her. I always liked my dad more anyway."
"Why's that?"
"Ha... probably because he spoiled me. We always had a lot of fun together..."
"Speed it up, ladies!" Izaak hollered with a smile as he lapped us.
His voice snapped me out of my thoughts. "My dad just gave me more positive attention," I said in a hurry, once again more careful about how much I disclosed. Toby was too easy to talk to... I didn't need to get attached. "Now I've said enough. It's your turn to tell me about *whatever*."
x-x-x-x
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