Fanning The Fire Marshal's Flame

Emotional Explosions

She sat there debating how much she wanted to spill. Psych-One would be telling her it was her right to tell anyone off if they hurt her. Sabine would tell her continuing to hold onto the anger would not help her heal and she should let it off her chest.

She had him in front of her. For the first time in eight years, he was here, and she had the ability to tell him. While she couldn’t or wouldn’t in this moment, tell him about why she approached the men the night in the ballroom, she could tell him how his behavior after affected her. He was a big boy and hurting his feelings, if he had any, were not her concern. This was about her and getting it out there and confronting the pain he caused her.

She took a deep breath and then exhaled, “Fine. Here it is. Seeing you yesterday in my kitchen reminded me of the day after I got out of the hospital. You walked in, patted me on the head, offered weak, lame-a*s platitudes as if your presence at the ball would have made any kind of difference to what happened and then you left never to be seen again. Your words to me that day were if you had been there you would have protected me and you were sorry you weren’t there to stop it. You in this house brings me right back to the feelings of being vulnerable, hurt, angry and incapable while I wallowed in self-pity on the sofa. It brings me right back there.”

“Lita, I’m sorry,” he started to speak and stopped when she held up her hand.

“I’m not done. I’ve waited a long time to say this and now you’ve asked, I’m putting it all out there.” He waved at her to continue; his eyes gentle but guarded as if he knew something she said was going to hurt but didn’t know what it was. “But it also reminds me of how much I hated you for the words you said that day. You were a condescending prick and I wanted to punch you in the balls. My own father was at the ball and he wasn’t able to stop it, yet you popped in here on your way to Boston to offer some condescending bullshit about how you, the great Diarmid Clooney, could have protected me better if you had been there on the night of the ball and then you left with no explanation as to what the f**k you meant.”

“Lita, I –” he blinked at the cold fury of her tone.

“Save it, Diarmid. I don’t care for your excuses. I sat there after you left thinking if you had been there what could you have done? Maybe you would have noticed I wasn’t hanging off dad’s coattails and dragged me back to him? Maybe you would have noticed the boys buying me an illegal drink and you would have put your foot down. Might you have seen them d**g me and got me out of there to safety? Perhaps you would have seen me getting taken out of the ballroom while my dad was in the bathroom? Oh, I know,” she clapped her hands together once, “you would have been the white knight to beat up Reardon and save me from the r**e and choking he gave me or when he spit down my throat after he kissed me so hard, he split my lip against my teeth. Which, really, he didn’t need to do because I couldn’t fight him. Maybe you would have rescued me when he took great delight in making me o****m. Did you know victims can o****m? Ultimate in humiliation to be honest. I had no control over my body. Pissing down my own legs when I crawled out of the hotel room wasn’t near as humiliating as knowing my r****t made me come. So, tell me Diarmid, how was it you, in all your powerful glory were going to protect me had you been there when you barely noticed my existence before? Even if you had been at the ball, you wouldn’t have paid me an ounce of attention because I was just a kid.”

She watched his mouth open and close, and she gave a hard, cold glare at him. “Exactly. Your words served only to make me feel everything which happened was my fault because I was a weak little girl who went into a dangerous situation because the big boys weren’t looking after me. If you had been there, you would have protected me, right?” She stood up from the sofa and glared down at him. “Since you weren’t there, I was a frail vulnerable little girl who walked right into the lion’s den without any protection. Like it was my fault. It was my fault, right?”

“Lita, I never said it was your fault.”

“But according to you, since you weren’t there to stop it from happening, who takes the blame?” He blinked at her rapid-fire questioning, “not you, since you weren’t there to provide me the protection which I very clearly needed, even though I wasn’t your responsibility. Couldn’t have been Dad’s because he got cornered into a conversation with his boss and his boss’ boss? We all know it wasn’t the brat packs because they were all cleared in the inquiry and confirmed innocent of any wrongdoing. Which leaves me, right Diarmid? It was all my fault because I was too young and stupid to be left on my own without protection. My fault for allowing my eighteen-year-old self to be sitting with a group of guys who paid me any kind of attention when everyone else was ignoring me. I mean, had you been there, none of it would have happened right because you would have babysat me? Is this it? Made sure I didn’t get myself into trouble? I would love to have known where you came to your conclusion given you likely would have had a date of your own to occupy your time so why would you have watched me anyway?”

“Lita, I’m sorry. I should have chosen my words more carefully.”

“You shouldn’t have even spoke.” She glared furiously over him. “You didn’t need to come here that day. You didn’t need to say a f*****g word to me. Instead, you dumped all the blame on the stupid little girl who shouldn’t have been left alone because no man was there to protect me.”

She gave an angry shake of her head. “For two weeks I sat right here,” she pointed to the sofa, “right there and wondered if you were right. If you had been there to protect me, would I have gotten into trouble? Nobody was babysitting me and like a wayward child, I caused catastrophe. My fault. I took the blame. I sat there and took the blame because clearly, I should not have been left alone in a ballroom with three hundred people who literally work to save lives every day. I couldn’t be, shouldn’t have been, left unsupervised and as a result of my stupidity I got hurt.”

Lita started to walk away, yanking the ponytail out of her hair as she did, her auburn hair cascading down her back as she shook it out. “You want to know why I dislike you Diarmid? It’s because you were a condescending asshole just like those pricks in the boardroom who made me feel what happened was my fault. It wasn’t. I did nothing wrong. They did. They took advantage. They drugged. He r***d. He did. Not me. Yet you had the audacity to pat me on the f*****g head and say if you had been there none of it would have happened. Screw you. Even if you had been there, I would have been brutalized. Shame on you for dumping it all on me.”

She stomped down the stairs to the basement and stood in the middle of the room. One half of the room was set up as her lab. Neatly organized with all of her equipment and projects exactly where they needed to be.

The other half was a dance studio with a wall of mirrors and a bar and a hardwood floor her father had installed when she had been thirteen. She’d always been too tall to be a classic ballerina. Five-feet-seven-inches in height was too tall for any lead role but she’d always been graceful and thin with a willowy frame. While she’d never be a prima ballerina, she loved to dance. If running didn’t fix her issues, leaving it all on the dance floor usually did.

She hit a button on the wall and let the music permeate the room. She ripped her tank top off and stood in her running shorts and sports b*a and wound the hair she’d just ripped out of the pony into a bun with practiced precision. She yanked her shoes on with more force than necessary and avoided her own gaze in the mirror. She knew her face was flushed, her green eyes flashing and angry and her lips quivering with the need to cry.

The music pulled her to the center of the room, and she moved into position and then began to move to the haunting melody blasting around her. She twirled, dipped, kicked, and leapt, forcing her mind to focus solely on the tune wrapping around her. With her arms swaying rhythmically, she danced until her breath was short puffs and her muscles burned. She kept her face averted from the mirrors and often kept her eyes closed. This room she could dance in with her eyes closed. She knew how far she could go before hitting a wall and how high she could jump before touching the ceiling. When building this room for her, her dad had dug an extra six feet down in the ground to allow for more ceiling height. Yet with the right push from the floor, she could feel the ceiling against her bun. The risk of smashing her head paled to her need to have a physical ache to diminish the emotional one.

She collapsed to the floor as the music, continued blaring overhead and let her face fall to her knees, wrapping her arms around her shins and pulling herself into a tight ball and laying on her side. Diarmid’s arrival had brought with it an anger with which she had not yet dealt. Rage at herself for crushing on a man so much older than she was who had no idea of his impact on her and her spitefulness at him not showing up to claim the dance he had asked her to save. Fury at him for making it seem to her, in her most vulnerable moment, she shouldn’t have been left unsupervised and because she had been, she put herself in a situation only a man like Diarmid could have stopped.

The need to tell him off had erupted and now the words were out, she couldn’t take them back, nor would she want to. She only wished it hadn’t left her feeling open and vulnerable. Admitting he had hurt her and had caused her trauma to be temporarily worsened made her feel he had a power over her when he should have none.

She sat up when she noticed her father’s feet coming down the stairs and wiped the tears off her cheeks, acknowledging for the first time she was crying. The ire she felt pouring out of her in saline and sweat.

“Are you okay, Lita?” he turned the music off and sat on the floor with her, dropping his arm over her shoulder. “Diarmid said he peeked in on you about twenty minutes ago and you seemed completely lost and didn’t even notice him.”

“He had no right to come down at all, but he’s right, I didn’t notice him.” Her voice was shaky as her breath was still ragged from dancing.

“He said he upset you. What happened?”

She couldn’t look at him as she spoke quietly, attempting to gather control of her erratic emotions. “He’s a reminder dad. I took one look at him yesterday and was catapulted to being the little girl sitting on the sofa the day I got released from the hospital because it was the last time, I saw him. The last time I was in his presence, I was at my most vulnerable and seeing him now, with him acting like we’re old friends when it was never the case, makes me remember the things I have worked so hard to forget.”

“You were old friends.”

“No,” she corrected sadly. “I was a young adult. He was a grown man, and he was your friend, dad. Never mine. We weren’t friends back then. We aren’t now. I respect he is your friend, and you are his, but you can’t make him my friend when it was never the case. All he is to me is a reminder of a time when I felt more vulnerable than I ever did in my life.”

“I’ll tell him he needs to stay at a hotel.” Conor spoke quietly stroking her arm as he kept her tight to him.

“No,” she shook her head. “It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not, Lita.” Her father gripped her chin forcing her green eyes to meet his blue ones. “You, you are my child. You are right. He is my friend, but you are my daughter. If his being here makes you uncomfortable, brings up memories and triggers your PTSD, then he goes.”

“No.” She refuted again, with more conviction. “I need to deal with it. I’ll apologize to him later for yelling at him like I did, not for my words so much but for the delivery. Right now, I need to process my grief, yet again, but sending him on his way is only going to allow me to continue avoiding feelings I’ve had with which I haven’t dealt. I need to deal with them. I need to deal with him.” She rubbed her calves. “I’m going to take a hot shower and then make dinner. Is he here for dinner, or no?”

Conor gave a sad smile, “Lita, you don’t have to do this.”

“Dad, I do. If he’s going to be here in New York and you get to have your friend back, I need to get comfortable with him again.” She groaned as she rose to her knees to stand up, “f**k, going for a run and then dancing for an hour did me in.”

“An hour? You’ve been down here two hours.” Her father surprised her. “You were really in a trance or something, kiddo.”

“Well s**t,” she gave a low laugh, “explains why my legs are jelly.”

“Come on, my Little Lita.” He swung her up in his arms as if she weighed nothing and she laughed in protest. He kissed her cheek noisily, “you’re still daddy’s little girl. I can carry you upstairs to the bathroom. You take a hot shower and I’ll order dinner in, instead of you cooking it.”

She rested her head on his shoulder and sighed, “thanks Pops.” Sometimes, it was good just to be a daughter and nothing else.