Page 19 of Ready or Not (The Nape #I)

Pilates was the last thing on my mind.

Though I dressed the part, I found myself unable to attend the noon class with a clear mind…

Which led me to wander aimlessly through the park on Bedford Ave.

The summer heat pressed down on the back of my neck like an unwelcome hand as I walked, coaxing beads of sweat along my hairline.

The air was thick with the smell of freshly cut grass.

Children shrieked as they chased each other around, their laughter an almost mocking contrast to the heaviness in my chest.

The world moved around me, but my brain was focused on Naomi’s words.

Fear can’t be your compass forever . At some point, you’ve gotta sit with the uncomfortable and at least try to work through it.

I thought I had done the part where I sat with the uncomfortable.

I had attended therapy after Andrew and I finally called the quits, I halted dating until I was sure I wasn’t dragging old baggage into something new, and I… I…

A bitter chuckle escaped my lips as I shook my head.

I lied to myself that I was.

The truth? I'd been using movement—literal and figurative—as an escape. Pilates, DJing, and surrounding myself with my friends to not feel alone for the past year… They were shields dressed up as self-care. I used them as distractions from sitting still long enough to feel any real discomfort. I avoided the quiet moments like they were landmines, terrified of what might detonate if I stepped too close. Stillness meant reflection, and reflection meant I’d have to confront the truth lurking beneath the surface—the truth I’d been so meticulously dodging.

I was afraid of what I’d find if I stripped everything away.

If I peeled back the layers of curated progress, would there be anything solid underneath?

Or was I just a hollow shell I’d painted over with bright colors and called it healing?

I stopped walking.

Sinking onto an empty park bench, the slats felt warm against my back.

Around me, life continued: joggers darted past with their headphones in, and a dog barked insistently at a squirrel just out of reach.

The world was utterly indifferent to my spiraling and, in some perverse way, that felt like its own kind of relief.

I pushed a curl out of my face, trying to will my thoughts into submission, but they resisted.

They always did.

Sitting here now felt too close to what Naomi had challenged me to do—sit with the uncomfortable. My fingers fidgeted against the bench as if grabbing for something else to focus on, something physical to anchor me against the swell.

And yet… What was I running from?

What was this nebulous fear that kept me from clutching onto movement like it was a lifeline?

My chest tightened as I wrestled with the question, my breath shallow and uneven.

Suddenly, a song with similar undertones played from a jogger’s wireless speaker as they passed.

Though it was different, it summoned the song I now hated because it came with the memory of Andrew.

The melody curled around my thoughts like a predator stalking its prey.

I gritted my teeth against it, but the lyrics bubbled up anyway, dragging me back to that final moment of us in his car while we drove through Flatbush—the one where I realized all the things I had hoped for with him were nothing but fumes.

I just don’t think this is working anymore, Andrew’s voice—low and monotone—slipped into my thoughts uninvited.

The memory was so vivid that I could almost smell the orange of his cologne mix with the heat of the park.

My hands tightened into fists against my thighs as the scene replayed, unrelenting.

"You don't think this is working?" I'd repeated, hollow and disbelieving, staring out the window at the familiar streets blurring by. We’d passed Larry’s Deli, where we used to grab sandwiches after late nights out, and yet there he was dismantling everything we’d built like it was nothing more than an expired lease.

His silence then had said it all. His grip on the steering wheel was too tight, his jaw clenched as if saying anything more would somehow justify it.

He didn’t want to fight.

He didn’t care to defend his words or soothe the wound they inflicted.

Andrew had already checked out long before that conversation began—I just hadn’t seen it.

That realization—his absence in moments where he should have been present—hit me harder than his actual words.

And now, sitting on this bench in a park miles away from all that heartbreak, all I could think about was how Desi’s small action overlapped in a way that scratched at old scars I thought had healed.

Andrew had been emotionally absent long before he said the words out loud. He had left me to piece together the fragments while his silence did the breaking for him. And maybe, just maybe, that was why Desi’s absence and the action of my folded clothes this morning felt like déjà vu.

But it wasn’t fair.

Not to him—not to Desiderio, who had shown up for me in ways Andrew never would have dreamed. I couldn’t keep punishing someone new for the sins of someone old.

Yet knowing that and feeling it were two separate things.

Logic didn’t quiet the storm inside me; it only made me feel guilty for standing at the center of it.

My hands stilled against the bench as the realization settled in.

If I wanted to break the cycle, I had to be brave enough to name my own ghosts.

I had to admit to myself that I was now the problem.

My fear wasn’t of heartbreak or loneliness or even failure.

It was staring too long and too hard at whatever version of myself existed after all the distractions faded away. I didn’t want to see her—not really.

Because what if she wasn’t enough?

What if the person I’d fought so hard to become over the past year wasn’t anyone at all?

The thought hit like a gut punch, leaving me breathless for a moment.

What if I’m not enough?

A sharp wind picked up, tugging at my shirt and teasing my hair into my face, and I let it happen—let myself feel it instead of smoothing it away like I normally would.

The restless part of me wanted to stand again, to walk or stretch or even run until my legs burned enough to drown out everything else, but I stayed planted on that bench.

At some point, you’ve gotta sit with the uncomfortable and at least try to work through it.

So I stayed until the discomfort wasn’t bothersome anymore.