I saw him again in the most likely of unlikely places.
We had only been on two dates, but that night my date expressed an interest for the night not to end after the movie. Standing outside of their car, their hands in their pockets and their eyes on the floor, they asked if I would like to come over.
They were sheepish. They were shy.
I said yes without a moment’s hesitation.
There was a restless energy between us, a mix between nerves and excitement, as we shuffled into their small two bedroom apartment.
“I like your place.”
We exchanged pleasantries until one of us took a step closer, right up to the edge.
“I like your face.”
We were kissing before we knew it.
Hands grasped onto my neck, sliding down my back as my fingers traced a similar line down theirs, circling the outline of their backside all the way down to their thighs. My heart beat in my ears, drowning out the muffled sounds of the city around us and heightening with sharp clarity the slow drawing of our heavy breaths.
We were tangled up in minutes, two beings becoming one, but somewhere along the way I stumbled. I propped myself up meaning only to catch my breath, but something grabbed my attention out of the corner of my eye.
I froze, doing a double take at my date’s bedroom window, trying to see beyond our naked reflections.
“Everything OK?” they asked.
I could have sworn I saw someone, but now there appeared to be nothing outside but empty street. What gave me pause, and had me feeling shaken, though, was that the person looked a lot like Anxiety.
“Yeah. I—I’m fine.”
We tried to get back to it, but the seed had already been planted. I saw Anxiety, I was sure of it, and now I was thinking about him, too. That was all it took to pull me out of my body and into my head. Despite my better judgment, I glanced back towards the window as my date kissed me, and there Anxiety was again, standing on the corner of the street. He held up a sign with messy black letters that only I could see.
It read: “Are you sure you’re enough?”
I squinted, trying to shut out the thought, but it was like water to the seed. In an instant, all I could think about was what my date wanted out of me, and whether or not I could give it to them. Gradually, and then at once, my focus was ripped away from the present, becoming garbled by both history and potential.
“If you can’t be what they want you to be, you will lose them,” a voice whispered from inside the room. Anxiety’s voice, but I refused to acknowledge it, refused to even look his way. “Just like you lost Hank.”
“I’m sorry,” I gasped, pulling away from my date and into the intangible, unsettling arms of my oldest and meanest friend.
Anxiety’s long fingers dug into my shoulder, his other hand caressing my hair as I confessed to my date that I needed to stop; that it wasn’t their fault; that I was just in my head.
“It’s okay,” they said, sitting up on the bed. They hugged their knees to their chest to cover up their naked body. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t wanna do.”
“I want to,” I replied, my frustration evident. “Believe me, I do.”
“I believe you,” they said.
“They don’t,” Anxiety whispered with a forlorn sigh.
It’d been so long since I last saw him that I thought he might be gone for good. But that was my problem wasn’t it? Anxiety was a puzzle that couldn’t be solved, a problem without a solution. I knew this. I knew him. He always, always found a way to get inside my head, to whisper things that aren’t true, and send me spiraling.
“I really do understand,” my date insisted.
My eyes rose hesitantly to meet theirs, and I was surprised to see genuine understanding.
“I know him, too,” they confessed with a weak smile. “He’ll go away after a while. Can I hold you until he does?”
Anxiety hissed something in my ear, but I could only perceive my date’s arms opening up to me, inviting me into an embrace.
I smiled, too, and allowed myself to be pulled forward instead of backward; to weather the storm of Anxiety’s latest visit in the arms of someone new.