I stood staring at the pictures until I decided I was tired enough to go back to bed. I didn’t even hear Shane and Jenny come back, but I suspect they were probably trying to be quiet. Not that it would have made much difference; I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow anyway.

**********

Not long after Alice’s breakdown about her subject matter, she was scheduled to go on a nationwide book tour. To say that we were all proud of her would have been a vast understatement, because everyone was overjoyed.

It wasn’t exactly easy for her. Since her breakdown with Shane, Alice had been going back to much more intensive therapy sessions, and even after everything I started to worry that I might lose her. Shane and the others assured me that it would all turn out fine, but they weren’t there when we were home alone together, trying to get ready for bed. She never even seemed to look at me anymore. When I tried to hug or kiss her I was always allowed for the slightest moment, up until she pulled away from me. She never stayed in my arms longer than a few seconds at a time.

I realized that she was going through a lot and tried to be as supportive as I could, but it was hard for me too. I wanted to share her pain, and she wouldn’t let me in, not even a fraction of the way.

“What do you expect? That’s the problem, she feels guilty for feeling this way and she doesn’t want you to see it. She knows you’ll feel bad about it,” Shane scolded me after I’d asked her to the Planet to whine about the situation yet again.

“That doesn’t even make sense! If we can’t talk about it, how the hell are we supposed to fix it?”

Shane sighed. It was obvious she was getting frustrated with the entire situation, but so was I. Granted, I felt like an asshole for constantly venting about the same thing to her a thousand times, but I didn’t know what else to do. It wasn’t as if I could really talk to Alice about it, and that was what bothered me.