Javier
It’s been close to forty-eight hours, and the hurricane is whipping outside. Our phones have lost reception, and I’m assuming a tower might be down.
Connor and Gracie are in a heavy video game session. The rest of us are hanging out together.
Gabriella has been acting a little anxious all morning, pacing the family room and then hallway on rinse and repeat. Beckett mouths what’s wrong with her, and I mouth back I don’t know. After her fifth round, I stand in front of her, take her hands, and ask, “Babe, what’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re anxious. Tell me what’s happening?”
“Nothing.”
“Gabriella, something is wrong. Now tell us,” Beckett barks.
“I don’t know. I feel antsy,” she loudly replies.
I put my fingers on her wrist. She has an elevated pulse. “Are you having chest pains?”
“Not pains, but it feels like it’s racing. I need to get out of here.” She spins and paces some more.
Mia comes into the room. “What’s going on?”
“Gabriella is having some sort of episode,” Beckett says.
“I’m not having an episode,” Gabriella denies.
“Says the girl with a racing heart,” he replies.
I stop her when she enters the room again. “Do you need to eat?”
“No, I just ate. You saw me.”
I wrack my memory on what she had on her plate.
“Stop. I know what to eat. I had protein. It’s not that.”
“All right. Have you meditated?”
“Too many times to count.”
I snap my fingers. “Exercise. You need to exercise.”
Her eyes widen, and she nods quickly. “Yeah. I feel like I can’t breathe in my own skin right now.”
I cup her face. “Okay. Go get your workout clothes and shoes on.”
“But we can’t go anywhere.”
Beckett scoffs. “You don’t need to go somewhere to get a good workout.”
She glares at him. “Glad you’re enjoying this.”
He holds his hands up. “Hey, I had a six-by-eight cell for ten years. If anyone knows how you feel right now, it’s me.” He rises. “Come on, everyone, get changed, and let’s all have a good workout.”
“Where?” Gabriella asks nervously.
Beckett points to the floor. “Right here. Go change.”
I put my hand on her back. “Let’s go.” I guide her up to her room, cursing myself for not thinking about this earlier. We could have been doing mini workouts and avoided her anxiety.
When we get to the room, she turns to me. “I need to do cardio. I can’t just do pushups.”
I kiss her on the lips. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you covered.”
I have no doubt between my time in the military and Beckett’s time spent doing prison workouts that she’ll know how to get cardio in anywhere from now on.
We meet Beckett and Mia downstairs, and Beckett has a whistle around his neck.
I point to him. “Where did you get that?”
“It was in my desk drawer. Thought we should put it to good use.” He blows on it, and a shrill sound comes out.
Mia puts her hands over her ears then removes the whistle from his neck.
“Hey, I need that!”
She scrunches her face. “No. I’m planning on surviving this hurricane with my hearing intact. Let’s try music instead.”
I pull out my phone and toss it to her. “You pick.”
Gabriella paces again, and I take her hand and pull her over to a cleared-out space on the floor.
Mia scrolls through my app and picks one of my workout mixes.
“Good choice,” I tell her.
We spend the next hour doing a mix of running in place, jumping jacks, step-ups on the stairs, kickboxing, and other activities to qualify as a cardio workout. By the time we finish, we’re all lying on the floor, dripping sweat.
“That felt good.” I roll my head toward Gabriella, trying to catch my breath. “Feeling better?”
She looks as flushed and winded as I am. “Perfect. Thank you. I feel normal again.”
Beckett hands us each a bottle of water.
Gabriella sits up. “I don’t know how you did it.”
“Did what?”
“Lived locked up for ten years.”
His jaw clenches. He takes a long sip of water and sits on the floor in front of us. “It’s mental.”
Gabriella cocks her head to the side. “Mental?”
“That’s right. Javier probably knows what I’m talking about.” He locks eyes with me.
War zone. Prison. Both bubbles.
“Sure do. You don’t allow yourself to think about things that will break you down.”
Beckett drinks more water and continues, “You figure out what you have to do to get by, and you do it. You have to eat, so you figure out how to stomach it and keep it down. You need to move, so you don’t let a lack of equipment or space stop you.”
“And you take it one day, or meal, or workout at a time without thinking about how many more you have in front of you,” I add.
“That’s right,” Beckett quietly says.
“Why don’t you think about how many are in front of you?” Mia asks.
“Because you might not have the answer, and that can destroy you,” I reply.
Beckett adds, “Or, you know how long you have and thinking about it will also ruin you. If you can hardly get through the day, thinking about anything like that will be the cause of your demise.”
Gabriella shifts on her bottom. “How do you not think about it? If you’re somewhere you don’t want to be, in a confined space, with limited resources, how do you not obsess?”
“You do what you already do,” I tell her.
“What’s that?”
“You meditate. Recite something different over and over so you can’t spend time on what will destroy you.”
Gabriella tugs at the carpet fibers. “That didn’t help me today.”
“Because you needed to work out,” I tell her.
“I don’t think your meditation will work anymore for you,” Mia says.
Gabriella furrows her brows. “Why?”
Mia glances at me and then back at Gabriella. “The words no longer are needed. They don’t fit your current reality. You need a new meditation for what’s happening in your life now.”
“What’s the meditation?” Beckett asks.
“Nothing,” Gabriella quickly says and shoots Mia a be quiet expression.
Beckett looks at Mia.
“Nope. Not mine to tell. Going to my grave with it.” She pretends to zip her lip.
“You aren’t going to tell me, either?” I ask her.
“No. Sorry, but I don’t want to.”
I stroke her back. “Okay. It’s all right. But if it doesn’t fit into your life anymore, then maybe Mia is right, and you need to create a new one.”
“I don’t know how to do that. Lisa, my counselor in the mental hospital, created it for me.”
Mia stands and holds her hand out to Gabriella. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the office where the pen and paper is. Let’s tear apart your current one and decide what has changed and what we can put in its place.”
“You think this is wise? I’ve said the same thing for three years.”
“Yeah, and you aren’t twenty-one anymore. Your life is different. It doesn’t apply. Let’s figure out how you can create ones that apply to your life now.”
Gabriella bites her lip.
“I think it’s a great idea. At the very least, it won’t hurt,” I encourage.
“Okay. I’ll try it. What are you going to do?”
“Shower. Then it’ll probably be time for us to start lunch since we lost that bet, too.”
Beckett scowls. “This cooking-and-cleaning gig is getting old. Connor needs to stop making bets.”
“Speaking of Connor, I think it’s time the bathrooms got cleaned. What do you think of making a friendly wager with him during lunch?” I ask Beckett.
Beckett grins. “I’m in. What do you have in mind?”