March arrived without ceremony.
The days were lighter, the air less sharp, the city beginning to loosen its grip on winter. Elliot noticed these things now. Not all at once, not with wonder, but with a steady awareness that surprised him when he thought about it afterward.
He was in session with Dr Harper when he realised that was the point.
"So," Dr Harper said, glancing down at his notes before looking back up. "How have the past few weeks been?"
Elliot considered the question. He didn't feel anxiety first anymore. That alone felt worth noticing.
"Good," he said. Then, after a pause, added, "Consistently good."
Dr Harper smiled faintly. "Tell me what that looks like."
"I'm still walking every day," Elliot said. "I go places on my own. Deliberately."
"And how does that feel?"
"Sometimes it's hard," he said. "It's not effortless. But… it feels good to push myself."
Dr Harper nodded approvingly.
Elliot didn't tense at the world anymore.
"You sound proud of that."
"I think I am," Elliot admitted. "Not because it's a big deal. Just because I don't want to disappear, not anymore."
Dr Harper leaned forward slightly. "That's an important distinction."
Elliot nodded.
"I'm not trying to avoid things anymore," he said. "I still need space. I still need quiet. But I don't feel like I'm retreating into myself all the time."
"And Val?"
The name landed easily now.
"She feels… steady," Elliot said. "Even when things aren't. She notices when things get too hard. She lets me try at my own pace."
Dr Harper smiled. "That sounds like she really understands you."
Elliot absorbed that in silence.
"I want to suggest something," Dr Harper said after a moment. "Not because you're behind, but because you're ready."
Elliot waited.
"I'd like you to try something bigger. Do something with more people around you. Not social for its own sake. Something that reflects who you already are."
The words didn't alarm him this time. They settled.
"I've been going to the writing group," Elliot said slowly. "At the community centre."
Dr Harper's brows lifted slightly. "Tell me about that."
"I don't talk much," Elliot said. "Most weeks I don't talk at all. But I stay. And no one makes me feel like that's wrong."
"That's a good thing," Dr Harper said.
"I know."
"And how do you feel afterward?"
"Tired," Elliot admitted. "But… good."
Dr Harper smiled. "That's exactly the kind of thing I mean."
After the session ended, Elliot didn't sit staring at the closed laptop like he used to. He stood, stretched, and went to the kitchen.
Val was at the table, cutting coloured paper into careful shapes, her brow furrowed in concentration.
"Big day?" he asked.
She glanced up, smiling immediately. "We're planning a showcase. The kids are feral with excitement."
"Showcase?" he asked, pouring water into the kettle.
"At the end of the month," she said lightly. "Nothing fancy. Just sharing what people have been working on."
He nodded. The date lodged itself in his mind without resistance.
"You okay?" she asked, watching him more closely now.
"Yes," he said. "Just thinking."
She accepted that without probing, turning back to her work.
Later that evening, after dinner and their usual quiet routine, plates washed side by side, a show half-watched and mostly ignored, Elliot found himself lingering at the table with his notebook open.
Val noticed.
She smiled. "I'm going to bed, but I probably won't sleep straight away."
He sat down and started to write.
He wrote about rooms filled with people and how not all of them demanded something from you. About being quiet without being invisible. About the difference between hiding and choosing not to speak.
Val came back for a glass of water, she leaned against the doorframe.
"You know," she said casually, "some of the writers from the group might share something at the showcase."
Elliot's pen paused.
"You don't have to," she added quickly. "I just thought you might want to know."
He didn't answer right away.
The idea didn't send him into panic. That, more than anything, told him how much he'd changed.
"I'll think about it," he said finally.
She nodded, with a smile.
That night, lying beside her, Elliot stared at the ceiling longer than usual, not because he couldn't sleep, but because his mind felt busy in a different way.
He wasn't afraid of being seen.
And that felt like something worth taking seriously.
Elliot didn't decide all at once.
But he found the idea creeping into the quiet spaces of his days, slipping in when he walked, when he washed the dishes, when he lay awake at night listening to the steady rhythm of Val's breathing.
The notebook came out first.
Not a new one, that felt too intentional, but the soft-backed journal he'd been using for months now, pages already filled with uneven handwriting, crossed-out lines, thoughts written in fragments as they occurred to him.
He reread things he'd written almost a year ago.
That, in itself, was harder than he expected.
Seeing his own words laid out like that, tentative, careful, sometimes painfully honest, made his chest tighten. He had written them for himself, as they would never need to hold weight outside his own understanding.
He read a paragraph silently. Then another.
His inner critic stirred, familiar and sharp.
Too personal.
Too small.
No one will care.
He closed the notebook and set it aside.
The next day, he stood in the living room, Val had gone to work and Noah had been and gone.
Elliot stood near the window and tried to read aloud.
His voice caught immediately.
Not because the words were difficult, because hearing himself like that felt wrong, as though he were intruding on something private. He cleared his throat and tried again, softer this time.
The sound of his own voice in the empty room unsettled him. He wasn't used to taking up space audibly. Silence had been his way of remaining intact.
He stopped after two sentences, his heart beating faster than it should have been.
This is ridiculous, he thought.
And yet, he didn't put the notebook away.
Instead, he sat on the edge of the sofa and breathed until his body settled. He tried again, reading the same lines, this time not worrying about how they sounded.
Just letting them exist.
It wasn't great.
But it was possible.
The next day, he adjusted the conditions.
He practised in the shower first, where the sound of the water gave him cover. His voice felt less exposed there, muffled and unimportant. He read fragments from memory, phrases he knew well enough to let go of the page.
Later, he practised while pacing the length of the hallway, notebook in hand, stopping whenever his chest tightened too much.
He learned his limits quickly.
Ten minutes was too long.
Standing was easier than sitting.
Morning was better than evening.
Some days, he didn't practise at all.
Those days unsettled him more than the difficult ones. They felt like regression, like he was slipping back into avoidance. He had to remind himself that rest was not retreat.
Dr Harper's voice surfaced unbidden.
Progress doesn't mean punishment.
So Elliot began marking his efforts differently.
Not by how long he practised.
Not by how confident he felt.
But by whether he returned to it.
And he did.
Again and again.
At night, lying beside Val, he felt the words shifting inside him, rearranging themselves, preparing for something he hadn't fully agreed to yet.
Sometimes his heart raced with a sharp, electric fear.
Other times, the feeling surprised him.
One afternoon, Elliot stood in the living room and imagined the community centre.
He pictured the chairs. The smell of old carpet and coffee. The hum of other people's presence.
His stomach flipped.
He closed his eyes and kept going.
He imagined Val in the building somewhere, not watching, not waiting, just near. The way she always was. Present without pressure.
The thought steadied him.
He read again, voice shaking slightly at first, then settling into something more even. He didn't project. He didn't perform. He simply spoke as though he were explaining something important to someone who was listening carefully.
Halfway through, he stopped.
His eyes burned.
Not with panic.
With emotion.
The words had shifted.
They no longer felt like thoughts.
They felt like truth.
He sat down heavily, the notebook slipping from his hands, and stared at the wall while his body recalibrated around the realisation.
This is what it costs, he thought.
Not bravery.
Honesty.
That evening, Val noticed his distraction.
"You're miles away," she said gently as they sat on the sofa.
"Sorry," he said automatically.
She squeezed his hand lightly. "You don't have to apologise for thinking."
He hesitated, then said, "If I decide not to do the showcase…"
She waited.
"You won't be disappointed?" he finished quietly.
Her answer was immediate. "No."
He looked at her.
"Not even a little?"
She shook her head. "I'll be proud of you either way."
The knot in his chest loosened slightly.
Later, when she was asleep, he wrote about that.
Val said she didn't need me to do this. She said she wouldn't be disappointed if I stopped. I realised something then. Trust doesn't feel like safety. It feels like permission.
Permission to try without being fixated on the outcome. Permission to change my mind. To fail. To stop.
Knowing I can stop makes it easier to keep going. Knowing I'm not being measured makes me want to step forward anyway.
I think most of my life I thought that once I start something, I have to complete it. Or explain. Or push myself beyond my limits.
But this feels different.
This feels like choosing instead of being pushed.
And maybe that's what trust actually is.
The closer the showcase came, the more precise his preparation became.
He timed himself.
He chose where to pause.
He cut two paragraphs he loved because they didn't belong.
That loss stung.
He practised reading slower than he had been, resisting the urge to rush past the parts that felt vulnerable. He learned where his breath faltered and adjusted around it instead of fighting it.
One afternoon, something unexpected happened.
He finished reading out loud and didn't feel the need to escape the room.
His heart was still racing, but his hands were steady. His shoulders hadn't crept up around his ears. He felt present, grounded in his body in a way that was new.
He laughed softly at himself, the sound surprising him.
"I could do this," he said aloud.
The words hung in the air.
They didn't demand certainty.
They simply existed.
That night, he told Val.
Not everything.
"I think I might read something," he said quietly, eyes on the table.
Her face softened. "At the showcase?"
He nodded.
She reached for his hand, squeezing once. "That's brave."
He shook his head. "It doesn't feel like bravery."
"What does it feel like?"
He thought about it.
"Like I don't want to hide anymore."
Her fingers tightened around his. "I'm really proud of you."
The words settled, warm and steady inside him, and he realised he wanted to hold onto them.
Later, alone with his notebook one last time before sleep, Elliot wrote something new.
Not for the showcase.
Just for himself.
If I do this, it won't be to prove anything.
It will be because something quiet inside me deserves to be heard, even if only once.
He closed the notebook and turned off the light.
For the first time since the idea had taken hold, the thought of standing in that room didn't feel like standing on the edge of something dangerous.
It felt like he was stepping outward.
Slowly.
On his own terms.