Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“Are you…” I tense, narrowing my eyes. “Are you laughing at me?”
It’s definitely humor in his eyes, however mild, and in the faint curve of his lips.
“Not really,” he says. “Just pleased you’re using therapy to help process life. Considering you showed up to our first session like it was detention, we should at least acknowledge how far we’ve come.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” My smile fades as I remember what I need to discuss. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice…again.”
He nods toward the two leather seats. I take one and he takes the other.
“So what’s going on?”
“Yasmen thought she was pregnant.” I rush to clarify. “She’s not, but it made her realize she wants more than the current arrangement we have offers.”
“The one where you have sex without commitment or any pressure,” he says. “Those were the terms, right?”
It sounds so sterile when he says it like that. I guess that’s essentially what I told him when we discussed my relationship, but I don’t recognize it as what Yasmen and I have had.
“Right,” I say. “It made her realize she wants more kids at some point and she says she wants them with me. She says she wants to build a life with me, even if we aren’t married. She doesn’t want to continue our current arrangement not knowing where it’s going, or if it will ever go anywhere. She wants me to come home.”
“Sounds like a woman who knows exactly what she wants.”
“Now,” I snap. “She wasn’t this sure when she asked me for the divorce.”
“Did you ask her about that? What’s changed?”
“She says she’s changed, and that through therapy she’s come to understand why she responded the way she did when Byrd and Henry died, and she’s developed tools to cope better.”
“But you don’t believe her?”
“I’m scared to.”
A few months ago, I couldn’t have imagined sitting across from this dude and confessing my fears so easily.
“Let’s play this out.” He places his elbows on the armrests and steeples his fingers beneath his chin. “If you believe her and she actually has matured, grown, and you go home, restart your life together, and it all works out, how would that feel?”
“I’d be the happiest motherfucker on the planet,” I admit with a wry smile.
“And if the two of you try again and it doesn’t work out?”
A sinkhole opens in my stomach, sucking down my smile.
“That’s the thing,” I say, gritting my teeth until my jaw aches. “I can’t imagine going through that again. Losing her again. If you’ve been run over by a bus, you don’t go stand in front of another one as soon as you can walk again.”
“So losing her again would be too devastating.”
I nod.
“And she’s not worth the risk,” he says calmly, like he doesn’t know how that would set me off.
“I didn’t say she’s not worth it. I just—”
“Don’t want to lose anything else?”
“It hurts too much.”
“We’ve never really talked much in detail about when your parents died, which was your first major loss. I know you were young, but could you tell me what you remember about that day?”
I’ve so rarely talked about this. I told him they both died in a car accident, but I’ve never unpacked that day. Not with anyone. My fingers twitch on the armrests. Everything in me wants to squirm, wants to run, but I force myself into stillness and draw a deep breath.
“I got off the bus,” I start softly. “My mom was always home when I got there, but that day she wasn’t.”
The image crowds my mind, me sitting in the porch swing, rocking back and forth with a backpack at my feet. I was huddled into my coat, putting on gloves when it got colder and started getting dark.
“And then the cops came.” I draw a deep breath. “A police officer said there had been an accident and my parents weren’t coming home.”
I laugh shakily. “It’s amazing how vivid it is in my mind. Every time I’ve lost someone, it’s captured in Technicolor, and slowed down so every detail is engraved on me.”
“Go on,” Dr. Musa says. “This is good.”
“Then Byrd came and took me home with her.”
“You said before that you found your aunt when she passed away. Do you mind telling me a little about that?”
I clear my throat. “When I found Byrd, all the ingredients for her limoncello cake were on the table. The kitchen smelled like lemons.” I rasp out a brief laugh. “I’ve never told anyone that.”
“Not even Yasmen?”
I shake my head. I’ve never shared the losses, and I see now that was a mistake because it gave them even more power over me. I never told anyone that Byrd was wearing her favorite pair of earrings, and one had slipped halfway out. I carefully pushed it through the small hole in her ear. Never told anyone that Henry had my mouth. I held him, light as a ball of cotton, dark hair plastered to his little head, and I traced his lips. He had my lips and I wanted to cry because I would never hear him cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. And I can still smell the paint mingling with Yasmen’s perfume in the nursery when she told me to go. When she delivered the greatest loss of my life. When I lost her.