“It’s important to have standards,” I say, then drop the bagel into the toaster.
“I want the works,” she says, and I snicker to myself because she’s not getting the full works for an everything bagel.
“Inside joke?” Emma asks.
“Yes, it is.”
She flashes an I knew it grin. “So, you guys have inside jokes, now, and send each other gifts?”
“We do,” I answer.
When the bagel is ready, she bites into it and rolls her eyes in gastronomic delight. Once she swallows, she fixes me with a no-nonsense stare. “Declan Steele, when a man like Grant Blackwood sends you bagels this good, shares insider jokes, and ships you gifts, you have to find a way to be with him.”
Those feel like words to live by.
One thing I’ve learned at therapy: shrinks will wait for you to find the answer.
Mine has an Oprah vibe, both in her looks and her demeanor. She’s patient, wise, and inviting.
When I walk into Carla’s homey, earth-toned office on West Seventy-Second Street on a Wednesday afternoon in May, I’m armed with questions.
I sink onto her couch and fire away. “Do you think I’m ready? Do you think I’ve been getting away with murder the last few months? Do you think I’ll slide into old habits?”
She smiles softly—sagely too—as she crosses her legs. “Would you like me to answer all three at once, or should we start at the top?”
“Fine. We can take it one at a time,” I say with a faux huff.
“Okay. Question one. Are you ready?” She leans forward, tilts her head, studies me. “Are you, Declan?”
I breathe deeply, looking inside for the answer. It feels just out of reach. “That’s what I want to know.”
“Did you come here a year ago to be ready for a relationship, or did you come here to learn better skills—ones that can help you in any relationship?”
“The latter?”
“Is it a question?” she asks with a light laugh.
“The latter,” I say decisively.
“I’d say so too. So, Declan, do you think you’ve put those skills into practice?”
I cycle back over the last year—the way I’ve been open with my mom, letting her deeper into my life, telling her about Grant; the way I talk to Emma; the way I shared with Nadia; and most of all, how I am with Grant.
But also, maybe even most importantly, how I’ve handled my dad. Turns out not giving him a ride unlocked something in me.
Erecting that boundary gave me a new kind of freedom—to live life on my terms. It gave me the freedom to talk to Grant during spring training—and after spring training, and for the entire month of April. Also, for all of May so far.
“Yes. I talk to Grant almost every day,” I say, then amend that. “Every day. We talk every day. As you know.”
Carla nods. “As I know.”
“Should I feel guilty about that? Am I breaking the promise I made to myself? To you?”
“Do you feel guilty about talking to him?”
It’s a fair question. “I thought I would. I worried I would be going back on my word. But I don’t feel guilty at all. I feel calm.”
“And why do you think that is?”
“Maybe I was more ready than I thought?”
She nods a few times, like she’s considering my answer and hasn’t been waiting for me to arrive on my own. “Or maybe you had to become ready sooner,” she says. “Life doesn’t always come at you in neat packages and timelines. Life and love happen on their own schedule.”
I reach for the green pillow on the couch, absently running a hand down it then bouncing my knee, fidgeting. “Are you saying I sped things up with Grant?”
She leans forward. “I’m saying what you did in February was what you wanted to do. Right?”
“Yes.” By February she means the weekend of the awards, when I reconnected with Grant officially, and that was exactly what I wanted to do.
“And since then, you’ve been doing what you want, haven’t you? Talking to him. Staying in touch. Being . . . boyfriends?”
A breath stutters from my lips. Is that what we are? Grant and I haven’t defined us at all. But with a few simple questions from Carla, here we are. Completely defined. Completely obvious.
“He’s my boyfriend,” I confirm, and my God, it feels incredible to say that out loud.
My therapist smirks, then laughs a little bit, seeming pleased. “Pretty hard to call him anything else.”
I smile too, relaxing back into the brown couch. “It’s impossible to call him anything else.”
She swings her foot back and forth. “How does it feel to call him that?”
I half want to ask her the same question. How did it feel when she met the woman who became her wife?
Maybe I’m not as messed up as I thought. Maybe I’ve had enough of a foundation in other ways—my own beliefs about who I give my business to, the lessons I learned from it, the love shared by my mother and then my stepfather. I have great friendships, a sport I love. Maybe I simply needed to get out of the way of my own happiness.