Sophia
Hunter Driesse recommends a colleague of his, Dr. Annette Reeves. “She’s excellent,” he says. “She might be booked up, though. I’m having lunch with her tomorrow. I’ll tell her you’ll be reaching out.”
Dr. Reeves agrees to see me on Friday. I show up at her office feeling nervous and heartsick. By the time I leave, I’m cried out and drained, but also a tiny bit hopeful. Ben was right. I should have seen a therapist years ago.
Simon corners me in the kitchen when I get back home. I didn’t expect to see him there. It’s Friday night, and my brother is still in the ‘must-go-out-every-Friday-night’ stage of his life. “Did your plans fall through?”
“No, I thought I’d hang out with you.”
“What if I hadn’t been at home?”
He makes a scoffing noise in his throat. “Please. You’ve been moping all week.” He grabs a beer out of the refrigerator and offers me one. I decline it. Just in case. He cracks open the bottle and takes a long swig from it. “I talked to Julian on Monday,” he says carefully.
My heart does a funny leap in my chest. “Oh.” I have so many questions. How is he doing? Did he mention me? Was Damien there? Are they angry? Do they hate me?
“Does it bother you that I’m working on his greenhouse? Should I stop?”
“What?” I stare up at my brother. “No, of course not. I'm not asking you to take sides. You agreed to work on his place. His sister is getting married there in December. You can’t walk off the job.”
He gives me a quizzical look. “Why do you care, Sophia?”
I swallow the lump in my throat. My eyes are prickling again. I’m ridiculously emotional nowadays. I’m so fragile from breaking things off with Julian and Damien that everything makes me cry. Last night, a stupid insurance commercial made me tear up.
I dig my nails into my palm and do my best to keep my voice steady. “I don’t hate him,” I whisper. “I don’t hate either of them.”
“Why did you break up with them, then?”
Annette asked me that too. I’d poured the whole thing out, and she frowned at me, puzzled. “What did Damien say when you asked him about the conversation?”
“I didn’t ask him,” I confessed, shamefaced. I’ve always thought of myself as a responsible adult. I’ve been working since I was eighteen. I get along with most people, pay my bills on time, and don’t read or respond to the comments section of the Internet.
But I ran out on them. Didn’t ask for an explanation. Didn’t listen to what they had to say. I assumed the worst of them.
I was so impulsive. So thoughtless. So stupid.
I don’t deserve them.
I’m drained from telling Annette everything, and I don’t have the energy to talk about this with my brother. “It’s complicated.”
“Do you regret it?”
“Yes.” With every fiber of my being. If I could roll back the clock, I would. But I can’t. There are no time machines in real life.
“Why don’t you call them?”
Because they deserve better. They deserve someone who isn’t this fucked up. They deserve someone who will stick around when times get hard.
“It’s complicated,” I say again.
“Do you want to?”
I nod wordlessly, my eyes filling with tears.
He gives me a long look. “Julian asked me to pass on a message to you,” he says. “He said, ‘Whatever we did, we’ll fix.’”
Hope sprouts in my heart, but I trample it. It’s not them that need fixing. It’s me.
Saturday morning,I finally rouse myself out of my stupor and head to the community garden where I volunteer. Rosemary Travis, the founder, is there, weeding a bed of lettuce. “Sophia,” she exclaims. “I’ve been meaning to call you.”