“Coping strategies?” I ask.
“Yeah. I mean, I’m not qualified to diagnose him or anything, but it sounds to me like he’s pushing at you and mom.”
Blood drains from my face. “What do you mean?”
“His insecurity, maybe from the trauma of staying with dad, has him pushing boundaries. Testing you. Making sure that you’re for real.”
I blink.
“If that’s the case, though, I would recommend to Max’s mom that he get some serious professional counseling outside of school.”
I finger the corner of my laptop.
“I didn’t do your homework. I think it really bit me in the ass,” I mumble.
My therapist looks at me through the screen. “Well, Georgia, I’d like to avoid the use of the word ‘homework’,” she tells me. “Homework implies that it’s a onetime thing. However, it’s something you should continuously work on.”
“So like a project.”
“Hmm… Project implies that there’s an ending, so I don’t love that either. Self-reflection, communication with your partners, those tasks I gave you… you should always practice those things. Those are healthy behaviors.”
“Well, I didn’t do it.”
“What happened?”
“I snapped at Oliver. I did the testing thing.”
“Why did you snap at him?”
“Because he was pushing me,” I tell her. “He made a bunch of choices for me, and you know how I can’t stand that.”
“So you stood up for yourself? Were you right?”
I think for a moment. “Partially. Yes.”
“Then I think you should be proud of yourself, Georgia.”
“But I feel like I forced him into failing the test. Because I didn’t do your homework, or project, or whatever. I didn’t communicate all the issues I was having. I bottled it all up until I let it all explode. And now I feel like I’m holding it against him, mourning, because he didn’t prove himself to me,” I say miserably.
She nods. “He didn’t pass the test.”
I’m annoyed when she says this.
She thinks for a second, flipping through her notes. “Maybe your ‘testing’ behavior doesn’t have to be so black andwhite. Maybe it shouldn’t be pass or fail. Let’s reframe this positively. In this particular test, this particular incident, maybe you should just analyze the data you got. What did this test measure? What do you need to work on?”
Myself, is the answer. I need to work on myself.
THIRTY-NINE
Oliver
I gave her a week.
A week of space. Then I would go and apologize.
Towards the end of that week, I went to Tim’s super late, to ensure there were no teachers left. But of course she was fucking there. I saw her with fucking Elias, of all people, the full radiant force of her laugh directed at him. He looked a bit shell-shocked, honestly. I wondered if that’s how I look around her.
Seeing her like that, so effortlessly happy and drunk and oblivious to the world around her, fuck. Happy with someone it was okay to be happy with. In public. Without fear of retribution for losing her job. I stood there, frozen, every fiber of my being screaming at me to leave, but I couldn’t move. The sight of her, so familiar yet so distant, tore me apart.
