CHAPTER 1
JANE
The plaque on the door taunted me.Dr. Annie Monroe, Therapist.My therapist.
Lifting my chin, I looked around the small waiting room that used to feel foreign to me when I first started coming to these appointments. Now, I had a favorite chair, which I was sitting in. It was the one by the snake plant. The only other chair was across the room beside a steaming diffuser. The frankincense and grapefruit scent was nice but not when you were getting a face full of it. Then it was no longer soothing, which I assumed was the point.
There was also a couch, but I wasn’t going to lounge around before my appointment like Cleopatra. No amount of grapefruit vapor would relax me that much.
Dr. Annie’s office door opened, and her gaze fell on me. She gave me one of those smiles people reserved for skittish animals they couldn’t trust. Then she stood back, held the door ajar, and invited me in with a wave of her hand.
I eased into my usual spot in the leather armchair waiting for me. On my right, a box of tissues sat at the ready. I wouldn’t need those.
In my family, poise was expected, even if being held at gunpoint, which was also why I sat primly, my legs crossed with one ankle neatly tucked behind the other, and prepared to lie my ass off.Because… poise.
“Jane,” Dr. Annie began, her tone placating and soft, almost insultingly so. “How have you been?”
Oh, just spectacular. That’s why I come here twice a month, because everything is just perfect.
I pasted my most responsible, eldest-daughter smile on my face. “I’m great. Yeah. All good.”
Her head cocked about ten degrees to the left. “How’s work?”
“Super.”Except that it still makes me infuriatingly, agonizingly, unbelievably full of rage to see my uncle Andrew at the office after he was voted in as CEO overme, a three-time Yale graduate with a PhD in business, just because I’m a woman.I fixed my smile that had fallen from my lips. “Just awesome, really.”
“Well, that’s good,” she said slowly, like she knew I was full of shit. “How is your relationship with the board of directors going?”
“It’s better.” I gripped the armrests of the chair in a practiced way no one would ever notice and smoothly fed her the answers she wanted. “We’re learning how to read each other better.”
They’re ninety percent overfed, over-suited fossils who thinkfeminismis a brand of yogurt.I smiled with all thirty-two teeth. “Our falling out is all water under the bridge now.”
Not even an ounce of that was true, but I didn’t come here for honesty. I came for the structure. The accountability. Maintaining the illusion that by sitting in this room for fifty minutes every other week, I was doing something to improve my mental health.
Then again, I’ve been running on fumes and caffeine for so long, I’m not entirely convinced I have any mental health left to salvage.
“Are you dating anyone?” she asked then, like she was ticking off items on a mental list. “Maybe gone on a date since our last session?”
I curled my fingers tighter around the armrests, a move I’d perfected to center myself when I was asked questions I really didn’t want to answer. I’d had plenty of practice with that in the last few years, surviving press conferences and public scrutiny I never thought I’d have to face.
“No,” I admitted quietly. “No dates yet.”
She nodded and made a note. “Have you considered it?”
“Sure.”
She nodded along, my answer apparently satisfactory. Good. “And how are things with your mother and your brothers?”
Ah, yes. My favorite topic. The one that never fails to make me feel like I’m screwing up at life and parenting simultaneously—and I haven’t even had a baby of my own.
I rattled my answer off like I was reading from a script. “I still feel responsible for them. I know that probably contributes to my lack of a social life and it’s probably also why I barely have friends.”
It’s absolutely why it’s been at least a year since my last proper orgasm. I never have any time for myself anymore, but hey. At this point, who’s counting?
She smiled warmly, entirely unaffected by my dry recitation. “Good. Awareness is the first step.”
Awareness was the only step I ever seemed to take.
“Have you thought more about setting boundaries with your family?” she asked. “Like we talked about in our last few sessions?”
