Sandra’s eyes flare with surprise before she smooths her face into something neutral. “That’s a different answer from our last session,” she says, a questioning lilt to her voice. “Are you saying you did mean what you told her?”
I wet my lips, a pigeon catching my attention as it soars past the window. I track the animal until it disappears.
“No, it wasn’t—” My throat bobs on a swallow, feeling too tight. “I didn’t mean what I said…but Imeantto hurt her. Even if I didn’t know it then. I knew exactly what to say to do the most damage, and I used it.”
Sandra gives a slow nod, looking down at her tablet. She picks up the pen, scrawling something across the glass screen, and my knee jiggles. I grind my elbow into my thigh, trying to make the movement stop.
She doesn’t look back up, even when her pen stops moving. Sandra always knows when to ease off on the pressure, giving me a moment so the tightness in my chest eases and lets me breathe.
“Why do you think you did that?”
“I felt like…” I shake my head. “God, I sound like an asshole.”
Sandra gives me a small smile. “You know that isn’t constructive,” she chides gently. “We want to move out of old patterns, break habits, and build new, healthy ones.”
I chuckle. “But sometimes, it’s the truth, right? I was an asshole.” The humor dries up faster than it came. “I reacted. I just saw Barrett?—”
“Charlie’s friend?” Sandra clarifies.
I stare down at the floor. “Yeah. He’s always just been there, right from the beginning. I kept hearing this voice in my head, ‘If she has him, why does she need me?’”
“What was the answer?”
I blink, frowning at Sandra in bemusement. “Huh?”
“What did Charlie need you for?” she asks softly, prodding. “What did you give her that she couldn’t get from her friend?”
My mouth trembles slightly. “Love, I guess. He doesn’t love her like I do. Not in the same way, or as deeply.”
Sandra nods, just as a softchimecomes from her desk. “That’s our time for today. I’d like you to think about why you onlyguessthat you give Charlie love, Dillon.” She leans forward, eyes earnest and intense over the rim of her glasses. “I want you to really think about why you reacted the way you did. And not just considering your relationship with Charlie, but also your friendships and your childhood.”
“You don’t ask for much, huh?” I joke, but it falls flat.
“It’s your homework,” Sandra says firmly, and I sigh heavily, dropping my head against the back of the couch, squeezing my eyes shut. “I’ll see you in a week. We’ll discuss everything you reflect back on.”
On my way home, Jack texts me, asking to catch up. I ignore it, unable to think of anything worse right now. Not when it feels as if my stomach has been cut open and my insides are spilling out everywhere.
Instead, I go back to my silent apartment, wishing I didn’t see Charlie everywhere I look. I sit on the couch, thinking aboutthatmorning, remembering how she walked through the front door, already broken because she knew we were over, and was just waiting for me to catch up.
I try to think about what Sandra asked me to do, but my mind is blank—trying to protect itself from a hard truth.
Iwantedto hurt Charlie that day.
And I succeeded.
Barrett knew it too. He’d had a front-row seat to the hell Charlie’s mother put her through, time and time again. He watched me join the ranks of people who hurt her, when she was a person who only ever deserved good.
The guilt and anguish over what I did have set up a permanent residence in my chest, almost making me wish that Barrett was around to punch me again.
I deserve to feel every ounce of the pain, because I know Charlie is still feeling the weight of my words. I was the last person she expected to ever lash out at her like that, which meant her guard had been down.
My mind is all jumbled and messed up—like someone dumped about twenty different puzzles with missing pieces into my head and told me to clean them up. I’m edgy and out of sorts, so I pull out my phone, ready to call her, but then freeze.
There’s no point.
Charlie doesn’t want to hear from me, and I’m not at a point that I deserve for her to listen.
I pull up the notes app, staring down at the screen for a long time, wondering what I’d say to her if she were standing in front of me.
