“Okay,” I say, but slip out of them anyway.
She sighs as I walk over to the table. I don’t know where to sit. Next to her? Opposite her? My eyes wander back and forth as I try to decide. I hate decisions, especially when I’m under stress. My brain feels like glitching.
Victoria gets up and pulls the chair next to her from the table. “Sit down,” she says, and I feel like the biggest idiot of the lot. Who needs someone to tell her where to sit?
Yet, I sit. Gladly. Where she told me to sit.
“What tea would you like?” she asks me.
“Whatever you take,” I say. I can’t make decisions right now. I also don’t want to make a fuss.
She sighs. “What tea would you like?” she asks me again, sternly.
“I really don’t care,” I say. “I like every tea. I don’t mean to cause any trouble.”
Victoria shakes her head in disbelief.
“We will try that again,” she says. “I’ll ask you what tea you like, and you’ll tell me exactly what sort of tea you like, understood?”
I breathe out heavily, regretting my appearance even more. I don’t know what tea I want right now. I’d rather be home without any tea. Victoria stares at me with her blue eyes, piercing me,
“Yes,” I say and add with my eyes wandering to the floor, “I am not stupid, I—I just don’t like decisions.”
“Would you like me to decide for you?” she asks.
I nod, still staring at the floor. How embarrassing. Pathetic. Stupid.
“Henry,” she calls, and the man who I believed to be a driver appears. Apparently, he is a valet. Whatever.
“Assam, loose-leaf for me, and the wonderful green tea we brought from France for Miss Phillips, please.”
“Very well,” says Henry and disappears.
I stare back at the floor. I don’t know what to say, nor what to talk to her about. I shouldn’t have come.
“So, you read the book?” she asks me, and I look up.
“Yes,” I say. “Immediately. I wanted to read it for a long time. Ilove Brené Brown. I once went to see a talk of hers—“ Suddenly, words fall from my mouth.
Victoria smiles at me.
“Did you like it?” she asks.
Of course I did. I loved it. But I also know that I will apply none of it to my life. A fact I can’t have her know.
“Yes,” I say carefully.
“Yes, but?”
“But I feel it is more for the people who walk the path of self-improvement as a life purpose.”
“And you do not self-improve?”
“I—“ I stutter. It sounds so bad framed like this. “I am happy the way everything is right now.”
“Huh,” she says. “Are you really?”
And there we are again. She is making me question myself, pushing me into inner turmoil. I want to run. Far away.
