“These are guidelines,” she says. “You’re not failing if you can’t follow them perfectly. But they give you something to hold onto. Something besides fear.”
I fold the paper carefully and tuck it into my notebook. My chest feels… tight, but in a more contained way.
“Can I ask you something?” I say softly.
“Of course.”
“If he doesn’t… get there,” I say. “If he never fully accepts this. If he’s always a little uncomfortable, a little… withholding. Am I allowed to still love him? Or is that… betraying myself?”
Dr. Kaur’s expression softens in that sharp way I’m starting to recognize as her about-to-say-something-important face.
“You are allowed to love people who can’t love you back in the way you wish they would,” she says. “What we’re trying to protect you from is shaping yourself to fit inside their limitations.”
“I don’t know how not to do that,” I whisper.
“That’s what we’re practicing,” she says. “You can love your father. You can feel gratitude for what he’s done. You can also say, ‘This part of me is not up for debate,’ and let him feel whatever he feels about that without using his reaction as a verdict on your worth.”
“We’ll talk again after you get back,” she adds gently. “You don’t have to process all of this in real time. You just have to get through the week using the tools you have.”
“Okay,” I whisper. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Text your support system,” she says as I stand. “Let them know what you decided. That includes Miguel.”
I roll my eyes. “He’s going to want to make a color-coded version of this list.”
“Good,” she says, smiling. “Let him.”
Miguel is alreadyat the condo when I get there, hair damp from his shower, hoodie sleeves shoved up to his elbows as he scrolls on his phone at the table. There’s a grocery bag on the counter and a glass pan of brownies on the island. He looks up as soon as the door clicks. “Hey, baby.”
“Hey.” I drop my backpack by the couch and toe off my shoes, suddenly more tired than I realized.
He opens his arms without a word, and I go straight into them.
For a good thirty seconds, that’s all we do. My face buried in his chest, his hands moving steadily up and down my back.
“How’d it go?” he finally asks, voice low.
I press my cheek against his sternum. “We built a harness,” I mumble.
“That sounds like a Kaur metaphor.”
“It is,” I say. “We made a list. For spring break.”
Pulling back just enough to see my face. “Wanna show me?”
I dig the folded paper out of my notebook and hand it over. He scans it, lips moving silently as he reads.
His mouth curves at “no heavy talks after 10 p.m.”
“I like that one,” he says. “Can we apply that to year-round life?”
“Yes,” I say immediately. “Put it in our constitution.”
He keeps reading, expression shifting subtly at each bullet point. When he gets to “code phrase: I’m grabbing water,” his jaw tightens.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “We can do that.”
“Is it dumb?” I ask. “Overkill?”
