It's About Time (Blossom Peak #4)(11)
I glare at him. “Cut the shit, Elliot. You know drinking yourself stupid isn’t a long-term solution.”
“Good thing I don’t care about what you think of me or how I choose to live my life. I’m a grown man, remember?”
We stare at each other as I lean forward and brace my elbows on my thighs. “You know what? You’re right. Don’t worry about what I think, but what about the boys? What about your parents? Do you care what they think?”
He moves his eyes away from mine. “I’ve been getting enough shit from all of them. I don’t need you to add to it.”
I s often my voice. “They’re concerned, Elliot, and with good reason. What you’re doing isn’t healthy. And it isn’t you.”
He pushes a hand through his hair as tears fill his eyes, avoiding my gaze. “I’m fucking miserable, Dil. I hate my job right now, my fucking dad is…” He trails off, shaking his head. “And seeing Fletcher and Henley so happy now is just making it worse.”
My brother is dealing with his own demons at the moment while falling for his nanny, but I have faith that he can overcome the issues he’s been pushing down for years. Elodie is worth it, and every woman deserves a man who will fight to be better for her.
One day I hope to find that too—although I definitely didn’t feel that way after my breakup.
“I know you’re miserable, Elliot. But unfortunately, you’re the only one who can fix that.” I study him as he stares into the box of onion rings because I remember feeling powerless too at one point, but this isn’t about me. It’s about him. So I decide to shift to the second part of my plan. “Have you ever seen the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall?”
His brows draw together in confusion. “No…”
“Really?” Launching myself from my chair, I move toward my purse and take out the DVD, grateful that Elliot still has a player for this outdated technology. “Then we need to fix that.” I head toward his TV and turn on the system, programming the movie and then pressing play.
“Dilynne…”
“If you’re the type of person that talks during movies, Elliot, we’re going to have a serious problem.”
He sighs but takes my warning to heart. And then we sit there in silence, watching the movie until he passes out with the box of onion rings still on his lap.
Chapter 5
Elliot
Trying to Move On
Five Months After the Wedding
“I realized something after our last session,” I begin.
Dr. Harris encourages me to continue with a nod.
I lean forward, bracing my forearms on my knees, eyes fixed on the floor. “You mentioned last time that my ideas about love have a lot to do with how I’m feeling,” I say, working through the thought as it forms. “Well… I think I loved the idea of Tori more than I actually loved her.”
The admission hangs there, and I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
Dr. Harris scribbles something on his notepad, nodding again. “How so?”
Sighing, I lean back against the couch cushion, staring up at the ceiling. This is my third session with my therapist, and I am finally starting to feel some of the pain in my chest subsiding. “I wanted to believe in us so hard because I felt like I had to,” I continue. “I made the decision to get married and even told myself that everything would be perfect, so then when it didn’t feel that way, I didn’t listen to my gut. I kept telling myself that it would all work out because that’s what I wanted to happen.”
“You ignored your intuition.”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Tell me more about your grandfather,” Dr. Harris continues. “You said he set the bar for how you wanted your relationships to feel?”
A memory from my childhood hits me. I can see my grandparents dancing around the kitchen, laughing as Frank Sinatra plays through the small handheld radio sitting on the kitchen counter. “He and my grandma were always happy. They loved each other so much, it was sickening really,” I say through a laugh. “Their relationship was the complete opposite of what my parents had, and I wanted Tori and I to have that too. It was all I could think about.”
Dr. Harris sets his pen down on his notepad and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Sometimes when we have these two opposing viewpoints, Elliot, it can make us romanticize certain things and villainize others. You focus on the happy moments between your grandparents, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have their share of problems and disagreements.”
“True…”
“And since you only saw the good, the bad with your own parents was magnified. As a result, I think part of your struggle with this failed relationship is the mismanaging of your expectations.”
My brows furrow. “What do you mean?”
“ Disappointment comes from our expectations not being met. In other words, part of why you’re battling so much with what happened was because you had such high expectations of what could have been, but it wasn’t really there to begin with.” He glances down at his pad of paper. “Over the past three weeks, you’ve mentioned numerous things that occurred in your relationship that you didn’t address—Tori’s unhealthy boundaries with her job, her convincing you to have kids when you didn’t want them, and even how you felt your affection was one-sided. The thing is, without a partner who wants many of the same things as you and is willing to compromise on others, it’s hard to ever achieve what your grandparents had.”