He picked up on the first ring. “Ali?”
It annoyed me how much hope was in his voice.
“Hi, Neil. We’re going to do a little trust exercise.”
“Okay…” he said.
“For the next four months you’re going to see a therapist. My therapist. You. By yourself. You’re going to tell my parents that I’m going with you—”
“Why would I—”
“Shhhhh! I’m talking and you’re listening. I’m going to give her permission to talk to you about anything I’ve talked to her about, so you’ll have all the insight you need into why we’re not together. You will tell my parents that we’re in couple’s counseling. And at the end of the sixteen weeks, provided you haven’t thrown me under the bus to Dad and you’ve gone to all sixteen sessions—and I will need proof that you’ve gone to these sessions—I will agree to start going to therapy with you.”
He was silent on the other end.
“You want me back so badly, this is your big chance. And it’s also my final offer.”
More silence.
“Okay,” he said. “Yes, I agree. Thank you.”
“Fine.”
I hung up on him.
Bri was looking at me with wide eyes. “WOW. Maybe you’re the wartime consigliere.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe he agreed to it.”
“He had to. He’s lost control. His other strategies aren’t working,” I said.
“Do you think he’ll actually do it?” she asked.
“I have no idea. I’m leaning toward no.”
“And if he does?”
I shrugged. “Then Mom and I get a four-month mental health break? And then I end up doing what I think I’m going to end up having to do anyway, which is to pretend to work on our relationship?”
She let out a resigned sigh. “Oh, Ali.”
“It’ll be good for him if he goes,” I said. “He needs therapy.”
“What he needs is Jesus.”
I laughed. Then my smile fell.
“You know what’s weird? Daniel is only twenty-eight and he has his life figured out. Shouldn’t I have my life figured out by now? I should, right?”
“I bet his life isn’t figured out either. Nobody’s is. I thought mine was, and look how that turned out.”
I peered over at her. She was looking at her hand, twisting a ring around her pinky finger.
“Are you doing okay?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Define okay. Benny’s getting worse. I can’t do anything to help him. My marriage has failed, and I can’t even find a guy decent enough to have casual sex with. I’m bored and alone all the time, living in my mom’s crappy house.”
She went quiet for a moment. “I just want one of us to be happy. Why can’t we be happy?”
I sighed. “What does happy even look like, Bri? I fall in line and do what’s expected of me, give up Daniel, but I get to keep my family? Or I give it all up, become the shame of the Montgomery legacy, lose my dad, devastate my mom, but I get the boy I like? Which one is happy?”
She shrugged. “It’s easy. It’s whichever one you can’t live without.” She looked at me earnestly. “But I’ll be there for either scenario. I’ll always be there.”
I studied her face gratefully.
Bri was amazing. She didn’t deserve what happened with her ex or what was happening with her brother. She deserved everything and more.
“Maybe we should both quit Royaume,” I said.
She laughed. “Quit men too. Move in together and start a YouTube channel where we day drink and rate bread.”
I laughed and leaned over and hugged her. “I love you,” I whispered.
“I love you too,” she said with her chin over my shoulder. “But I’m still not digging the hole.”
Chapter 27
Alexis
When I’d seen Neil this morning in the kitchen, he tried to do the thing where he puts a tender knuckle to my cheek, like my counseling offer was some meaningful moment of forgiveness from me. I smacked his hand off me and grabbed the Keurig from the kitchen, marched it to my bedroom, and locked the door.
I had to come back down a minute later to shove coffee pods into the pockets of my robe, so the gesture lost a little momentum, but I think the message was pretty clear. If he wanted to talk, he could talk to me in four months after he’d jumped through all my hoops—which I half expected him to not do. But at least it would get Dad off my back long enough for me to breathe.