“Oh?”
“It’s still really new.” Really new. That kiss in the newsroom was Wednesday, and today’s Friday. “So I haven’t talked to him about . . . all of this yet.” I wave my hand around the room.
After we rearranged his desk to make it look less like he’d been mauling me on top of it, I started yawning, and he gave me a ride home, saying his work could wait. “There’s no way I’m going to be able to concentrate now,” he said with a rough laugh, one I felt down to the tips of my toes.
He has Elodie this week, meaning our schedules won’t match up again until next weekend. We’ve been texting, though, and the next night we both have off, I’m taking him on his first date in five years.
“That wasn’t going to be my next question,” Joanna says.
“Okay, fine, but I could tell it was coming. Eventually.”
We discussed this when I was with Garrison: why I felt I couldn’t tell him about my every-three-weeks visits to this office or the pills in my purse. “Do you think,” Joanna had said, “that maybe he isn’t getting all of you? He loves you, Ari. He might understand what you’re going through more than you’re giving him credit for. Might even support you.”
“I just don’t want to lose him if I do,” I’d say.
As open as I’ve been with Russell, he has only a fraction of my history. I want to think it would be different with him, but I’m not sure yet if it’s worth taking the risk. I have no way of knowing what would happen if I gave him every broken piece of me—and it’s the uncertainty that keeps those pieces stashed away.
“Let’s talk about something else,” I say quickly. “Let’s talk about my mom.”
Joanna’s eyebrows climb so high they disappear beneath her bangs. “Voluntarily bringing up your mother? I can roll with that.”
She has a point—I don’t do it very often. In therapy, even when I don’t have to be that sunshine version of myself, I’m always on edge when we discuss my mother. “I saw her last week. She’s going home in a couple days.”
“How did that go?”
“Not terrible. She seemed . . . good. From what I could tell, at least.”
“Have you thought about what you want that relationship to look like? I know she’s your mother, but you have every right to make whatever decision is best for you.”
I let the question hang in the air. Weighing it. “I have. And I want a close relationship with her, or however close we can get. I know it’s not going to look how I imagined it would when I was younger, and I’m okay with that. I want to get to know this different version of her.” Once the words leave my mouth, I’m surprised to realize they’re true.
“You know she isn’t going to be instantly cured,” Joanna says. “That this is a process, and she’ll have to keep up with her therapy and medication.” It’s maybe a reference to the joke I made after our third session. “I’m cured!” I crowed, and she shook her head, smiling. One of my past therapists didn’t have a sense of humor at all. It was important to me to find someone who could laugh about things. “And that she may not entirely be the version you’re expecting her to be.”
“I—I know that. I still want to see her. To try.”
Joanna sips her tea, nodding slowly. “Should we talk through some of those strategies to handle the things she might say to you?”
“Okay,” I say quietly, and that’s what we do for the rest of the session.
* * *
? ? ?
THAT SUNDAY, I meet up with Alex and Javier for boozy brunch at an upscale diner Javier is trying to poach a chef from.
“This kimchi hash is to die for,” he says between bites. “Imagine what she could do in our kitchen.” Javier’s place, a Cuban fusion restaurant called Honeybee Lounge, is consistently getting rave reviews, but he has his heart set on a Michelin star.
“Isn’t poaching a chef kind of morally questionable?” I drag my fork through my stack of pancakes. He’s not wrong; everything here is amazing. And I probably shouldn’t be the judge of anyone’s morals.
“Happens all the time in the industry. Especially if you have a rock star chef who’s not getting the attention they want, which I suspect is the case with Shirley Pak, given the very casual, not at all morally questionable conversation we had over drinks last week.”
“I guess that happens in TV, too.” I tilt my head toward the ceiling, pretending I’m calling up to the universe. “If the Today show wants me, feel free to let me know any time!”
“Don’t worry, I’ve already sent them the photos of your billboard.” Alex takes a sip of his mimosa, his freckled cheeks already prosecco-flushed. “God, it’s weird being out without the twins. It’s almost too quiet, isn’t it? Shouldn’t someone be screaming?”
Javier nudges him. “Quiet can be a good thing.”
This would be the perfect time to tell my brother and brother-in-law about Russell, but especially after confiding in Joanna, I’m not sure how much vulnerability I have left in me.
All around us, groups of friends are toasting one another and laughing and stealing food off each other’s plates. For the past couple months, I’ve been thinking I lost all these friends to Garrison. Sure, they were all his friends first, but I’m struggling to remember who I had before that. Later in college, I had a few close classmates, but we all split for different cities after graduation. There were a couple people in Yakima, including their chief meteorologist, whose goal was to keep that job for the rest of his career. He wanted to be the Yakima weatherman, and while my dreams were different, I could respect that.
When I got back to Seattle, I had Alex again. My hope of hopes was that eventually I’d have Torrance, too. I’m friendly with meteorologists at other stations, to the point where we chat if we see each other at industry events, and while we always promise to grab coffee sometime, it never happens.
I excuse myself to use the bathroom, dreading the feat of engineering that is unbuttoning my jeans with one arm in a sling. On my way there, I spy a familiar blond head at a two-top across the diner.
My first instinct is to swing by and say hello. But when her tablemate comes into view, I’m so startled I have to rush into the bathroom for fear of letting out an audible gasp. I don’t trust my eyes or my brain until I reenter the dining room, slowly, slowly. Because that is Torrance Hale, and the man she’s sitting across from, her hand on his forearm, is not Seth.
I stumble my way back to our table, where the view is more obscured but feels about a thousand times safer. The guy looks about Torrance’s age, maybe a bit younger, with overly styled brown hair and a silver hoop in one ear. They’re dressed casually, which of course for Torrance still means flawless lipstick and a sweater that probably cost more than a month of my rent. Sure, he could be a relative . . . but the way she’s leaning forward, giggling at something he’s saying is decidedly date-like.
“You all right?” Javier asks. “You look a little spooked.”
“Fine,” I choke out, spilling water down the front of my shirt.