Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
you’ve come further than you thought you could
Max
‘You might be my longest relationship, Marianne.’
‘I’m honoured,’ she says neutrally, adjusting her glasses on her nose. ‘Anything specific you want to discuss today?’
I think of Dylan’s crumpled expression. Hazel eyes filled with a quiet hope, slowly crushed by my inability to ever commit.
I think of how it feels to watch her smile from afar. I think of the shitstorm of my own making in my head. ‘Uh, I might’ve
messed up.’
Marianne remains impassive while I tell her what happened with Dylan, and when I finish, she gets straight to it. ‘Could you
explain to me, an outsider, why you think you behaved the way you did?’
‘Aren’t you supposed to tell me that?’
‘I’m your therapist, not a mind-reader. I’d like to hear, in your words, what exactly led you to those actions. If you don’t
know, we can try to get to the bottom of it together.’
Ava’s flat is familiar, but it’s not home. I can’t go back to our parents’ house yet. I need to lick my wounds before I’m
bombarded with questions from them.
I let out a long breath. ‘I know exactly what it was. I just don’t . . . stick. I said no to her because I can’t be anyone’s long-term person. I have to leave before the universe takes the choice away
from either of us, and everything goes to shit. At least this way, I get some control, and it’s less painful in the long run
for everyone involved.’
Marianne hums quietly. ‘Is it less painful for you?’
I scratch at a piece of dust between two laptop keys. ‘Probably not.’
‘So why do it? Why put yourself through this?
‘Because a big part of me thinks I deserve the pain too,’ I admit quietly. ‘Because my existence hurts people. Because they
worry, and they care, and the worst hasn’t even happened yet, and I won’t be able to take any of that pain from them when
it does. Walking away before I’m pulled away is the kindest option. I’d do it to my family too, if I thought I had a choice.’ The final sentence gets caught on its
way out. It’s something I’ve never really verbalised before. I swallow hard and try to lighten my tone. ‘Dylan will move on,
and then she can do whatever she wants with whoever she wants. In a few years, she’ll be grateful for this.’
Despite the screen between us, Marianne’s stare is so intense that it feels like she’s in the room with me. ‘I’ve seen how
hard you’ve been working over the years to reclaim your life and turn it into something that feels like it belongs to you.
But you can’t stop people from caring about you. That’s not within your control.’
‘I’m too much of a risk,’ I say hoarsely. ‘I don’t live a life that’s conducive to retirement plans and matching porch swings.
I can’t guarantee I’ll be around for a long time. And before you say it, I know no one can guarantee that. But I have more reason than most to believe it.’
She peers at me for a moment and then seems to decide something. ‘Do you remember our first meeting?’
I cast my mind back. I’d been through a few therapists by the time I started seeing Marianne. I’d made progress, but it’d
been slow. I wasn’t spending most of my waking hours inebriated anymore, and I’d been getting into a better sleep routine,
but I was still worse off than I am now.
‘I think I’d just come back from a trip to Thailand. Was that when my hair was long enough for a ponytail?’ I lean closer to the camera. ‘You won’t offend me by admitting that looked awful.’
Her eyebrows raise by a fraction of an inch. ‘I’m casting no judgements. But let’s not deflect. You’ve come on in leaps and
bounds since then.’
I know that every step I’ve taken away from that mindless, desperate place I used to live has been thanks to help from people
like Marianne, teaching me new ways to cope, one problem at a time.
She nods slowly. ‘So, following on from that, I’m going to share some observations I’ve made over the last six weeks, and
then we can talk about them. When you were in Wales, you mentioned a trip to Lisbon that you’ve been invited on. You said
you were considering asking for Dylan to be added as your plus-one.’
At the mention of her name, my stomach twists. It’s incredibly jarring to realise how many seemingly innocuous details I’ve
shared with this woman. ‘Is this relevant?’
‘Indulge me,’ Marianne replies. ‘Why were you going to ask to bring her?’
‘Because,’ I mumble. She looks at me and I know I need to enunciate better. ‘Dylan wanted to go surfing again, and there’s
a spot not far from Lisbon that I reckon she’d like to visit, so I had the idea of bringing her along and extending the trip
by a few days.’
‘Okay. When was the last time you drank alcohol?’
Another curveball. ‘Not since the day before I got my last scan results. Zero per cent beer tastes basically the same, and
doesn’t make me feel like shit the next day.’
‘You’ve swapped your morning runs for walks. Why is that?’
‘It started because I was enjoying spending time with Dylan, but I guess . . .’ I analyse the ceiling. ‘Same reason as the
alcohol. I felt like it was damaging my body, just in a different way. You know I’m not great with moderation, and running
until I hurt was starting to feel like a bad habit, somehow. I figured I should just stop before it got much worse. Slowing
down’s been kind of nice.’
‘Has it helped your hip?’
I’m thrown for a second, because somehow, for the first time in ages, my hip’s been an afterthought. My head has been eased, more than anything. ‘Where are you going with this?’
‘Where do you think?’
It’s been years of this and I still forget how annoying it is to never get a straight response. Work it out. There’s no wrong answer.
‘You’re glad I’m not showing up to sessions hungover?’
She shrugs and says easily, ‘Experience tells me you’re much more responsive when you’re sober, which makes my job easier.
But what made you make these changes?’
‘I don’t know. It kind of happened by accident. I started doing things to take better care of myself, and it felt good, and
now these things are habits, and, unless something wild happens, I don’t see myself breaking them.’
‘Who are you taking better care of yourself for?’
My instinct is to say my family, but maybe that’s not the sole truth. My answer rises to the surface, lifted by something that might be pride, and my voice
is quiet. ‘Me, I think.’
Her lips betray the tiniest smile. ‘That’s interesting, isn’t it? These don’t feel like the kinds of changes someone makes
if they don’t intend to live a long life. Seems to me like you’ve been thinking of your future self for a while now.’
Well, fuck. The silence stretches between us, and I let it wrap around me, an antidote to the chaos of my forever raging thoughts.
I press the heel of my hands into my eyes until I see stars. ‘I don’t know how to . . . turn the future into a beginning instead
of an end. I don’t know what the next step is.’
She tilts her head, and then she says what I already knew. ‘Forward, Max. That’s always been the next step.’