Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Maggie
Sometimes, I avoided going to therapy.
Especially during the times when I needed it most.
I just… didn’t want to feel like I was broken and needed to be fixed. I knew I had problems. Everyone did. But I didn’t see what dumping them on another person would really do for me in the long run.
The thing about Linda was, she never made me feel like that.
Instead of being a person I ranted at, she was like a mirror being held up to me, giving me the tools to cut through my own bullshit.
And she wasn’t afraid to tell me when I was being a pain in the ass, which was honestly pretty refreshing.
Her words weren’t usually as colorful as that, but I appreciated the sentiment nonetheless.
I liked people who were genuine. They were all too rare to come by, and I had a knack for seeing through facades.
The double-edged sword was that—so did Linda.
“How are you?” she asked, trying to open the conversation.
I should let her. I should just talk. It’s why I came to therapy after all. But blabbering about my problems felt too vulnerable. Even though by law my pathetic feelings would never leave the privacy of this room, it still felt too embarrassing to share. Too personal.
“I’m fine,” I told her, bobbing my head in a nod.
“You’re fine?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Yes,” I lied. “I’m good.”
If she really wanted to know, she’d keep asking, and eventually I’d give in and tell her. But it would be too pathetic of me to just lay it all out there after a simple How are you?
“I know that you’re not,” she tsked, as if my refusal amused her. “And do you want to know why?”
“I am fine,” I countered, “but for curiosity’s sake, I’ll bite. Why?”
“Because I know for a fact the receptionist told you the joke of the day, and you didn’t so much as crack a smile when you walked in here.”
“Maybe it wasn’t funny.”
In fact, I had been so zoned out checking in that I hadn’t heard a word the secretary said.
“It was funny, and I know if you were fine you would’ve thought so too. Especially since you laugh at everything,” she said easily.
I liked that about her. She knew how to break the ice with easy banter. It made me feel at ease. Comfortable. Linda was older, but she never made the sessions feel stuffy or dated. She was relatable. She could meet me at my level. It’s probably why she was my longest-standing relationship to date.
“I do not laugh at everything.” I fought the urge to smile.
“You do,” she said in a sing-song voice, seeing the start of it forming on my lips.
“Most people aren’t smart enough to make me laugh,” I countered, just for the thrill of arguing.
“Hey,” she protested. “I’ve been known to get a laugh from you on occasion.”
“You have a doctorate,” I told her, scanning over to her plaque on the wall for emphasis.
She snorted.
“Glad to know my credentials are approved by you.”
Linda was good. She made therapy comfortable. Breathable. It was like talking to a friend rather than someone I was paying an inordinate amount of money to fix my brain.
If that were even possible.
“So, what brings you here today, after all this time?”
“Oh, Linda,” I groaned. “Where do I even begin?”
“And then he just… proposed!”
Linda blinked, as if waiting for the punchline.
“Did you hear me?” I repeated. “Brody proposed to me! Just sprung it out of nowhere.”
She shifted in her seat, choosing her words carefully.
“Are you telling me the two of you never talked about it?” she asked carefully.
“I mean, he’s brought it up, but I thought that I’d steered him off the topic well enough to discourage him from actually doing it.”
She stared at me intently in a way that made me squirm.
“Do you not imagine a future with him?”
Her words were like an ax to my heart. I couldn’t imagine a future without him.
“Of course I do,” I told her.
“But you’re running from intimacy with him.”
“Trust me,” I muttered, “intimacy is not the problem here.”
“I’m not talking about sexual intimacy, Maggie. I’m talking about emotionally.”
“But I—”
“You have a pattern of running away or shutting down when things start to get too—what’s the word—real?”
“That’s not true.”
“As your therapist of ten years, I can say with confidence that it is.”
“So, are you saying my five-year relationship is invalid because I don’t want to get married?”
“Not at all,” she said. “In fact, I think your relationship with Brody is one of the realest things in your life. And I think that’s why you’re so scared.”
“Scared?” I asked. “Of what?”
“You tell me, Maggie.”
“I just don’t want to lose what we have. I don’t want things to change.”
“Why?”
“Because marriage changes things. It ruins them. You get too comfortable. And then bored. And then resentful. And then someone leaves.”
“All the marriages you’ve witnessed follow this pattern?” she narrowed her eyes at me.
“Besides Liam and Cassie,” I said. “But they’re the exception to the rule. They’re practically soulmates, and I don’t even believe in that concept.”
“I’ve been married for twenty-five years, you know,” she told me.
“You’re a therapist,” I said. “You practically have a cheat sheet to relationships. I don’t. I’d screw it up. He’d end up hating me, and I wouldn’t know how to fix it.”
“I think you need to be more honest with yourself about what you’re afraid of.”
I pulled back. “I’m not afraid. I’m realistically cautious of screwing up the best thing in my life.”
“If it’s the best thing in your life, I’d think you should have more faith in it.”
“Everyone starts out with faith until it blows up in their faces,” I countered. “No one goes into marriage expecting divorce.”
“And which divorce particularly gave you all these reservations?” she asked pointedly.
“What do you mean?”
“I think, Maggie, that you’re afraid of repeating your parents’ mistakes.”
“I won’t make their mistakes,” I said vehemently.
“Right, because you’re closing yourself off to the possibility of that ever happening. It’s self-preservation.”
I frowned.
Sometimes, talking with Linda felt like a mental chess game.
“What am I trying to preserve myself from?”
“The same thing everyone is trying to,” she said. “Pain.”
I stared at her, wagging a finger. “You’re good, I’ll give you that. But so what if I don’t want to feel pain. Is that so wrong?”
“Pain is part of life. And if you spend all your energy trying to protect yourself from it, you’re going to miss out on the good parts. The parts that make it worth living.”
I exhaled, cradling my head in my hands.
The agony of Brody’s face washed over me, a perfect mirror of what I felt inside my chest when I forced myself to walk away from him.
Sometimes I didn’t understand why I acted the way I did. Why I ran from things I wanted. I was the master of self-sabotage, telling myself that if someone really loved me, they’d find a way to stick through it all.
It wasn’t until the aftermath of one of my episodes that I could see clearly. See reason. I couldn’t put people I loved through that just to test them—just to see if they cared.
But, despite that knowledge, I did it again and again and again.
And now? Now I had no one left.
“Now, listen, I’m not saying you should get married,” she said, holding her hands up in defense.
“In fact, if you have any doubts, I’d actually say exploring that is the smart thing to do before making that type of commitment.
So, what do you say we get into that? Figure out the root of some of those fears? ”
I started speaking before I even knew where I was going with it. Like word vomit, I just spoke as the thoughts entered my mind.
“Dating feels different to me than marriage because now, when he’s with me, I know it’s because he wants to be with me.
There’s no legally binding law forcing him with me until death.
He doesn’t have to worry about legal fees and paying half of his assets to an ex-wife if he wants to leave.
But if we’re married… how would I ever know if he’s staying because he still loves me, or if he’s only there because of a legally binding contract?
I just can’t become an obligation to him. I won’t.”
“You make marriage sound so technical, Maggie,” Linda said softly.
“Isn’t it?” I asked.
“It might be to you. But what is it to Brody? Why do you think he wants to get married?”
“Because he loves me,” I said, certain of that truth. “And he thinks he wants to be with me forever.”
“And you don’t think he does?”
“I think people change their minds,” I said carefully, biting my lip to keep back any words that might give me away. “And I think losing a husband, after I thought in my head that he was my forever… well, that would hurt a lot more than losing a boyfriend.”
“I don’t think the label makes a difference. Men and women get married every day without the love that you seem to have for your Brody.”
My Brody, I thought.
Was he still?
Or had this final rejection been too much? Pushed him too far away?
“You do love him. Don’t you, Maggie?”
“Of course I love him,” I breathed out. “More than anything in the world. That’s why I’m so scared.”
“Have you talked to him?” she asked. “Since this all happened?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, what about your brother?”
“He’s still not speaking to me.”
“What about Cassie?”
“I can’t talk to her. She’s going to be on Liam’s side.”
“Maggie,” Linda took a breath. “It sounds like you self-isolated from every single person in your life.”
“If they loved me, they would reach out. Wouldn’t they?”
“You tell people you want space, and they’re going to give it to you.”
“I didn’t say I wanted space,” I said, irritated.
“Actions can speak just as loud as words, Maggie. I think your loved ones know you well enough to understand when you need some time.”
But I didn’t want time. I didn’t want space.
I just wanted to be loved.
But somehow, whenever I tried to ask for it, all I did was make the people around me hurt.
“I need—” I said, sucking in a breath as I felt tears sting my eyes. “I just need—”
“What do you need, Maggie?” Linda asked, as if she actually cared.
Not just because I was her client. But because I was a person.
I exhaled, letting out a shaky breath as I admitted the one recurring thought that screamed louder than the rest.
“I just need to be fixed.”