10. Kai #3
Of course he fucking did. An asshole would have been easier. A good-looking, intelligent man who accepts her boundaries without arguing or attempting to wear her down is considerably more difficult to hate on principle. I manage anyway. Clinically, however, the example is useful.
“So the reason you said no wasn’t because you were afraid of disappointing him.”
“No.”
“And you were attracted to him, which meant saying yes would have been easier in some ways, but you still chose what protected something important to you.”
“My job.” She says with a small nod.
“Your job, your reputation, the environment where you feel competent and secure. You decided those things mattered more than whatever might happen over dinner.”
She nods again.
I set the pen against the notepad. “That’s a boundary, Julia. A fairly healthy one.”
“Well, look at me.” Something almost proud slips into her expression before she adds, “Maybe I’m not completely fucked up after all.”
“No one said you were.”
“You’re a psychiatrist. You probably have professional rules about agreeing when patients say things like that.”
“I have several.” All of which I am obviously choosing to ignore because of you.
Her laugh is quiet, but real, and some of the irritation currently attached to a man I have never met eases simply because I made her do it.
The rest of the session is considerably quieter than the one before it.
We talk about the difference between being useful because she genuinely wants to help and becoming useful because she doesn’t know what else to offer, along with the strange inconsistency in how easily she protects her boundaries in places where affection isn’t part of the equation. Nothing cracks open this time.
When the hour ends, Julia stands with both feet firmly in this room, gathers her bag and looks back at me from the door.
“Same time next week?”
“Yes.”
“And for the record, I still think the premium appointments should include snacks.”
“I’ll bring it up with management.” I say, feeling my mouth pull into a smirk usually not reserved for my patients but she’s making it damn difficult not to.
“You are management.”
“Then I’ll give it serious consideration.”
“That’s all I ask.” She leaves smiling.
The heavy door closes behind her, and this time I don’t remain standing there wondering whether I made a mistake by letting her walk out of it. She’s fine. Actually fine. The distinction matters more than it should.
I return to my chair and go through the notes while the session is still fresh, adding a few things in the margins before my next patient arrives. Work. Competence. Boundaries. Mother. Then I reach the section where she told me about the man at the firm.
There is a sentence beneath the clinical note that I don’t remember consciously writing.
Fucking asshole.
I stare at it for several seconds. Then slowly remove my glasses.
“Well, fuck.”
Apparently some part of me has opinions. I should cross it out. Instead, I look at it long enough to acknowledge that the disturbing part isn’t the sentence itself. It’s how natural writing it apparently felt.
Eventually, I draw a single line through the words, close the notebook and spend the rest of the afternoon doing my job while pretending a man I have never met has not somehow managed to piss me off simply by being attractive to my patient.
By the time I leave the office, I have no intention of going to Julia’s house.
This remains true while I change out of my suit, eat dinner and answer two emails I’ve been avoiding since this morning.
It even remains true while I spend twenty minutes half-watching something on television without absorbing a single scene.
Then I pick up my motorcycle keys. At this point, the lies are becoming insulting to my intelligence.
The route to her neighborhood is familiar now.
I know which intersection backs up after eight, which light takes unnecessarily long to change and exactly where I can kill the engine without the sound carrying toward her house.
I leave the bike at my usual spot and make my way through the same line of trees I used before, stopping far enough back that the shadows keep me hidden while the large windows of her house remain visible between the branches.
Her kitchen light is on. So is the living room.
For a few moments, I don’t see her but the she walks into view carrying a glass container against her hip and something wrapped in plastic beneath one arm.
She looks nothing like the woman I followed home six days ago.
Her hair is piled into a loose knot that appears to be surviving entirely through optimism, she’s changed into leggings and an oversized T-shirt, and there is music playing somewhere inside the house.
I can’t hear enough through the glass to recognize the song, but I can see the effect it has on her.
She moves around the kitchen while she works, opening the refrigerator, pulling out containers and dividing whatever she cooked into portions for the next few days.
Every so often her head moves with the beat, and at one point she lifts the wooden spoon in her hand like a microphone, sings something I can’t hear and turns toward the counter with a little movement of her hips that makes a smile pull at my mouth before I can stop it.
This version of Julia is new to me. There is no careful stillness I see in my office, no hyperawareness of another person watching her and no visible effort to manage how much space she occupies.
She tastes something from the spoon, wrinkles her nose, adds more seasoning and starts moving with the music again while she stirs.
Good — that’s what she looks like tonight.
Not healed or magically untouched by everything we’ve discussed, just good.
Present, happy enough that the sight of it loosens something inside me that has been tight since the afternoon she disappeared in front of me.
Today was a good session for her. I know therapy isn’t measured by whether a patient leaves smiling, but after last week, I’ll take it.
Julia stacks the containers inside the refrigerator and leans back against the counter with her phone in one hand.
Whatever appears on the screen makes her smile.
My own disappears almost immediately.
That fucking asshole.
There is absolutely no evidence supporting that conclusion, but that does fucking little to stop me from reaching it.
Maybe he texted her. Maybe he has already decided accepting her answer politely was merely step one in some patient strategy to change it.
Or maybe she changed her mind all by herself and decided an attractive attorney with good manners and healthy respect for boundaries was worth reconsidering. My jaw tightens.
She is a grown woman standing inside her own kitchen, entitled to smile at whoever the fuck she wants. The rational part of my brain supplies that information effortlessly.
The part that wrote fucking asshole during her therapy session remains unmoved.