Page 89 of Back to You

“Kind of? I know Ethan said he needs me here, so that’s all that really matters.”

She smiled approvingly. “Well, Ethan and I have talked a lot about your relationship with him, and how the way it ended could be holding him back in certain areas of his life.”

Brandon’s gaze shot to Ethan’s, worried. “I’m holding you back?”

“No!” Ethan said quickly. “She means … Sarah, I need to say something to Brandon before we get into this, or there’s just no point in having the discussion.”

“Go ahead.”

Ethan turned sideways on the couch. “Brandon …” he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I want us to get back together.”

There it was, out in the open. He watched Brandon’s face closely, saw the relief and the joy flood him. Brandon reached out and grabbed Ethan into a hug, just pressing his face into Ethan’s neck and breathing him in.

“I want that too,” Brandon said, and it was as though a weight fell from Ethan’s shoulders. He had his second chance.

And he wasn’t messing it up this time.

Brandon pulled back and set a hand on Ethan’s cheek, smiling into his eyes. Then he took Ethan’s hand in his as he turned back to Sarah. “Can you explain to me what you meant about our break-up is holding him back?”

“Sure. Ethan has done a remarkable job cutting back on his work schedule.” She explained again about how workaholism is an addiction. “So Ethan is worried that his past as a workaholic will hold you both back in a renewed relationship. There’s also the matter of your excessive dependence on one another through your previous relationship, and how to avoid that going forward.”

“I see.” Brandon looked down at their joined hands. “I do still feel a little nervous about if Ethan can keep going with this revised job schedule.”

“That makes sense. Ethan, what do you say to that?”

“I need to say that I can’t promise anything about the future, because this really has felt like an addiction to work. But I feel like I have the tools now to keep myself on the right path. At first, I thought that I needed to cut back for you, but I see now that was never the right way to look at it. I needed to cut back for myself, to make myself happy and healthy. I will say that I’m planning to keep working late on Thursdays, just because that’s usually a busy day and it’s easier for me to get things done after hours.”

“I can work with one day a week, as long as I know about it ahead of time,” Brandon said consideringly. “Are you willing to be flexible with that? Like if something comes up on Thursday, are you willing to move your late day to another day?”

Ethan pondered that a moment. “I think so, yeah. I just picked Thursdays because they’re usually busier.”

“Okay, then that sounds fine. What will you do if you start getting back into that workaholic mindspace?”

“I’ll probably come back and talk to Sarah.” They both turned to look at her.

“Typically, a backslide like that is the result of something external and how it affects you internally. So yes, I’d say coming to see me at that point would be the healthy response. Also, keeping up regular communication with your partner can help you ward off these kinds of issues, or at least spot them before they happen.”

“Sarah thinks we probably didn’t communicate like we should, and I think she’s right,” Ethan said.

“I can see that,” Brandon said. “We sort of just went along together until something went wrong.” He turned to Sarah. “How can we keep that from happening again?”

She gave them some tips about healthy communication in a relationship. Ethan was touched to see how seriously Brandon was taking it. He even pulled out his phone at one point to take notes.

“Now, let’s talk about the dependency issue,” Sarah said.

“My sister said something about us being codependent before,” Brandon said. “That doesn’t seem like a good thing.”

“This issue seems like it was more Ethan’s than yours, but I don’t presume to know that much about you.”

“It just felt like, you were my entire world, and when you were gone, I had nothing,” Ethan said. Brandon took his hand again and squeezed. “And that wasn’t healthy. I had to find out how to live on my own. I didn’t think I was ready until recently. But I feel like, god forbid, if something did happen now to split us up again, I’d be devastated, but I wouldn’t fall apart like I did before.”

“I can understand that,” Brandon said. “I didn’t fall apart like that, but it wasn’t like a normal break-up. It was like shearing away part of my soul.”

“That’s a beautiful way to put it, Brandon,” Sarah said. “You can feel like Ethan is a part of your soul, because he is. Just like you’re a part of his. It’s when you begin to feel like he’s your entire soul that the problem comes in.”

They talked for a while longer before Sarah said, “Okay, you two get homework.”

“Homework?” Brandon said.

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