Page 120 of The Last Good Man

“Do I like him?” I murmur, evading her eyes.

She probably knows by now that I do, and that’s why my views of the others are so skewed.

“He’s okay…” I say, downplaying everything.

“What’s the problem with him?” she asks, tilting her gaze down,ready to write more aboutmynew man.

She’s not even acting surprised that I've already hit a roadblock with him.

I stay silent.

I can’t make it about how sexually adventurous I was with him––by my standards, anyway.

She yanks her eyeglasses off with too much force.

That’s truly an accomplishment if even my therapist has had enough of me and my nonsensical stories.

“There’s no problem,” I say.

She doesn’t write that down. It’s a lie, after all.

“Did he hit on you?”

Let’s see…

He said I belonged to him, and he’d take out everybody else interested in me.

“Not in the classical way.”

“In what way then?”

She places her eyeglasses back on.

“We talked.”

“Talking is good.”

“And he had to wait for the storm to pass, so we talked some more.”

Her hands sag over her notepad.

“Did he like you?” she asks, trying to end my meandering.

“He said he did. Not in those words.”

“You couldn’t tell?”

“I could. No… I couldn’t.”

“Which one is it?”

“What does that even mean?”

“Oh, please. Don’t wax philosophical on this.”

Her notepad meets the sofa before she pushes to her feet and beelines for the coffee machine.

She pours herself a cup, adds a teaspoon of sugar, and stirs it earnestly.

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