Page 58 of Someone Like You

“And you’ve just been sitting there staring at me for five minutes?”

“Yep. What were you thinking about?”

“Forever,” I mumbled.

“Well, I’ve been waitingforeverfor you to tell me if you want pepperoni or cheese.”

“Cheese,” I said. “And please don’t get those garlic breadsticks because your breath smelled for a week straight last time.”

“Why do I put up with your blatant emotional abuse? You’re lucky you’re so cute,” he griped.

I sighed and dug under my bed for my notebook. Working on my poems or doing some free writing might help me parse through all these emotions. I just needed to let the thoughts take shape, let them go where they needed to, and maybe I could make sense of everything. Of just what, exactly, I was feeling about Brody.

But I definitely wasnotin love with him.

“I’m notin love with him,” I told Dr. Varu. She nodded her head and jotted something down on her notepad. I imagined her scribbling outHe is, with the utmost certainty, in love with Brody, but is unable to admit it to himself.

It had been a whole week since I’d seen Brody—he had to cancel last Saturday’s study session because his uncle needed his help with something. But a little voice in my head had started telling me that he was lying, that he really just didn’t want to see me. That all this space and time had made him realize that I was not worth his attention. I tried hard not to listen to that voice, but it kept getting louder and louder. I mean, we still texted and spoke on the phone every day, but it wasn’t the same. At all.

“And what makes you think that,” Dr. Varu said, adjusting her glasses.

“Because I don’t even know what it means to be in love with someone. Because I don’t knowhow.”

“What makes you think that you don’t know how to love someone?”

“Because I’ve never done it before. Outside of Jordan, who I love platonically, I’ve never been this close to another person. And I’m too…too, uh—I’ve got too many issues, I think. Yeah. I’m definitely not capable of it, I don’t think.”

“What if Brody told you that he lovedyou? How would that make you feel?” Her blue eyes were staring straight into my soul as her mouth asked the question that struck me to the bone.

“Um. Well, I think I’d have a hard time believing him. I mean, I know he likes me, and he tells me I’m beautiful, and perfect, and good, but…I’m not. Doesn’t he know I’m not any of those things?”

“I would take his words at face value unless experience tells you to do otherwise. His perception of you differs from your own perception of yourself. To him, youareall those things. So it’s not that he’s wrong, it’s that you don’t want to believe that he’s right, in his own way. Because then it means maybe you’re wrong—that the perceptions you’ve held onto for so long don’t have any value anymore. Not when it comes to your relationship with him. And that can be scary. It can be terrifying to let go of beliefs you’ve held onto for such a long time. But it’s also very brave to be able to let them go. So. Just ask yourself if you want to be brave enough to believe him. Because from everything you’ve told me,hebelieves what he’s saying. And that’s very, very promising.”

Fuck. Me.Dr. Varu, this is why I pay you the big bucks.Actually, I didn’t pay her the big bucks. She worked with me on a sliding scale and I paid very, very little. But this was exactly why I kept coming back to her.

“Hmm,” I said, still trying to parse through the revelation she’d poured over my head. There was a lot to it. “Can you write that down for me?”

She laughed, and I muttered, “But I wasn’t joking.”

Still, I left therapy that day feeling less hopeless and more optimistic about my ability to handle whatever may come with Brody.

Which I hoped were only good things.

They would be. Right?

17

BRODY

“You have a surprise for me?” Isaac gaped at me, managing to look as suspicious and angry as he was perplexed.

“That’s what I said.” I laced my fingers through his as we walked back to my truck in the parking lot of the bowling alley. Isaac was such an atrocious bowler we’d had to put up the gutter rails for him—after a whole game of him arguing that he would definitely, one hundred percent manage to keep his ball out of the gutter on every turn.

Spoiler alert: he didn’t. Not once.

“What is it?”

“It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you what it was, Isaac.”

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