Page 500 of Hate Mates

But then?—

We could have been quieter. I could have just said we didn’t have plans to stay up all night when he talked to me at the beach. I could have explained. I could have not freaked out over basically nothing and been a complete bitch to him.

Letting my head fall back I groan. I don’t know. I could have done everything differently, I guess.

By Monday morning, I’m feeling as down as I did before Hazel’s emergency sleepover happened. I don’t want to go to my therapy appointmentat all,which is a good sign that I need to be there. I make up a million excuses not to go, but in the end, I drag myself there anyway.

My therapist, Anne, runs her practice out of a room in the front of her house with a separate entrance. It’s cozy, with an overstuffed chair for clients to sit in and a colorful rug on the floor. A prism by the window reflects rainbows onto the deep green walls. Anne, my therapist, is making tea when I arrive. She hands me a cup with a quiet greeting, and I settle into the chair with it. It doesn’t matter that it’s summer. I still appreciate the heat. I’ve seen her for six sessions now. I’m used to the pattern of how things go. I’m used to the smell of the herbal tea and the faint bell from her cat as he moves somewhere in the house.

Anne settles in across from me and inhales the scent of her tea, then meets my eyes. “So,” she says, like we’ve been talking for a long time already and we’re only changing topics. “How was the party?”

“It was horrible.”

Her eyebrows go up. “Was it? I thought you felt positive about having your friends come to see you.”

“No.” I take a sip of my tea. It’s the perfect temperature, but it makes my throat ache. “No. It was—most of it was fun. Hazel pulled out all the stops. They all did. They really wanted to cheer me up.”

“But you weren’t cheered up?”

The sun streams in through the windows, and I’m reminded of the good things.

I need this. I just let all the thoughts fly out of my mouth.

“It just feels,” I say carefully, trying to be as accurate as I can about how I feel. It’s hard to find the words because my emotions are a mess. A big, painful mess that I can’t clean up or get rid of. “It feels like nothing can go right.”

“You know that’s not true, right?” Anne looks at me with soft eyes.

“I know.” I let out a heavy exhale. “I know.”

“Let’s look for proof that things can go right.” She glances out the window and takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Did you have any trouble on the way here? Car trouble? Driver trouble?”

“No. The drive was—it was fine. The weather is nice even.” I could have walked, but I drove because I thought I’d turn around if I was on foot. “So that went right.”

“As far as I can tell, this morning hasn’t been all bad. You were on time. You didn’t have any problems with your car and didn’t get into an accident. You arrived in one piece. Did something specific happen over the weekend that’s making you feel this way?”

I didn’t want to talk about this. Ireallydidn’t. It’s so meaningless. But now that Anne’s asked, it’s the only thing on my mind.

“I ran into my neighbor. My landlord. We…well, it wasn’t a fight, but he wasn’t happy because my friends and I were loud on Friday night. We kept him awake. He wasn’t—I don’t know. I overreacted, I think, but I was upset. And that’s why the party wasn’t wrapped up with a bow.”

Her brow arches. Oh Anne. I’m learning what that means. “Because of something he said?”

I shift in my seat and set the tea down. “Because he—I felt defensive about the noise because he could have said something and then it wouldn’t have been an issue. And then I dropped the shell.”

“A shell?” Anne asks, that brow still arched. It’s going to give her wrinkles.

“I found a shell on the beach. I was going to write on it like I used to do with my mom. We would come here for long weekends and sometimes in the summer we’d get a place, and we would write memories on shells and then throw it in the ocean to show thanks to the universe.”

Anne smiles kindly, “Your mom sounds like a gentle soul.”

I nod, my throat going tight, “She was.

“I was going to write a memory on it, about the party and how I missed her but she would have loved it, but it broke.” My eyes fill with tears. I can’t stop them. “When it broke, it just felt like the whole weekend broke with it. It’s supposed to be a shell for that day, you know? And I was so tired and it broke.”

Anne hands me a box of tissues. I take one and dab at my eyes, breathing deeply. I amnotgoing to cry over the shell. I’m not going to cryagainover the shell. Once is enough.

“What would your mother have done?” Anne questions.

“About what?”

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