Page 30 of Perfect on Paper

“No. That’s why you have to take in other information. Like, how invested was the partner during the relationship? Do they usually use silence to show anger or disinterest? Who broke up with who, and why?”

“So it’s not one size fits all,” Brougham said with an air of triumph. Like he’d somehow backed me into a corner here. Not even close.

“Agreed. That’s why I base my advice on personal situations, letter by letter.”

“Right,” Brougham said. “Andthat’s, of course, why you never take someone’s money before you get all of that information. Who broke up with who, the history of the relationship, yadda yadda. Even if they don’t include any of that in the initial letter.”

I faltered.

His eyebrow quirked the tiniest bit. He seemed quite pleased with himself. The annoying thing was, hehadbacked me into a corner. Except for one tiny detail. “I have a ninety-five percent success rate, don’t I?” I asked. “I can tell everything I need to know from the vibe of the letter.”

“You know all the information without having all the information?” Brougham said, before standing up to face me at eye level. “Miraculous.”

Amazingly, I did not murder him. “Can we get started?”

“Sure. One quick, teeny question first, though?”

I mean, he was gonna ask anyway, right? “What?”

“If someone sent you a letter and said, ‘Help, my boyfriend ignores me for days on end if I say or do something he doesn’t like,’ what would you say?”

I could already see where this was going, but my mind couldn’t function effectively with himstaringat me like that, so I gave in and let him lead me into his trap. “I’d say that the silent treatment to punish or manipulate is emotional abuse. But that’s different, this isn’t to punish—”

“But itistrying to manipulate someone into changing their feelings, right?”

Well, yeah, kind of, but—but it was different, wasn’t it? It was more about getting space from someone than winning them back. And even if someonediduse it to get someone back, it was okay to do something if the aim was good. And what could be more “good” than rekindling love and affection?

Sure, maybe part of that was to make the other person feel lonely, or miss you, or uncomfortable, but… Actually, if I thought of it like that, maybe Brougham had a point. It didn’t seem the same, though. It wasnotemotionally abusive to create boundaries and space after being dumped by someone. What a ridiculous thing to imply.

How did he get medoubting myself? Who was the expert here?

“Can we just…” I trailed off and waved my hand around in a circle.

“Just what?”

“Justnotright now? It’s too early, and we don’t have much time to get you ready for today.”

He wanted to push it.Ooh,I could see in his eyes he wanted to push it. And I had the horrible feeling if he did, he’d have me scrambling to type out a new email response imploring my customer to ignore the initial advice.

Instead, he flopped backward onto the bed and spread his arms to the sides, chin up and self-assured. “Rain check on that one, then. Hit me, Phillips, what have you got?”

I went under the bed and fished out the bulletin board. “I realized your timeline with Winona is missing something important.”

Brougham shook his head in amazement. “You dragged that all the way from your mum’s for this?”

“You’re welcome. We know a lot about what was workingfor you guys, but I’m unclear on what wasn’t. So: first fight?”

“Jesus, I don’t know,” Brougham said as I got my pen and paper ready to add to the board. “How am I supposed to remember thefirstone?”

“Lots of fighting,” I murmured as I wrote the words down for a caption.

“We didn’t—it wasn’tlots.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, buddy. Okay, how about the most common fight?”

“We mostly fought over how often we should be messaging each other.”

I nodded, and started the picture above the caption. A male and female stick figure, both with angry eyebrows. I drew a speech bubble over the female figure and wrote “Text me more” in it.

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