Page 63 of Finally Loved

Alba perked up, leaning on the table. “Was whoever was texting you complimenting you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Sure you do. If you’re going to sit here and talk about how I look at Neve, you don’t get to avoid me talking about how you were looking at your phone.”

“You’re clearly in love, though. It’s different.”

Alba waved the accusation away. She didn’t need to get into that, especially not when Neve could reappear at any moment. “Any chance it was the new person from work?”

Zainab shot her a dangerous look right as they both heard the bathroom door open. “As it so happens, it was simply a colleague wishing me a happy birthday.”

“At midnight?”

They heard Neve enter Alba’s room, both knowing she’d rejoin them shortly.

Zainab leaned in closer. “You’re playing a very dangerous game when your girlfriend is about to be within earshot.”

“Not my girlfriend,” Alba said in a hurried, hushed voice before sitting upright.

Zainab’s gaze flicked to something over Alba’s shoulder and she smirked. “Yeah, right,” she muttered.

Alba turned around to find Neve walking towards them, freshly showered, and wearing one of Alba’s oversized college sweatshirts. She almost groaned—at the sight, at the situation, at Zainab’s annoying comments.

She really did want to be Neve’s girlfriend.

Chapter 19

Forty-five minutes early for an appointment was excessive. Sitting outside a therapist’s office for forty-five minutes felt particularly bad. Though, if Neve had a general problem with excessive earliness, she figured her therapist would be the place to go for help.

As it was, she didn’t usually have a problem with excessive earliness. Today, however, she had spent forty-five minutes sitting outside of her therapist’s office, just waiting for her appointment as she scrolled the internet time and time again for answers to her questions. There were pitifully few, and, if anything, more answers that made her feel bad than those that made her feel better. However, she was savvy enough, even in her panic, to know that was just how the internet was.

Now, she sat on one of the hard, wooden-effect chairs in the waiting room, bouncing her knees up and down. She felt like she’d hardly stopped bouncing her knees since Thursday.

A door opened and Neve sat up slightly straighter, consciously halting the bouncing.

“Hey,” her therapist said softly, with that familiar smile. “Come on in.”

She nodded and headed into the office. As she passed Olive in the doorway, she wondered how long it would take for her to realize Neve felt like she was bouncing off the walls.

“So, what’s new with you?” Olive asked, sitting down in her usual seat and watching Neve sit on the couch with interest.

So, not very long then.

Neve scoffed quietly. “I have a problem.”

Olive smiled gently. “You came to the right place. Do you want to talk about what’s going on?”

Neve took a deep breath and stared out of the window to the side of them. “You know how when Roxanne broke up with me I was a little bit broken?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I mean, I know we talked about it and how it was more what she said—and a little bit where she did it—than it was distress at missing her.” Neve shook her head. The first session after the breakup, she’d been so certain it had to be distress at the loss of Roxanne, but, the longer she sat with it, the more she saw all of the places they’d never been working, and all of the tiny bits of relief that snuck in around not being together anymore. Now, looking back just felt embarrassing. “I mean, after all that, I just… kind of felt like… I didn’t…”

Olive waited. She’d been seeing Neve long enough to know when she needed a moment to work up to things.

“I’ve been feeling like I never wanted to be in a relationship again. Like every part of me wished I could not want that. Because what’s the point in wanting that if it always ends the same way? I don’t have anything to offer someone in a relationship.”

“The things you have to offer are more than just sex, Neve.”

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