Page 22 of The Plus One
Jude flinched again and Indira caught herself before she made contact. Something about the curve of his shoulders and lines of his face told her that touching him would only make the pain worse.
“Jude,” Indira whispered, balling her hands into fists and pressing them against her sternum. “You can talk to me. You know that, right?”
Jude looked up at the ceiling, and Indira watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.
“Trust me,” he said at last. “It’s for the best if I don’t.” Then he turned and walked away.
CHAPTER 9
Indira
“I’m just gonna say it.” Indira sucked down a rattling breath as she held back tears on Dr. Koh’s couch. “There are few places more pathetic to get drunk and have an internal emotional crisis than a Cheesecake Factory.”
Dr. Koh nodded sagely. “That does sound rather challenging.”
Indira gave her therapist a pointed look. “The whole night felt like a massive disaster. And I can’t stop thinking about it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“What parts of the night does your mind keep returning to?”
A flash of the dark hallway. Jude’s crestfallen face. The sound of his rough laugh and how she wanted more of it.
“I don’t know,” Indira said with a shrug. “Just… all of it.”
“How was it seeing Chris with Lauren so soon after your breakup?”
Indira rolled her eyes and shook her head. “It wasn’t fucking great, Dr. Koh.”
Dr. Koh gave her a placating smile. “Let’s dig a little deeper with the emotions at play here. What did it bring up in you?”
“Umm, I guess the overwhelming sense of abandonment?” A strangled laugh fell from her throat.
“From Chris’s betrayal and new relationship?”
Indira chewed on her lip as she considered the question but shook her head. She hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and plenty of hours staring up at her ceiling allowed her to untangle that the crashing and burning with Chris didn’t upset her because she really loved him but because it meant he didn’t really love her. They’d been a mess of make-believe, both letting the distance grow between them for months. It never would have lasted, but it certainly sucked how it ended.
And it was mortifying as hell to watch your ex and his girlfriend rub their noses together in a disgustingly overt display of affection.
“In all honesty, it kind of hurt more to watch Jude walk away from me than it was to process the end of the relationship with Chris.”
“Why do you think that is?” Dr. Koh asked, tilting her head.
Indira shrugged. “You advised me to take my psychiatrist hat off during our sessions, so I’ll defer to your interpretation.”
That won her a genuine laugh from Dr. Koh, but that was all.
Indira leaned her head against the couch, staring out the window over Dr. Koh’s shoulder. It was fairly annoying how much therapy made you actually think about things.
“I really don’t know,” Indira said, her knee starting to bounce. “Maybe because I’ve known Jude for so long and he’s so… different? It worries me. Bothers me. Which is weird because we’ve never been, like, best friends or whatever. We’ve always fought more than anything.”
“And this change in Jude is holding your attention and emotional energy more than Chris’s infidelity?”
Indira nodded, digging her teeth harder into her bottom lip and swallowing down a sudden swell of feelings that threatened to overflow from her chest.
“It’s weird, right? That Jude is what I’m more focused on?”
More of that therapeutic silence.
“I feel like maybe I kind of… expected this with Chris?” Indiraadmitted softly. “Or at least knew it was possible? Not the weird peanut-butter-cheating thing, but it ending. Or maybe it was that things never felt…rightwith him?”
