Page 22 of For You, Sir

He dropped his gaze to his plate and swallowed hard, his throat bobbing. “Why not?”

“There’s no point,” I said. “If I’m going to feel miserable, I’d rather be naturally miserable. Not in some chemically altered state.”

“Maybe the writing only feels hopeless because of the depression,” he said meekly. “With the medication, you might see things more clearly…”

I refilled my glass and a little sloshed onto the table. “I’d rather fix it myself. I don’t want to depend on pills for the rest of my life.”

“It doesn’t have to be forever,” Jun said quietly. “Maybe it’s just for a season.”

My stomach twisted with frustration.Would he just drop it already?“What do you know about it?” I knocked back half my glass in one swallow.

“I, uh…” Jun’s hands fidgeted in his lap.

Go on, traitor. Admit you know nothing about it.

“I took them for a while. SSRIs.” He glanced at me, then back at the tabletop. “My dad died when I was in college. It was preventable, and I watched him do it—drink himself to death. Kind of messed me up.” He spoke haltingly, in a small voice. His shoulders tensed upward like he was braced for a blow.

My anger immediately deflated, and I put my glass down. “Oh. Jesus. I’m sorry.” Jun always seemed so serene and put-together, I never would have guessed.

“I dropped out of school and kind of lost the will to do anything. Someone suggested I take medication. I didn’t want to, but I agreed to try.” He gave a limp shrug, still avoiding my gaze, looking at the table. “It didn’tfixanything, but it helped a lot. It was like…” He considered, deep in thought. “Before, I was drowning. And the meds helped keep my head above water long enough to think straight. So I could tell which way to swim to shore.”

I felt like an asshole, but grateful to Jun. “Uhm, thanks for telling me that.”

He nodded and finally lifted his eyes to mine. “I took them for about a year. By then, I was doing better and didn’t need them anymore.”

“Did you go back to college?”

His mouth quirked in a rueful smile. “No. That’s when I trained to be a butler instead. Much to Mom’s chagrin.” Jun’s calm exterior slid back into place, and he took a sip of pinot noir. “But I think you should try again them, Sir. You can always stop if they don’t work for you.”

I nodded, feeling shitty and chastened. Hedidknow what he was talking about. And in the fog of my depressive memory, I recalled having positive results when I’d first taken the pills a long time ago. But then I forgot to take them for a few days, which became a few weeks, and I’d decided I didn’t need them anymore. At some point, in my mind, the pills became a false panacea for something incurable. “Thanks, Jun.”

“Shall I get them for you now?”

You bold little fucker.“I’ll think about it,” I said with a smirk.

Jun nodded in acknowledgement, but he looked dejected. Because of me, or from thinking about family stuff?

My throat went tight with regret. “Sorry about your dad.”

“It’s a choice he made,” Jun said dispassionately. “My brother dropped out at the same time as me, but he crawled into a bottle to deal with it. That was hard to watch. Still is.” He took another bite of pasta.

A brother? I tried to picture what he’d be like. Jun was so mature he had to be the older of the two. With one parent dead and the other in the hospital, was Jun trying to keep his whole family afloat? The calm exterior Jun wore probably concealed a hell of a lot of pain and pressure.

“Who suggested meds—a therapist?” I asked.

“Yeah. I went for a little while,” Jun said. “Quit pretty early on, though.”

“What made you stop? If you don’t mind talking about it, I mean.”

He nodded his assent. “I didn’t like my therapist. She was too judgmental.”

I furrowed my brow. “That’s no good. Aren’t therapists supposed to keep an open mind? Encourage their clients to do the same?”

“Right?” Jun thudded his wine glass down forcefully, his cheeks wine-flushed. “She was so arrogant. Kept acting like she knew me better than I knew myself.”

I rested my chin on my hand and peered at him. “How so?”

“She started out by asking about my parents, like you’d expect. They were strict, obsessed with grades. Typical Asian ‘tiger parents’—nothing special.”

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