Chapter 21

MELODY

Tuesday evening

At Aretha'soffice

"I hate dating,"I bark the second I barge in.

It rarely happens that Aretha is in her office, waiting for me.

She glances at me over the rim of her glasses, a book in her hands.

It's taken me forever to get here.

My day wasn't exactly how I expected it to be. Work was fine, but everything else wasn't.

At lunch, I called my mother and told her about my intentions of buying an apartment.

She gleefully congratulated me and said she'd be in Manhattan next week so we could grab a bite and talk.

Aftermeetings back to back, I left my office late, took a cab, and even had to walk a few blocks because the traffic was horrendous.

On top of that, it"s raining again, and my blazer is damp, while my hair is a ridiculous mess.

"Are you all right?" she asks, sliding her glasses off and placing her book next to her on the couch.

The last thing I want is to signal that I have a meltdown.

Running my hand over my hair, I try to tame it. I also clear my throat and speak in a calm voice.

"Yes. Everything's fine. It's just that I thought I'd never make it," I say, placing my purse on the couch across fromherand gingerly removing my blazer. "If you don't mind, I'll drape it over here," I say, placing my blazer over the back of a chair. "It's raining again," I say apologetically.

She gestures to me.

"Please, take a seat, and don't feel bad. We all have bad days."

While I appreciate how she handles my little crisis, she's never had one of those herself.

Her gaze dips to the coffee table.

"Okay. Let's get started,"shesays. "Would you like something to drink? Coffee?"

She moves her eyes to me and studies me briefly.

"I guess not," she says. "Tea?"

"No, thank you. Maybe a glass of water."

"Water it is," she says, relieved. "Make yourself comfortable. I'll be with you in a moment."

She walks out while I lean back in my seat anddrag an empty starearound the room before focusing on her desk.

Tucked in the corner next to the window, her desk is extra tidy. It has one computer and a paper plannernext to it.

As much as she admires modern technology, she's not fond of power outages, computer errors, or those pesky moments when the Internet is down.

‘I can listen to someone at candlelight. I don't need more than that,' sheonce said tome.

The corner is decorated with shelves stocked with books and luscious plants, but my mindgoes backto that paper planner.

I know she's booked in advance, so she must have Jax's appointments in there.

Perhaps she's scribbled down little notes too, although shenormallyuses a different notebookfor that.

Each client has their own notebook as she keeps records of our conversations.

Hmm.

A thought pops into my head, and I push slightly to the edge of the sofa, tempted to rise and take a few steps toward her desk, when her voice drifts from the waiting area.

I plop back down and lean against the couchas ifI've never moved.

A moment later, she steps in.

"So…" she says, smiling and handing me a glass of water. "I'm sorry. My neighbor just popped in."

"Is everything all right?" I ask while she goes to her desk and, as expected, retrieves a notepad–my notepad–from an unlocked drawer.

"Yeah, yeah… Everything is fine.Theywant to change the lighting in the building. The stairwell is too dark. Someone made a complaint."

I swallow hard. Tell me about it, yet it worked out well last Thursday.

"Where were we?" she says, grabbing her notebook andherpen. "You were talking about how much you hate dating."

Smiling, she rests her hands on top of her notepad.

"What made you say that?" she asks.

"First of all, I suck at it. And then, it's all a game."

"That it is," she agrees quietly. "But it's mostly because you're not with the right guy."

She continues.

"I don't expect you to tell me you've worked on some of the things we discussed."

I stare at her for a second.

"Oh. You mean finding a high-quality man?"

She nods.

"Yeah. No," I murmur. "I wouldn't be here, would I?"

She writes something down before focusing entirely on me.

"What about Thomas?"

"Yes… Thomas."

My frustration is obvious as I give her a summary of what happened last Friday, leaving out the reason why things didn't work out for us.

"That's it?" she says.

"Yes."

"Is that what has fueled your frustration?"

I also tell her about Emile contacting me again.

"Oh. How do you feel about Emile?"

She puts his name down while I give her my opinion on the Frenchman.

She lifts her gaze after writing down a few more words.

"You could've said no to him," she murmurs. "What made you accept a meetup with him?"

I suck in a long breath, trying to hide my irritation.

"I'm still at that stage where I'm trying to get to know people."

"Are you?"

She places her hands on top of the notepad.

"Aren't I?" I toss back at her.

Smiling, she sets the notepad next to her and struggles with her pen, which keeps rolling to the edge of the couch.

Eventually, she tucks it in her hand.

"Emotionally, you're past that stage. I think,"shesays.

"What makes you say that?"

"You seem invested in, um… something. You have certain expectations. Or maybe you've lost your patience. For the ‘getting to know people' stage, you should be more detached, not so tense and frazzled. I'm not so sure this is working for you anymore."

"As if it ever was."

She purses her lips.

"That's a valid observation. But you seemed more determined to make it work. What changed?"

A few moments pass as my eyes trail down without focusing on anythinginparticular.

I lean forward, grab a butterscotch candy from the glass bowl, and spend some time unwrapping it and popping it into my mouth.

"I thought about our last conversation. The high-quality men versus high-value men."

"And?"

I bring my eyes to her.

"None of the men I know are high-quality men."

She lifts an eyebrow at me, waiting.

"So I need to try something different. Majorly different. But… I've become impatient and worried that this might never work and I might never find that man. And even if I find him, it might not be what you think. If that's the case, I need to know soon because I don't want to waste my time."

She searches my eyes before slumping back in her seat.

"So you'd like to quit then?"

I know what she's doing.She knows I'm not a quitter.

"I find this dating game silly," I argue. "I don't understand it and can't grasp these men."

"You can't?"

A glint of curiosity flickers through her eyes.

"What?"

"You weren't that critical of them last week. What happened in the meantime?"

Oops.

She's pointing out again something's happened.

And something did happen, and I wasn't even aware of it as I unknowingly compared these men to Jax London.

Jax, who's not even part of this group for obvious reasons.

But now Aretha peers at me with more scrutiny in her eyes than ever, demanding an explanation.

"Nothing happened."

But somehow, I need to include Jax in the conversion, although I can't say who he is and for sure can't make him a hero.

So, I make him a villain.

"I met someone new over the weekend."

"Wow… That's a development."

Her fingers tremblewith excitementwhen she grabs her notepad to document the encounter.

She puts her eyeglasses on as if she expects an epic tale.

"How do we call him?"

I hesitate for a second.

"Jack."

She shoots me a stare over her reading glasses. Amazingly, I hold her gaze.

"What is Jack doing?"

"Uh… Jack is an outsider."

I don't expect her to write that down, but she does.

"A commoner," she says, smiling, her brand of humor not entirely new to me.

"Yes. A commoner," I say, although neither of us holds misanthropic views.

"I like commoners. That's a nice change. So he's not a banker, CEO, stockbroker, that kind of thing?" she says, her pen moving maniacally across the paper.

"No."

"Do you know what he does for a living?"

"No."

"Does it matter to you?"

"It's too early to think about it."

"Okay. How did you meethim?"

"Uh…"

My eyes go down as I lift the glass of water to my lips.

"I ran into him. We struck up a conversation, and then…"

My gaze is still tipped down.

"And then?"

"We met again."

I tilt my head up, and our eyes connect.

"Did you plan to meet again?"

"No, not really… It was fate."

"Uh-huh. Interesting."

She writes something else down.

"And where exactly did you two meet the second time?"

I ponder my answer while she's waiting patiently, her pen hovering over her notepad.

"I spend Saturday night in Connecticut at an inn. He was passing through the area, and there was a storm."

If she knew how far the inn was from the freeway, she'd know his presence there had nothing to do with fate.

"Interesting. That's some coincidence."

Dr. Aretha Stenson is no fool. I sense the trepidation in her voice. Anyone watching criminal investigation documentaries can name at least one stalker who killed someone and happened to be at the right place at the right time.

"I hope this is a good story," she says.

I shrug in response.

"What went wrong?" she goes on.

"Nothing. We had dinner. He was nice."

"So he's a nice man," she murmurs, writingdown the exactsame words.

"It's too early to say, but yeah…Hewas nice that night."

It's not like she's on the edge of her seat because of my story.

"Do you like him?" she asks me directly, and I'm sotaken by surprisethat I mumble unintelligible words while grappling with a surge of heat.

‘Your body never lies,' my mother used to say when I was a kid, but she wasn't talking about boys.

It was about me being tired, needing food, or craving somethingin particular.

Something she always liked to cook for me.

Maybe that ispart of the problem.

My expectations are so high because I've always been surrounded by people who loved me.

I'm trying not to expect people to cater to me, and I don't think I am too fussy.

I just want to connect with someone for real. And I wanthimto feel the same way.

I want him to need me as much as I need him. But truthfully, no one needs anyone these days.

I see it every time I meet someone new.

He doesn't need me, and I don't need him, and it's all about how quickly we figure that out and move on.

They're doing this game.

And I'm doing this game.

That's why it's called a game.

At the end of the day, it's pointless, yet we're still doing it.

"Do I like him?" I murmur, evading her eyes.

She probably knows by now that I do, and that's why my views of the others are so skewed.

"He's okay…" I say, downplaying everything.

"What's the problem with him?" she asks, tilting her gaze down,ready to write more aboutmynew man.

She's not even acting surprised that I"ve already hit a roadblock with him.

I stay silent.

I can't make it about how sexually adventurous I was with him––by my standards, anyway.

She yanks her eyeglasses off with too much force.

That's truly an accomplishment if even my therapist has had enough of me and my nonsensical stories.

"There's no problem," I say.

She doesn't write that down. It's a lie, after all.

"Did he hit on you?"

Let's see…

He said I belonged to him, and he'd take out everybody else interested in me.

"Not in the classical way."

"In what way then?"

She places her eyeglasses back on.

"We talked."

"Talking is good."

"And he had to wait for the storm to pass, so we talked some more."

Her hands sag over her notepad.

"Did he like you?" she asks, trying to end my meandering.

"He said he did. Not in those words."

"You couldn't tell?"

"I could. No… I couldn't."

"Which one is it?"

"What does that even mean?"

"Oh, please. Don't wax philosophical on this."

Her notepad meets the sofa before she pushes to her feet and beelines for the coffee machine.

She pours herself a cup, adds a teaspoon of sugar, and stirs it earnestly.

"I think he did."

She dismisses me with a lifted eyebrow.

"It's not like you to be so uncertain about these men. What's so special about this one?"

I won't bite.

So I just look at her, refusing to speak.

"You're frustrated because of him," she says.

That I can't deny.

"He's just like the others," I say deceitfully, but she doesn't notice.

"Good. See. We're finally getting somewhere," she says, returning to the sofa, scooping up her notepad, sliding into her seat, and writing again.

She doesn't believe an iota of what I just said.

If she does, I shouldprobablyfire her.

"In what way is he the same?" she mutters, her eyeglasses parked on her nose, her gaze pinned on the notepad, her pen waiting to compile a list of Jax London's flaws.

"He sent me mixed messages."

"Oh. Thank God. Why was it so hard?"

I've never seen someone so irritated with me.

A smile spreads across her lips to conceal her frustration.

"Mixed messages. You liked one type of message but not the other. You had certain expectations when it came to him."

Usually, I'm talking before she nudges me to draw my own conclusions.

Not tonight, though.

"Please elaborate," she says.

"He showed me that he liked me."

She's writing stuff down.

"How?"

She flicks her gaze up and reads my face.

"Never mind. Just go on," she says.

"And then he left without a word. He seemed to be pissed."

‘Like you now,'I almost say.

A long breath tilts her chest while she removes her glasses and slides her notepad next to her and her pen underneath so that it doesn't roll over the edge.

"What did you tell him?"

"Nothing."

It was more than I had told her.

"What did he say to you?"

"That he liked me, and it wasn't because he wanted to have sex with me. Apparently, he wasn't after sex."

The corners of her mouth slide down as she looks at me, disheartened.

Or maybe I'm projecting.

"What else did he say?"

"He asked me to give him a chance," I murmur, my ploy of making a villain out of him swiftly failing.

"Why would he say that? He just met you."

I shrug, looking at her as if I've eaten the entire bowl of candy, and trying to deny it.

"Why wouldn't you give him a chance?"

Because he's the twenty-something ex-convict who's coming to you for anger management issues, I suppose.

And he's fucking a married woman. Or used to fuck her. And if necessary, he can put out a guy with a punch.

Not exactly the guy you want to bring home and introduce to your mother.

"It was too early to give him a definitive answer," Isay in my defense.

"Were you scared of him?"

I flick my eyebrows up, my jaw locked.

"Yeah. You were. I'd be scared too if someone would come onto me so strong."

I don't know if Dr. Aretha Stenson has someone in her life. I know she's not married. And I'm sure there's a reason for that.

It's great that she validates my fears, but that doesn'tmake things better.

"So… What happened after that?"

"Nothing. I haven't heard from him again."

Her eyes go blank.

"I see," she says in a dull voice.

Now she knows how I feel.