More guilt. Shit. I’m really racking the mistakes up tonight.
I glance around the small but immaculate minimalistic interior of the loft. “Is Harry . . . ?” I begin, then shake my head. I chose to come here, to where Harry lives with my friend. If I didn’t want to be near him, I shouldn’t have come.
“He’s in bed,” Kate answers my unspoken question, voice silken and soft. “It’s just us.”
Kicking off my shoes at the door, I stalk across the kitchen and throw myself onto one of the squashy couches near the barren wood-burning fireplace.
Kate rustles in the kitchen for a moment, then follows me. “Wine?” she asks, offering me one of the glasses of red she carries.
I accept it and take a massive swig that should embarrass me. But after tonight, I’m not sure I have the right to be ashamed about anything as trivial as over-imbibing.
My friend raises an eyebrow at my gulp but says nothing as she settles onto the other end of the couch other than, “Rough night?”
I open my mouth to spill the details of the evening, but just the memory has my jaw clamping shut, cheeks flaming red.
Now Kate looks confused. “Wait, you really have had a rough night, haven’t you? I thought maybe you were having an existential crisis thanks to one of those self-flagellating philosophy and psychology books you insist on reading before bed.”
“They’re not self-flagellating,” I say defensively. “They open my mind to deeper self-examination.”
“Okay. But this,” she waves her hand at me, “isn’t about a book, is it?”
I shake my head, inhaling more wine, tears brimming. I try to swallow them down, but without my permission they flood my cheeks, my sudden sobs loud in my own ears.
“Holy shit,” Kate says, more to herself than to me. She sets her wine on an end table before grabbing mine and doing the same. Then she scoots close and folds me into a hug so gentle that it only makes me sob harder.
“Oh, Emmy,” she says, voice rough with empathy, “what happened?”
“I met a man,” I bawl into her sweatshirt.
She sits up straight, still holding me. “Wait, what? You met a guy?”
“And he’s kind and strong and funny and I like him and we had sex —“
Kate sucks in a sharp breath. “Whoa. All this in one night?”
I nod, snuffling. “And now I don’t know who I am. How could I have let this happen?”
She rocks back from me, holding me at an arm’s length and examining me with the keen eye that’s served her well as an up-and-coming lawyer. “Em.” She doesn’t continue until I meet her eyes. “Did this man hurt you?”
“No, he’s wonderful. I’m the one who’s the problem.”
Kate frowns. “Explain.”
The meaning of the two syllables is clear. But for some reason, when faced with this stark, uncomplicated question, I find myself stammering.
My friend cuts me off. “Okay, let me see if I can get this straight. You met a man tonight?”
I nod. “At kickboxing.”
“And you liked him?”
Another nod.
“So you . . . ?”
“Went out for a drink,” I finish.
“And then you went home and had sex?”
I cringe. “We made it to the alley behind the bar.”
Now she whistles. “Holy shit, Em, that really is next-level for you.”
“Right?” Fresh tears, hot and fat, well in my eyes. “It’s terrible.”
Kate raises a hand to stop me. “Hang on. That’s not what I said. It’s different than your usual, sure, but I haven’t heard anything that’s bad.”
Without warning, my sadness turns to anger. I find myself wanting to strike out at my friend, to lash her with words that cut so deep she’s forced to turn away from me. But I know myself enough to understand that this is my gut-level way of trying to protect myself from pain — and that it won’t work.
So I haul in a shuddering breath and try to make her understand with words. “We’ve talked about this before — I can’t do relationships. I can’t do love.” I practically spit the words. “It’s not in the cards for me. And tonight, I let myself slip and I’ve hurt Oliver and myself in the process. And hell, probably you too.”
“Oliver’s a nice name.” Kate says it so quietly that I barely have time to register the words before she’s pressing on at her usual volume. “You’re not hurting me.”
“But I could, if I let things get out of hand.”
“If you let yourself fall for someone,” she says as if she’s reciting from memory. Which she probably is — Kate’s got a mind like a trap, and we’ve discussed my love principles more than once.
“Exactly,” I say.
“Well,” she replies, fixing me with a look that makes my neck suddenly prickle with the awareness that I’m about to hear something I won’t like, “I think this is all a bunch of bullshit.”
My mouth dangles open. I want to rage at her, to scream that she doesn’t understand. But all I can do is sit there like a dumbass, agape and mute.
Which is fine, because she’s not finished. “You’ve seen some rough relationships through your clients, it’s true,” Kate continues, “but I think you’re giving them too much credit.”
My rebuttal is elegant, truly a work of art. “Huh?”
“You’re a therapist. People come to you when they need help in their lives or their marriages or whatever. They don’t come to see you when everything’s fine and life is chugging along a-okay.”
“Your point being?”
She smirks. “My point being that you’ve decided all relationships suck based on the much smaller percentage of relationships that actually suck.”
“But the divorce rate —“
“Yeah, the divorce rate. But how many divorced couples seek counseling before calling it quits?”
I open my mouth to answer, but she beats me to it.
“I know, not nearly enough. So you’ve used a logical fallacy — logical, sure, but a fallacy nonetheless — to condemn yourself to a life of solitude.”
“I’d hardly say condemned —“
Kate grabs my hand. “Emmy. There’s nothing wrong with being happy on your own, with not wanting a partner. But deciding you don’t need a partner, even though you want one, because someone might get hurt?” She sits back, releasing me. “Well, that’s a damn shame.”
I blink, brain whirling. It’s been so long since Kate’s lawyer brain faced off with my psychology brain that I forgot she’s one of the few people on earth who can best me with my own logic.
Suddenly, I feel very, very tired. I rub my forehead. “What are you saying, Kate? Tell me straight.”
She slides back over so that our outer thighs press together, and I find the contact comforting. “I think that you long for love, but you hold yourself back from it because of what-if’s that might never come to be.”
Feeling the tears return, I look her in the eyes. “But what if they do?”
“Then you’ll deal with them with your partner. Together.”