“You look like you’ve thought of something,” Lacey said, her gaze piqued with curiosity.
I nodded. “Yeah, I did.”
“What is it?”
My words came out shaky, belying the conviction I felt. “I’m moving to Nashville.”
TWENTY-NINE
McKenzie
From the momentI sat on Dr. Florene Zott’s sofa in her office that rainy Monday morning, I felt like a ball of anxiety that might simply bounce from the room. But even if I did, I wouldn’t have made it far. My mom had come with me for moral support and was waiting in the lobby.
I’d squirmed through the entire intake process, my stomach knotting like a dainty necklace. Even the slightest movement would’ve had it tangled beyond recognition.
Dr. Zott tapped a few more notes into her laptop before looking at me through her thick cat-eye glasses.
“Let’s talk a little about this panic attack you experienced Saturday night,” she said, tucking a strand of her black bob behind her ear.
I tucked my hands under my legs in a vague attempt to stop my fidgeting. “What do you want to know?”
“What happened leading up to it?” she asked. “Were you under more stress than usual?”
I nodded, then told her about the pressure I’d been under at the restaurant all week and how our staffing issues had bled over into Kia’s party.
“Mmm,” she murmured. “I imagine your sleep schedule was disrupted too because you were under so much pressure.”
“Yeah. It was.” I swallowed hard. “Things hadn’t been so great with my boyfriend, either.”
She tugged the sleeves of her cardigan down. “Tell me about that. Were the two of you fighting?”
“No,” I replied. “It was nothing like that.” I filled her in on how my relationship with Luca began and how things had started to pivot over the last two weeks. “Our lives had been on this parallel path since the fall, then all of a sudden, it was like we were going in two different directions.”
I picked at my cuticle while I continued to explain the events that occurred Saturday night, including Luca’s texts and frantic phone call. “He’d gotten some bad press—not just a little, either. Alot.It was like the gates of internet hell opened up and swallowed him whole.”
“I imagine it was hard for you to give him the assurance he was probably seeking from you at that moment,” she said. “Because you already had a lot on your plate.”
“Not only did I not give it to him, but I essentially told him to just deal with it himself.” I scrubbed my hands over my face. “It was partly because I was stressed out, but there was some resentment there too. I’d been feeling this sense of impending…lossbecause he would be going out on the road soon, and he wasn’t affected at all. Or at least he didn’t seem to be.”
“Did you ever ask him?” Dr. Zott questioned.
I shook my head. “No, and I know that’s my own fault. But there was a part of me that was afraid to say anything.”
“Why?”
My gaze fell to my hands. WhyhadI been so scared? I didn’t have a lot of experience with relationships, but I couldn’t entirely blame my behavior on my lack of expertise in matters of the heart. There was something much deeper at play.
“Luca has a history of depression…of self-harming thoughts. Like my brother did.” The words squeezed out of me like the last dredges of toothpaste from a nearly empty tube. “Brennan…he took his own life fifteen years ago this past October.”
“I see,” she said, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her narrow nose. “So you were worried that saying something might upset Luca and potentially send him down a rocky path?”
“I guess so,” I said with a shrug. “It seemed like he was finally happy, you know? I didn’t want to ruin that for him by being selfish. But when he called me like he did…something in me kind of snapped. Like, had he not stopped to consider what life would be like once he started touring? I can’t just drop everything and be there all the time.”
“Is it possible he thought you’d be going with him? That perhaps he took for granted that you’d always be there?”
“Maybe.” I hadn’t even considered that. It wasn’t something we’d discussed, but then again, our communication had broken down. And even if he had thought that, I didn’twantto go. My life was in Nashville.
She nodded and tilted her head. “I want to go back to your panic attack. Did it happen after your conversation with Luca?”
