It reminded me of my profession a little too much. I’d hate to face her in the courtroom.
I got the sense Fifi had spent a lot of her life under people’s watchful eyes, trying to be three steps ahead of the next question, the next assumption, the next push toward something she wasn’t sure she wanted yet.
I got that.
Ireallygot that.
And maybe that’s why it rattled me more than I expected.
Because standing in that antique shop, with Millie reading me like an overdue library book and gently suggesting I figure myself out before I hurt someone like Fifi…
It hit a little too close, not because I was some great mystery, but because the truth was simple.
I no longer knew what I wanted.
I thought I did.
I had a plan once. A straight line I’d followed with the precision of a man who believed goals were gospel: climb the ladder, prove yourself, get the promotion, land the clients, and earn the title.
I’d finally gotten it, too. The office with the view, the team, the salary that could cover three mortgages, and still have room for overpriced scotch.
And it felt like ajoke.
Every day, I woke up and walked into that place like I’d built a kingdom just to find out I didn’t want to rule it.
I started waking up tired. Not physically. Just… hollow. Like everything I’d built didn’t have walls anymore.
And then one day, I booked a two-week stay at a lodge in the middle of nowhere.
I told myself it was to reset.
To breathe.
To think.
But it wasn’t.
It was tohide.
Hide from the voices that said I should be grateful that I should be satisfied. That I was lucky, that I’d made it, that I had everything people were supposed to want.
But what if it wasn’t whatIwanted?
What if I didn’t know what I wanted at all?
I turned and started walking slowly down the sidewalk, the sun warming my back, the ache in my chest building like a pressure valve no one warned me about.
I wasn’t good at this.
The introspection. The sitting still. Thefeeling things.
And then there was Fifi.
The bright, whirlwind woman with wide eyes and a voice full of too many thoughts. Who always said the thing I didn’t expect. Who made room for other people’s feelings without even realizing it, and accidentally made me realize I stillhadfeelings buried under all the concrete I’d poured over my emotional landscape.
She scared me.
Not because she was intense. But because shewasn’t.
