Page 11 of Life, Love, and Other Messes

“In Kroger?”

I shut my eyes. Get with the program. “Not like huge PDA, just an arm around her. So then I called the place she had worked and they said she was with another…What?”

“You called her at work?”

I threw my hands in the air. “What am I supposed to do? Shouldn’t I know what’s really going on? It’s not like I’m stalking her or something…I mean, not really, right?”

Catherine just stared back at me.

“Come on. That’s so not like me. It isn’t like I was stalking her when I thought she was in St. Louis.”

“Fair enough. So her work said what?”

“That she was with another firm in town.”

Catherine nodded. “Okay. Any idea why she might do such a thing?”

“Because she’s a—” I stopped myself and stared out the window again.

“Say it.”

“No. I don’t mean it.”

“Say it anyway.”

I ignored that. “I am not so fucked up that she couldn’t just tell me she was over me. Tell me that I am not so fucked up that she needed to pretend that she was moving out of state.”

Catherine wrinkled her nose. “You’re not that fucked up.”

I didn’t like where she put the emphasis, but hearing that in so many words did make me feel a little bit more justified in my tirade. “But that she would think that…I mean, okay, I can take it. Really, I can take it. I’ve taken it from plenty of people. I’m not dead yet.”

“Did you do anything that might have led her to believe you’d hurt yourself or—”

“Or hunt down her new girlfriend or stalk her?”

“You keep bringing up stalking.”

I clenched my jaw for as many seconds as it took to convince myself not to tell my therapist to shut up. “I did nothing. I’m positive. I was really good during this one. Anyway, it wasn’t like we lived together. We could go home. We could get away from one another. We didn’t have to deal with the mundane, unattractive shit.”

“So could there be a possibility that she simply couldn’t bring herself to leave you in a…more conventional manner?”

“She packed up her life, quit her job, and pretended to leave town,” I said. “I suppose she didn’t assume a new identity… It could be worse.”

Catherine smiled. “There we go.”

I shook my head. “No. I’m not funny. I am desperately unfunny right now.”

The smile grew. “Are you writing?”

“I’m on my meds,” I told her darkly.

“I know it. Are you writing?”

“As much as I ever am on them.”

“Don’t go off them. Not now.”

“I know.”