Page 62 of Letters From A Stalker

“What I’m more interested in,” he continues, “is whether you still make choices based on how you imagine your mother will react, even when you’ve decided not to tell her about them.”

My brow pulls together because immediately, and annoyingly, I know what he means. “Sometimes.”

“Can you give me an example?”

I think about it for a moment, then let out a small breath. “I don’t know if I have a specific one, but I do sometimes hear her opinion before I’ve even told her something.”

“Even when she isn’t there.”

“Especially when she isn’t there.”

That earns the smallest shift in his expression. “Then perhaps that’s something worth noticing this week. Not whether your mother approves of your choices, and not whether you should ignore her opinion. Just how often you consider what she would think before you’ve asked yourself what you think.”

I stare at him. There’s something irritatingly familiar about the direction he’s steering this.

“This is going to become another homework assignment, isn’t it?”

“It doesn’t have to.”

“That means yes.”

His mouth curves slightly.

I shake my head and settle farther into the chair. “Fine. What exactly am I supposed to notice?”

“The point where somebody else’s voice enters the decision before your own.”

That makes me freeze.

Because that is substantially more interesting than choosing cereal or deciding what I want for dinner.

Kai picks up his pen again, only to turn it once between his fingers before resting it against the notepad.

“What I’d like you to pay attention to this week isn’t whether your mother’s opinion is right or wrong, or whether you should stop considering what the people in your life might think about the choices you make. That would be unrealistic.” His voice remains calm, the same measured tone he uses whenever he wants me to actually hear something rather than react to it. “I’m more interested in the order in which those thoughts appear.”

I frown slightly. “The order?”

“You’ve become very good at anticipating other people. You know what will upset your mother before she says it, what Tessa will probably think about something, what somebody at work will need from you and how a person is likely to react before you give them an answer. I want you to notice how often one of those voices enters the conversation before your own does.”

For a moment, I simply look at him.

“That sounds disturbingly difficult to keep track of.”

“I don’t need a spreadsheet.”

“You say that now.”

The faintest trace of amusement touches his face, but he doesn’t let me derail him with it. “Just notice it. If you’re making a decision and the first thought is what somebody else will think, pause long enough to ask yourself what you think before you do anything with the answer. You don’t need to change the decision. You don’t even need to tell anyone what you wanted. I only want you to recognize when your own preference arrives late to the conversation.”

I slowly turn the water bottle between my palms while I consider that. The assignment sounds deceptively simple, which is becoming a recurring theme with him. He asks questions that would barely qualify as questions anywhere else, then somehow turns them into things I think about while brushing my teeth three days later.

“So basically, I need to figure out how often everybody else lives in my head rent-free.”

Kai’s mouth curves slightly. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“And then what?”

“Then we talk about what you notice.”