AllFreeNovel
Share Us
There was a couch and a few chairs.“Do I lay down?”
“Not unless you want to.Pick a seat.”
The couch looked good, so I settled in.
“You were a little vague on the phone.What did you want to see me about?”Marcie asked.
“I’m here so my friends will leave me alone and I can get my boyfriend back.”Was the bluntness to shock her?To get me off the hook?Both probably.
She nodded.“Okay.”
Not the reaction I expected.
“Tell me about your boyfriend.What’s his name?”she said.
“His name is Danny.”I could keep this vague.Like a list of statistics.Except, once I started talking, she didn’t interrupt.She’d nod occasionally, or sayokay, but nothing else.And the words fell out of my mouth without permission.
Not in any sort of order.It was a jumble of tangents that jumped from Danny to Reese to Adam.My dad.Work.I lost track of what I said, and I had no idea if it made sense.
“What do you remember about your dad?”The fact that her question was longer than a few syllables caught me off-guard.
I grasped the first thing that popped into my head.“When I was eight, I wanted a train set.Not just a set of tracks, but the full thing, with an intricate setup.We couldn’t afford it.Adam was a baby and we didn’t have a lot of money when there wasn’t a second kid in the house.I was certain Santa would bring me the train.That was the year I learned Santa wasn’t real.”
That wasn’t a memory I wanted to share.But it was tame enough.I suspected a lot of kids had a story like that.But the ache in my chest had shifted.It was sharper now.Harder to ignore.
“Did you find out Santa wasn’t real because he didn’t bring you the train?”
It took me a minute to make sense of why she’d ask that.“No.Some kid at school told everyone.”The question nudged more of a wall I’d built up that I never realized was there.Why did I lump all those details together?How much of my life did I blame on Adam?
Holy shit.
The question stole my thoughts.
Marcie nodded.
That was getting infuriating.How was I supposed to react if she didn’t?
“When I was twenty-five, my dad and Adam built me a train set.”Ireallydidn’t want to talk about this.Why couldn’t I stop myself.“It was waiting in my apartment on Christmas morning.There wasn’t nearly enough room for it.”
“How did that make you feel?”
Did she really just ask me that?And why did my trying to figure out the answer feel like gouging out my heart?“My reaction waswho the fuck wants a train set at twenty-five.”I felt guilty at the memory.“Where the hell was I supposed to keep it?But I didn’t say any of that.”A knot welled in my chest.I’d been polite, but they both knew I wasn’t enthusiastic.“They must have spent hours—days—putting it all together.I was so fucking jealous.”
No.Why did I say that?
Because I was.Adam got to spend that time with Dad, and I didn’t.They had so much in common.
“What happened to the train?”Marcie asked.
“It’s in a box in storage.”Another bittersweet memory that was a fist around my heart.This hurt so fucking much.It wasn’t fair.“After Dad passed, I pushed it back so far—literally, this isn’t a metaphorical thing—that I’d never have to see it again.”
There was a lot to unpack in those words.She must have something to say about it.
Nope.She just nodded, and let me keep rambling.
I didn’t want to talk about the painful memories anymore, so I shifted to work.At least on that subject I could be furious and tired instead of sad.
I was surprised when she said, “Our time is almost up.”
