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1
SIX MONTHS EARLIER
“Captain fix a bro?”Kennedy Dawes repeated what Anne, her therapist, had just said.
“Yes. You’ve heard of Captain Save a Hoe; well, you suffer from Captain Fix a Bro syndrome,” Anne stated as if ‘Captain Fix a Bro’ was a legitimate medical term.
If someone would have told twelve-year-old Kennedy that when she grew up, her Harvard-educated therapist, who charged one hundred and fifty dollars an hour, would quote E-40 lyrics in their session, she would never have believed them. But that’s exactly what was happening.
“Okay.” Kennedy wasn’t going to argue with the woman diagnosing her with a ’90s rap song condition, mainly because she paid one hundred and fifty dollars an hour for her expertise.
Anne continued, “You attract men who are broken, either emotionally or physically. They are typically at a low point in their lives, going through some sort of life crisis. You rehabilitate them, and then once their wings have healed, they fly away.”
“I feel like that is just a very poetic way to describe me getting dumped.”
Anne responded to Kennedy’s assessment by agreeing without agreeing. “You need to recognize the pattern, or it will never change.”
Kennedy knew she had no leg to stand on when it came to defending herself against her therapist's evaluations. She did seem to attract men who were down on their luck, only to have them leave once they were back on their feet again. “So now what?”
Anne shifted in her chair and adjusted her black-rimmed glasses. “That depends on what you want.”
What did she want? The honest answer to that question was that she wanted to find her person, her lobster, her happily ever after. She wanted her own personal fairytale. She was a hopeless romantic who, at the age of thirty-five, was still waiting to find her prince charming to ride in on a horse and save her. She was a feminist and knew that she could slay her own dragons, but for once, she’d love to have the suckers die at the hands of someone else. Preferably someone tall, dark, and tattooed.
Since that response sounded pathetic, even to her own ears, Kennedy decided to go with a less romanticized truth. “I just want a healthy relationship with someone who is truly a partner.”
“Okay, good.” Anne nodded as she glanced down at her notes. “How did the sensory speed dating go?”
Kennedy had tried a new form of speed dating where you wore blindfolds and sniffed each other. It was…interesting. “For me, not so great.”
“Why did you specifyfor you?”
“Laura matched with someone who I think is perfect for her.” Kennedy had spoken to Anne about Laura a lot in previous sessions.
Laura Lopez was Kennedy’s best friend, but more than that, she was the closest thing she had to a sister, cousin, or any sort of family she had besides her grandmother, who had raised her when her mom died when Kennedy was eleven.
Laura liked to say that Kennedy was the Diana to her Anne. The Ethel to her Lucy. The Shirley to her Laverne. The Cristina to her Meredith. Or it was the other way around, and Laura was Diana, Ethel, Laverne, and Cristina. Either way, they were each other’s friend-soulmates.
“So what didyoutake away from the experience?”
“A nasty sinus infection.” The men and women at the event had doused themselves in perfume and cologne, and it had wreaked havoc on her sinuses. She’d always had problems with allergies. She had a sensitive nose. She was allergic to a lot of dusts and pollens and nine times out of ten, those allergy flare-ups would end in sinus infections. The speed dating event had resulted in a Z-pack.
Anne grinned, clearly amused by Kennedy’s response. “Anything else?”
“No, but I did make the list, like you suggested.” That had been Kennedy’s homework from the last session. Anne advised her to make a list of everything she was looking for in a partner; that way, she would know him when she saw him and she could manifest him. Also, so she would stop settling for men who didn’t have the qualities she was looking for.
“Great.” Anne grinned, “Let’s hear it.”
“It’s long.”
“How long?”
“One hundred qualities long.”
Anne’s eyes widened slightly. “Wow. Okay, well, why don’t you give me your top ten?”
“You want me to say them out loud? To you?”
“If you’re comfortable with that, you don’t have to.”
