Page 2 of The Dating Ban (Mind the Corbin Brothers #1)

Pee-Pee

Ivy

I am in purgatory.

Alright, technically, I am in the waiting room of my therapist’s office, but the difference is negligible.

The walls are a bland shade of beige, the kind that aspires to be “calming” but just looks like old porridge. There’s a sad little fish tank in the corner with one lonely goldfish who always seems to be glaring at me. I swear it knows. It knows I am a walking disaster.

I glance at the clock. Ten minutes to go. Ten minutes before I have to sit opposite Phyllis Philpott, aka Pee-Pee (let’s not tell her I call her that behind her back) and admit that my most recent attempt at “living adventurously” resulted in feeling utterly humiliated.

I check my phone for any last-minute emergencies that might get me out of this, but of course, there’s nothing. Not a single text, not even a train delay I could exploit. Just my own impending doom.

I let out a long sigh and sink further into the uncomfortable chair .

I’ve been seeing Pee-Pee since my divorce three years ago.

Back then, my biggest problem was figuring out how to rebuild my life after my husband left me for a woman he met on a meditation retreat.

(She “taught him how to breathe,” apparently.

I hope she’s still coaching him through it while he chokes on his own spit.)

Back then, therapy was about healing, rediscovering myself, and coming to terms with the fact that love isn’t always enough. Honestly, I should’ve started sooner. It might’ve saved my marriage if I'd had Pee-Pee to help me process the fact I can't have children.

Instead, I dragged Barry into every alternative therapy going, hoping one might magically conjure up a baby. He got fed up and went looking for fun elsewhere, rather than just talking to me.

But if I’ve learned anything over the past three years, it’s this: Barry and I were never really suited to each other. Still, just because we’re not compatible doesn’t mean I don’t despise him for cheating. Knobhead.

Nowadays, therapy is about… well, kind of still the same. I still don’t know who I am and what I want. Apparently, I am a slow learner. Yet again I am sitting in the waiting room, trying to figure out how to explain my latest life choice without making it sound too tragic.

For a brief, fleeting moment, I wonder if I should just… lie. I could make something up—talk about work stress, pretend I’ve taken up gambling, literally anything else.

But lying to a therapist seems like a whole new league of issues.

And besides, Pee-Pee would know. She has that unsettling, all-seeing quality, like a wise old owl wrapped in a pastel cardigan.

I’d get maybe three words in before she’d tilt her head, hum thoughtfully, and somehow extract the truth from my soul.

The receptionist, who has the enthusiasm of a woman who is counting the seconds until she can go home, peeks her head out from behind the desk.

“Ivy? Phyllis is ready for you.”

I plaster on a tight-lipped smile, shove my phone in my bag, and stand up like a woman being led to an interrogation.

Here we go. Time to tell my therapist that I got downgraded from a wild, reckless woman of passion to a mildly inconvenient speed bump on the way to Match of the Day.

I step into Pee-Pee’s office, which is just as beige and aggressively soothing as the waiting room.

The walls are a soft eggshell-y colour, the armchairs are that expensive kind of beige that rich people put in rooms they never actually sit in, and there’s a small tray of herbal teas that I have never once seen anyone take.

Pee-Pee herself is perched in her usual spot, dressed in her signature cardigan-and-sensible-trousers combo. Today, the cardigan is a gentle mint green, which I suspect is meant to lull me into a false sense of security.

“Hello, Ivy,” she says, with that calm, knowing smile. “How are you this week?”

Oh, we’re starting with that, are we?

I sink into the chair opposite her, already feeling the walls close in. “Oh, you know,” I say breezily, waving a hand. “Can’t complain.”

She nods, waiting. She knows I am going to complain. It’s just a matter of when.

There’s a long pause. She looks at me. I look at the tiny wooden figurine of a tree on her coffee table, like maybe I can will myself into becoming one with it.

Pee-Pee tilts her head slightly.

I panic. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about getting into clay.”

She blinks. “Clay?”

“Yes. You know. Crafting sculptures, making mugs, all that.” I make a vaguely circular motion with my hands, as if this will somehow prove my deep and genuine passion for ceramics.

She nods again, but now with mild amusement. “That’s lovely, Ivy. What’s brought this on?”

Oh no. I have not prepared for follow-up questions. “Uh… mindfulness?”

Her lips twitch, as if she’s trying not to smile.

Damn it. She knows. Of course she does, Ivy, you sound like you’ve lost your marbles.

Pee-Pee waits again, giving me the opportunity to dig myself out of my nonsense, but I am committed now.

“It’s very therapeutic, apparently,” I continue, grasping at straws. “You know, the whole… earthy, grounding thing. I thought I might try it.”

“Hm,” she says. The dreaded hm .

She picks up her notebook and taps her pen against it lightly. I know this move. This is her version of a masterclass interrogator.

I need to change the subject before she calls my bluff. “Anyway, how’s your week been?”

She raises an eyebrow, ever so slightly. “Ivy.”

I swallow. “Yes? ”

She leans forward a fraction. “Would you like to tell me what’s actually on your mind?”

No. No, I would not. I would like to sit here, sip an imaginary cup of tea, and pretend I am a well-adjusted person who did not get left mid-orgy for a football match.

I force a laugh. “It’s nothing, really.”

She just looks at me.

“It’s silly,” I add.

More looking.

I sigh, slump back into the chair, and blurt out, “I had a foursome.”

A beat of silence.

Then, in the calmest, most composed voice, she asks, “Would you like to elaborate?”

I groan, rubbing my hands over my face. “Not really, but I suppose I have to.”

She gives me that therapist nod that means yes, you do.

So, I tell her. The whole ridiculous, humiliating story—how I thought it would be exciting, how it was, in fact, not exciting at all. How, instead, Graham and Harry abandoned ship to watch football, and how I ended the night sitting on a bus, contemplating my own poor life choices.

Pee-Pee listens without interrupting, nodding occasionally, her expression unreadable. When I finish, she does something truly terrible.

She hmms.

It’s the deep, thoughtful hmm that lets me know that my entire existence is about to be psychoanalysed to pieces.

I brace myself.

She adjusts her glasses slightly. “And how did that make you feel? ”

I blink. “Like a discarded takeaway container?”

She tilts her head again. “And why do you think that is?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Phyllis,” I say dramatically, throwing my hands up. “Maybe because two out of three men literally walked out halfway through and didn’t come back?!”

“Hm.”

I groan. “You’re loving this, aren’t you?”

She smiles… just the smallest, knowing smile. “Not loving it, no. But I do think this experience has left you with some feelings worth unpacking.”

Ugh. Of course it has.

I cross my arms. “I was just trying to have fun. Be spontaneous. Isn’t that supposed to be good for me?”

“Fun is good,” she agrees. “But I wonder if you were looking for something more than just fun.”

I open my mouth to argue, but nothing comes out. Because the annoying part? She’s probably right.

I sigh. “So, what you’re saying is, I didn’t just make a bad decision—I made a psychologically bad decision?”

“I think you made a decision that didn’t give you what you were really looking for,” she says gently.

I huff. “Which was what, exactly?”

She shrugs. “That’s something only you can answer.”

Oh, brilliant. A therapy riddle. Just what I needed.

Pee-Pee writes something in her notebook. I imagine it's just a slow, tired scribble that says Here we go again .

“I blame you,” I say, arms folded like a toddler who’s just been denied pudding.

She doesn’t look up. “Of course you do. What am I responsible for this time?”

“You told me not to think. ”

Now she looks up. Tilts her head slightly, the way people do when trying not to look directly at a car crash. “I told you not to overthink . That’s not the same as switching your brain off entirely and mistaking chaos for spontaneity.”

“Well,” I mutter, “you could’ve been clearer.”

There’s a pause. Then she says, very gently, “You’ve had a pattern, Ivy. Of meeting someone and immediately imagining a future with them. Why do you think that is?”

I roll my eyes so hard it nearly counts as cardio. “I don’t always do that.”

Her silence says, Go on then. Prove it.

“Okay,” I say, holding up a hand. “Exhibit A: the fitness coach. Remember him?”

“I do.”

“Mr Abs-for-Days who told me I’d ‘blossom’ if I stopped eating bread. I left with the food, not the man.”

Pee-Pee nods, neutral.

“And Exhibit B: the one who said—on date one , mind you—that he wanted a woman who cooks, cleans, and doesn’t argue.”

“And you tried to cook for him,” she says softly, not accusing, just... reminding.

“Almost burnt the kitchen down, yes. But the point is, I don’t always go full Jane Austen. Sometimes I meet absolute clowns and still try to be normal.”

Pee-Pee sits back, watching me. Not with judgement, but with that therapisty stillness that makes you feel like you’ve walked straight into a trap made of your own logic.

“So why didn’t you walk away from him?” she asks .

I hesitate. “Because he talked about marriage. Not in a creepy ‘let’s name our kids’ way. Just… like it was on the table. And I thought maybe, for once…”

She lets the silence settle for a moment, careful, like she’s stepping over broken glass.