Page 13 of True Sight (Nat. 20, #4)

CONRAD

Hey, quick question for you when you have a moment.

I read the message from my desk, leaning back in my chair.

I’ve been knee deep in building out Henry’s admin portal which will allow for him or his team to book private parties or groups at his studio like he requested—an idea thought up by his newest team member, Alex—to target bachelorette parties or corporate events.

Honestly, it isn’t a horrible idea, especially for Charleston where hundreds of brides-to-be travel to the city to celebrate their impending nuptials each year.

Marriage. Another thing you’ll never do, a voice in my head scoffs.

I’m not sure why, but the thought of being permanently linked to another human supposedly forever never seems like it’s in the cards for me.

With the divorce rates as high as they are, I don’t understand why people even bother in the first place.

But Hank and Kolbi do seem happier now that they’re married, that much is obvious.

What I can’t see is me, married to a woman, happily ever after.

Something about the image in my head feels wrong.

Even when I try to force my brain to conjure up the image of myself and a bride all dressed in white, the image is fuzzy at best.

Something my brain has no issue conjuring up is Henry’s dimpled smile looking at me from our meeting last week.

I’ll be seeing him again tomorrow, this time at his workout studio instead of our normal coffee shop, to talk about all the tech he’ll need installed inside to livestream his classes.

I blink hard, trying to expel the image of him out of my brain and push a heavy breath from my nose before rereading his text.

Hey, quick question for you when you have a moment.

What’s up?

If this is a tech question, please put it in the dashboard I built for us so we can go over it tomorrow during our meeting. Then you can have my answers in the future when we’re no longer working together.

No longer working together…

It feels weird to think about even though we’ve only been working on his project for a few weeks.

Oh no, this isn’t work related!

I was actually wondering if you wanted to get together this week and hang out. Maybe Friday ?

The muscles in my face clench together as I read his offer.

He wants to get together? To hangout? I know I said that would be okay but I had no idea he would actually take me up on it.

I don’t need to hangout with him, I have friends.

Enough friends to keep me plenty busy and enough work that makes my calendar too full to hangout with him.

Sure, that would be fine.

Why the fuck did I say that?

Great! Oh that’s so great to hear!

What time are you thinking?

You can come over at like, 8?

We can watch a movie or something.

What the actual hell am I doing?

That sounds lovely. Send me your address and I’ll come by then. I can’t wait!

I send him my address and set my phone down before I can do anything else totally idiotic. Why had I just invited him to come to my place? I never invite people to my place. I didn’t even invite Margaret the first time, she invited herself after getting my address from Kolbi. Fucking narc.

My arms cross defiantly across my chest, annoyed by my friend’s traitorous behavior and the fact that I’d just invited Henry to come and hangout on Friday.

He’s going to think we’re friends—we aren’t friends, we have a professional relationship, that’s it.

But now he is going to think otherwise. Before I can stew over my terrible decision making skills any longer, a very familiar feeling of a toy being dropped in my lap causes me to look down.

Annie, right on time as always, has offered her stuffed alligator toy to me as a sign that she’s ready to go for her afternoon walk.

“Alright, Annie girl, we can go.” I stand from my chair as she does an excited circle in front of me. “While we walk, we can think of some way to talk myself out of these plans on Friday because there’s no way I’m having Henry Baker over to watch a movie.”

“Hey, Conrad, welcome back. It’s good to see you again.” Hanna smiles at me through her silver framed glasses, her blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail today. I’m back on her couch for another week, ready to have my head shrunk.

“Y-ep,” I draw out the Y and pop the P.

“I see we’re still working on that charming and sunny disposition of yours.” Her mouth quirks as she writes something down on her notepad.

“Seems that way,” I grumble and reposition myself on the oversized couch pushed against the back wall of her office. Looking around, I scowl at the weird artwork she has hanging from the walls as if they’ve personally offended me.

“So.” Her voice perks up as she leans over her knees, arms crossed in front of her. “How’s your week been so far? How was game night?”

She and I have talked about my friends plenty enough and our weekly ritual of Wednesday night games.

In a past session, I shared with her my friend’s reactions to me starting therapy and she was thrilled to hear they were so supportive.

She was even more thrilled when I told her I’d followed her advice and gotten a dog.

“It was fine.”

She sighs at my indifference and lack of detail sharing.

“Fine meaning…” she probes.

“Fine, meaning I went, my friends asked me if I was seeing anyone, Bailey and Ophelia offered to set me up with some of their friends, and Malcolm told me he would take me out one night and be my wingman.” I roll my eyes at the memory.

The last thing I want is to be pimped out by my friends, especially Malcolm.

“You sound like that type of questioning bothers you,” she comments, scribbling more words down and looking at me over her glasses. I clench my jaw together and avoid her glance.

“I mean, yeah, wouldn’t you be bothered by your friends butting into your personal life?”

“Not if I consider my friends to be like my family, as you do. Family is supposed to butt in, that’s what families do, even when we don’t want them to.” She smirks at me when I cross my arms and fail to respond.

“So, how is your personal life?” she asks and I harumph at the inquisition. I wish people would stop asking me about my personal life.

“What? Am I not allowed to ask about it either?” she continues.

“It’s either your personal life or we can talk about your nightmares.

Oh, or your childhood trauma, you pick. But we will fill the next forty minutes with something other than uncomfortable silence.

” Now it’s her turn to cross her arms at me except when she does, she adds an eyebrow raise to really get her point across.

Why do I pay for this type of harassment every week?

Oh yeah, because my friends are tired of me being a pain in the ass.

“My personal life is f?—”

“If you use the word ‘fine’ one more time today, I’m throwing my pen at you,” she threatens, holding up the ballpoint pen she’s been using to take notes. When I squint at her, she continues, “I’m so serious right now. Pick a different word.”

“Who gave you your licenses? A five year old?” I sneer in disbelief. I can’t believe my highly rated psychiatrist just threatened to impale me with her pen.

“Pick a different word.” She raises the pen higher and while I have the urge to see if she’ll actually go through with the throw, I decide to follow her demands.

“My personal life is…the same,” I start, nearly saying the forbidden word again. “I see my friends, I do my work, and I hangout with my dog,” I explain and as I do, I realize how sad my life sounds. Hanna takes notes that I’m sure read, ‘Has no life, I feel bad for this loser.’

“Is that all?”

I stare at her for a second, considering if I should tell her about my plans.

“Well, tomorrow?—”

“Tomorrow?” she repeats, looking at me with an expression that toes the line of expectant and surprised.

“ Tomorrow ,” I stress, trying not to get annoyed by her constant interruptions. For someone who’s supposed to listen to me talk, she’s not letting me do a lot of that today.

“Tomorrow I’m having someone over to watch a movie,” I say as casually as I can muster.

“Margaret?”

“ No , not Margaret. Why does everyone think I spend all my time with Margaret? His name is Henry.” Her eyes widen when I share his name. “But he’s just like Margaret in the sense that he pretty much invited himself over.”

“Henry…” I can see the cogs moving in her head as I speak.

“He’s a client, a new client. The one I told you about with the fitness studio?” She nods her head. “Yeah, he’s, like, my age or whatever and asked me if I wanted to hangout.”

“And do you want to hangout with him?”

“I mean, no, not really.” Then why did you tell him yes so quickly?

“But yet, you guys have plans for Friday night? To…watch a movie?” I don’t like how she’s giving me the side eye and neglecting her notepad. Why isn’t she writing anything down?

“Like I said, he practically invited himself over. He moved here from London last month and I guess is lonely or something. Honestly I’ve been looking for an excuse to get out of it all week,” I sigh and shrug my shoulders at her.

“But you haven’t,” she states.

“I haven’t what?”

“You haven’t canceled,” she clarifies as if it were obvious what she meant.

“No, because I haven’t been able to come up with a good enough excuse.”

“Oh please,” she scoffs and flicks a hand at me again. “If you really wanted to cancel you would have. The fact that you haven’t says a lot.”

I scowl at her, unsure of what she means. “Says a lot about what?”

“It says that you want to hangout with him. It says that you might actually be opening up to someone else for once which is a good sign of growth.”

“Or maybe it shows that I’m losing my mind and I should cancel anyway. He’s a client, I work for him. I don’t become friends with my clients, I have enough friends already. I don’t need any more. ”

“We could all use more friendships in our lives, especially people like you.”

“Oh, people like me who are sad pathetic loners that do the same things every day and everyone sees as a grumpy asshole?” I snidely say. Her eyes go wide at my words.

“ Nooo ,” she drags out the word slowly before giving me a sad smile.

“People like you who have lost so much in their lives and deserve all the healthy, stable, supportive relationships they can get. You deserve more than what you have, Conrad, and I don’t know, maybe this Henry guy could become a really good friend.

You’ll never know and will never learn if you never open yourself up to it. ”

I blink a few times at her and try to understand her point.

The more it sinks in, the more I wonder if she might be right.

That maybe all these years I’ve closed myself off because I didn’t think I was worthy of having more people in my life.

Everyone—my parents and my grandmother—had been taken away from me and so I convinced myself I wasn’t worthy of anyone else.

Maybe this friendship with Henry isn’t such a bad idea after all.

She hadn’t been wrong about Annie, as annoying as it is to admit. Maybe she’ll be right about this too.