Page 43 of Hypnotized By Love

This was making me wish I hadn’t gone back to school to get my master’s degree in counseling, because now I knew that the right thing to do was to let her tell me in her own time. Even if I was impatient and waiting was the last thing I wanted to do.

“Okay.”

“Am I still your favorite sister?”

“Genetics dictate that I have to love you. But I am very upset with you.”

“It’s okay. You’ll get over it,” she said as she hugged me. I hugged her back because she was right—I would get over it. I couldn’t ever stay mad at Sierra.

“Speaking of getting over things, have you broken up with Joseph yet?” I asked.

She released me and sank back into her chair. “Can I just not talk to him for a long time and hope he figures it out? As a society, haven’t we decided that when someone ghosts you, you should respect the dead and move on?”

“I’ve had it done to me, and it feels really good when a guy just stops talking to you.” I laid my sarcasm on a bit thick.

“You did it to Mason.”

“That’s different and you know it.”

As if realizing that she’d overstepped, she backpedaled like she was an acrobat in the Cirque du Soleil. “Let’s not talk about him. Back to Joseph. If I try to break up with him, I’m going to have to tell him why, and I don’t want to explain. It’ll be a whole ordeal.”

“You don’t need to justify why you want to break up with him. It’s not like you have to convince a jury of twelve impartial peers that your reasoning is fair.”

It was frustrating that Sierra didn’t see that she deserved better. That she had the right to be with someone who would make her really, really happy. I could only tell her so many times, though. At the back of my mind, I felt like I always had to take her mental state into account. When she felt too much pressure or like she had to be perfect, that was when she would backslide.

It had been years, but the fear that she would relapse was always right there on the edge, for all of us.

I decided to not bug her about Joseph anymore. She was an adult. She could make her own choices. “You do whatever you think is right. I support you. But please know you deserve a good guy.”

“So do you,” she said.

“You’re right. I should be better about having a good romantic relationship. These days it feels like my healthiest and longest relationship has been with my DVR.”

She smiled at that and then, as if she couldn’t help herself, said, “There’s a decent man out there who’s right for you. And maybe that good guy’s name might rhyme with Jason Meckett.”

“Sierra,” I groaned. “This is so pointless. He and I hate each other.”

“Why do you think he hates you?”

“You were here the other morning. You saw how he scowled at me and said my name all rude.”

She blinked at me once, then twice, and said, “Are you for real?”

“Yes?” I said it as a question because of her tone.

“He smiled at you, and his eyes lit up when he said your name. You are so caught up in your own hatred of him that it’s coloring your vision. You have on hate-filled goggles. You’re an unreliable narrator.”

“I am a very reliable narrator,” I said with a frown.

“Fine, Ms. Reliable Narrator. Then please explain to me why he wants to keep hanging out with you.”

“Because he’s writing an article about hypnosis and is on a quest to annoy me to death.”

She muttered something under her breath and shook her head. “You don’t think there’s a chance you could just let things go?”

“I think we both know the answer to that question.”

Bridget arrived then, setting down the purse that held Lulabelle.

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