Page 117 of Goodbye Again
“JP is cool too,” he adds, and I nod in agreement.
I don’t know what I was hoping for, but this wasn’t it. I knew hoping they’d hit it off and be the best of friends was a silly and unrealistic dream scenario, but I just didn’t expect to have this weird calcified feeling in my gut.
“But maybe you should spend less time over there. Give them space—a little privacy,” he suggests.
“No.”
He turns from the kitchen to face me. “What?”
“No,” I repeat. “That is specifically not what she wants.”
He rolls his eyes. “You don’t know what’s best for everyone, Julia.”
“You’re right. I don’t. I’m going solely off of what she asked for. You’re going off of what you observed for two hours and thinking you know best because of all the life you’ve lived before me.”
He groans and rolls his eyes.
My jaw tightens. “Please stop rolling your eyes; it’s disrespectful when I’m trying to have an adult conversation with you.”
“There you go again...” he throws a hand in the air and paces the living room in front of me where I remain seated on the couch. “You don’t get to psychoanalyze me, Julia. I’m not your fucking patient. I’m your fiancé. Your partner. Someone you’re starting a life with.”
“Okay,” I hesitate. “I wasn’t trying to psychoanalyze. I was trying to express how I’m feeling while we communicate.”
“You sound like a goddamn textbook. Stop. You don’t know best simply because you have a few extra letters after your name at the end of an email.”
The blow is so low it makes my feet tingle. I stand to face him.
“I have worked very hard for thoseletters, Donavan. I see some extremely difficult cases daily and still manage to be your pretty, pleasant fiancée by the time you get home in the evening, so please don’t pretend my job is a hobby to fill my time.”
“You’re privileged, Julia!” he shouts.
I draw back. “I never said I wasn’t. Donavan, I’m very aware of it.”
“Then quit pretending like you’re not. Like you’re the smart one. The philanthropist that spends time with cancer patients and heals kids from their childhood trauma.”
I stay quiet, swallowing my defense.
“You don’t see what real life is like—”
“Hold on. I’m a child trauma therapist. I see it every day, all day.”
He’s quiet, and for a moment, I think I’ve won. But then he speaks. “Yeah, even privileged kids have issues.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Julia, you live in this skyrise apartment with your wealthy fiancé, you have a well-established job and rich patients and afamous mom, then pretend like you’re the literal hands and feet of Jesus.”
“I had no idea you hated my life so much.”
“No. I don’t hate your life. I just sometimes wish you’d wake up from it,” he says. “You’re living a Cinderella story but acting like you’re Hillary Swank in Freedom Writers, changing the world by saving one troubled child at a time.”
“Fuck you,” I whisper.
“You can’t be everyone’s hero, Julia.”
My chin shakes. I turn and walk over to the kitchen to wash the dishes from earlier in the sink. I ignore the tears running down my nose and landing in the suds growing taller in the sink. I scrub and scrub until I feel his arms wrap around my waist and he tilts his head down to my shoulder.
“I don’t want to fight.”
