Page 77 of Don't Remind Me
It hadn’t been this hard in a while. Didn’t that mean I was close to a breakthrough?
Maybe that was why Dr. Ohara had offered to talk on a Sunday morning after I’d messaged him last night on the brink of a panic attack minutes after walking away from Dani.
“Dani’s the one who had the vision for the whole thing,” I answered. “And Aubrey and the guys are the ones who ended up carrying most of the work in the kitchen. The only thing I feel like I can really take credit for is putting together a team that could take on that kind of challenge so readily. They never backed down, never once complained. It’s them I’m proud of.”
“Do you think they would have been as ready to take on such a challenge if you hadn’t been there to teach them this past year and foster their skills?”
“If Aubrey was there to teach them, then yeah. Probably.”
“What about the menu you created? Could Aubrey have come up with that?”
I shrugged as I reached the couch. Spun on my heel, headed back toward the island. “Hers would have been different but just as good.”
“Jase.”
I couldn’t tell if it was amusement or exasperation on the edge of his voice.
“Tell me one thing about last night’s event that wouldn’t have been possible without you. One thing you can own and feel good about.”
I tried to think. Tried to remember the work I’d put into the symposium over the past three months. I’d never doubted it would be a success. Never questioned whether people would like my menu or whether my team was skilled enough to pull it off.
I searched for that confidence now, knowing it used to be there. But it was like reaching for a door handle that had already swung shut. All I came back with was air.
My head went dizzy. I stopped pacing and covered my eyes with my hand, then shoved it into my hair and tugged hard.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“One thing, Jase.”
My breaths came faster. “I don’tknow.”
“What if I asked Dani the same question? What do you think she would give you credit for?”
Too much. She always had. There wasn’t anything I’d helped her do that she wouldn’t have figured out a way to accomplish on her own.
Or maybe nothing.
What if everything she’d seen in me hadn’t been me at all? What if all along, what she’d thought she’d seen in me had really been reminiscences of Alec, diminished by their time apart? What if seeing him last night had brought it all into focus, making it crystal clear in her mind who I was and who I wasn’t. How little I lived up to the person she’d been missing all this time. The person she really?—
“What if he’s the one she really wants?” It broke from me, the words that had been taunting me all night finally out there in the world, free to come true. And with them came all the fears I’d been holding in, forcing down with my denial since the moment I’d learned Alec was her ex. “What if she’ll always love him, and I’ll always be her second choice? How am I even supposed to know? Am I supposed to ask her? What kind of fucked-up question is that?”
I could already imagine it. The pain that would slash across her face when I asked. What it would imply about the months we’d spent together.
They’d been real.
I knew it.
So why was there still this gaping pit inside me as if someone had cleaved through my stomach with a butcher’s knife?
There was no judgment in Dr. Ohara’s voice when he answered. It was part of what I liked about him. That what felt like the ugliest parts of me were just normal to him.
“The truth is there may always be a part of her that loves a part of him,” he said. “And vice versa. People tend to stick with each other in small ways, and it’s common for relationships formed earlier in life to hold significant meaning. That doesn’t mean she’s stillinlove with him, and it doesn’t mean she has to loveyouany less.”
I barely heard the words over the pounding in my ears. My hand was back over my eyes as I stood in the middle of my apartment, struggling to fill my lungs all the way.
“What you and I both know,” he went on, “is this has never really been about whether she compares you to him. It’s always been aboutyoucomparing you to him. A habit you no doubt picked up from your parents.”
I nodded.
