Page 55 of Mostly My Boss
I left the bathroom and she got her stuff to head to the common shower room. I glanced over at her bed and thought about her being drunk and losing her virginity to some asshole who’d probably been just as drunk as she was.
It made me want to throw the bed across the room and destroy everything in sight. This time, because no one was looking, I took some deep, calming breaths.
I didn’t need meds. I just needed to get a handle on my shit. I was in control. I had to be.
Jules was okay. She would recover and there would be other guys in the future. Guys who would treat her better. Like she deserved. There just couldn’t beaguy. One guy who might think of taking her away from me.
Because that wasn’t going to happen.
10
Therapy
Julia
“You knew dating Nicki was crushing me. See?” I looked at Carol for support. “This is what I mean. He’s been hurting me like this for years and now I learn you were doing it intentionally? You asshole!”
“It wasn’t intentional…it was…I don’t know. I just wanted a reaction from you. Do you know how hard that is? To get you, for one single moment, to drop your defenses and just be real with me?”
“You hate emotion! You’ve said it a million times. I was trying to spare you that!”
“I hate mine,” he snapped. “Not yours. And don’t play the innocent here. You can’t tell me that you weren’t doing the exact same thing with CJ.”
“Who is CJ?” Carol asked.
I squirmed in my seat. I didn’t like to think about CJ. What I had done to him. Why I had done it. At the time, I’d thought I was being so earnest. So sincere in my feelings for him.
“Her fiancé!” Ethan railed.
“He’s my ex-fiancé,” I muttered.
“And why did you break up?” Carol asked.
Ethan looked at me, his bushy eyebrows raised in that smug look that made me want to punch him in the nose.
“It...it just didn’t work out.”
“Because you didn’t love him,” Ethan said. “Admit it.”
“I didn’t date him to hurt you,” I said in lieu of answering his question.
“He was my chief technology officer!” Ethan fired back. “I had to watch him moon over you for months. And you’re suggesting that wasn’t about making me suffer?”
I winced. Had it been? Because, no lie, that had been part of the attraction. The way CJ treated me in front of Ethan. The way he doted on me, the way he was so openly affectionate with me. Everything Ethan wasn’t, CJ had been.
“We’re so fucked up,” I said, moaning.
“Let’s go back to college,” Carol said, trying to reel us in. “What happened after you broke up with Nicki, Ethan?”
He closed his eyes. “That night…that night…I got pretty drunk.”
“Pretty drunk?” I said, calling him out. “He got so drunk Nicki had to take him to the hospital. Come to think of it, you never told me why.”
“I don’t remember. But that was the night that everything fell apart. Really, that’s what changed everything between us.”
* * *
Harvard
