I shook my head. “I’m in a bad mood. I don’t want to take that out on…” I gestured to Chloe, the house, and my sister singing offkey somewhere in there.
Her head tilted as she studied me. Then she took another step back and shut the door in my face.
That didn’t make me feel any less shitty. In fact, now I felt shitty and annoyed. Maybe that was irrational. It wasn’t her job to fix my shitty mood. But, damn. She could have been alittlenicer about it.
I glared at the door, and suddenly it opened and I was glaring at Chloe, a blanket in her arms and a bag of gummy bears clamped in her teeth. I blinked.
“Sit,” she said.
The word was garbled around the bag of candy, but I got the message, partly because she was pushing me toward the swing with her body. I sat. She sat next to me and tucked the blanket around us.
“Some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten boils down to this: If you feel like everyone hates you, take a nap. If you feel like you hate everyone, eat something.” She popped open the bag and offered it to me. “You look like you feel a little bit of both.”
“What if you’re just sad?” I asked. I took a gummy bear. Green. My favorite flavor.
“Cry about it.” She shrugged.
I snorted. “You don’t want to see a grown man cry. It’s pathetic.”
“It’s human.” She bit off the head of a red bear, then put the whole thing in her mouth.
“That’s not what my dad would say.”
“Oh, yeah? What would he say, then?”
I didn’t have to guess. I knew. “Suck it up. Don’t be such a girl. It’s just a dog. That’s what he said when he was drunk and backed his truck over my dog in the driveway.” I could still hear Milo’s scream of pain, and then his soft whimpers as he died in my arms.
Chloe stilled next to me. “That’s fucked up, Steven.”
“Fucked up? Is that your official diagnosis?” I smirked before tossing the green gummy bear into my mouth.
She studied me. “That’s not really what I do. Icandiagnose mental illness—or I can after I am fully licensed as a clinical social worker—but mostly I focus on temporary life upheavals and how to navigate the emotions around them, and community solutions. Like, farmers and ranchers have a high suicide rate because their livelihoods depend on many factors outside their control, and you couple that with a toxic masculine culture of not talking out problems and deep feelings of shame for notbeing able to provide for your family, and…boom. I focus on getting them talking and moving their life past whatever event it is they feel they can’t live past. I help them find a solution that isn’t suicide.”
She ate another gummy bear head first, still watching me. “I’m not your therapist, just to be clear. But if I were, I might point out that you have a tendency to hide deep feelings behind sarcasm, smirks, and general grumpiness.”
My eyebrows went up slowly. “You mean, if you were my therapist you might point it out like you just did?”
“Did I? Huh. How about that.” She smirked and shook the bag at me. I grabbed another bear. Orange this time. “What was the name of your dog?”
“Milo.” My chest squeezed. I hadn’t said his name out loud in years.
She nodded. “That’s a good name. Tell me about him.”
I shifted, putting an extra inch of space between us. “You said you weren’t my shrink.”
“I said I wasn’t yourtherapist,” she corrected. “And I’m not. I’m being your friend, weirdo.”
“I don’t talk to my friends about this shit. Work gripes, women, weekend plans. That’s what we talk about. Not childhood trauma and feelings.” I didn’t talk about that with anyone, ever, actually.
“Is friendship another one of those girly things your father wouldn’t approve of?” she asked drily.
I blinked.
Well, shit.
Seeing my face, Chloe laughed. “Surprise! The patriarchy doesn’t do men any favors, either.” She paused, reconsidering. “Well, it does, obviously, but at what cost, Steven?At what cost.” She raised her fists to the sky and shook them.
“Fucking dramatic,” I muttered, but I was smiling.
