Ugh. Of course it has.
I cross my arms. “I was just trying to have fun. Be spontaneous. Isn’t that supposed to be good for me?”
“Fun is good,” she agrees. “But I wonder if you were looking for something more than just fun.”
I open my mouth to argue, but nothing comes out. Because the annoying part? She’s probably right.
I sigh. “So, what you’re saying is, I didn’t just make a bad decision—I made a psychologically bad decision?”
“I think you made a decision that didn’t give you what you were really looking for,” she says gently.
I huff. “Which was what, exactly?”
She shrugs. “That’s something only you can answer.”
Oh, brilliant. A therapy riddle. Just what I needed.
Pee-Pee writes something in her notebook. I imagine it's just a slow, tired scribble that saysHere we go again.
“I blame you,” I say, arms folded like a toddler who’s just been denied pudding.
She doesn’t look up. “Of course you do. What am I responsible for this time?”
“You told me not to think.”
Now she looks up. Tilts her head slightly, the way people do when trying not to look directly at a car crash. “I told you not tooverthink. That’s not the same as switching your brain off entirely and mistaking chaos for spontaneity.”
“Well,” I mutter, “you could’ve been clearer.”
There’s a pause. Then she says, very gently, “You’ve had a pattern, Ivy. Of meeting someone and immediately imagining a future with them. Why do you think that is?”
I roll my eyes so hard it nearly counts as cardio. “I don’talwaysdo that.”
Her silence says,Go on then. Prove it.
“Okay,” I say, holding up a hand. “Exhibit A: the fitness coach. Remember him?”
“I do.”
“Mr Abs-for-Days who told me I’d ‘blossom’ if I stopped eating bread. I left with the food, not the man.”
Pee-Pee nods, neutral.
“And Exhibit B: the one who said—on dateone, mind you—that he wanted a woman who cooks, cleans, and doesn’t argue.”
“And you tried to cook for him,” she says softly, not accusing, just... reminding.
“Almost burnt the kitchen down, yes. But the point is, I don’t always go full Jane Austen. Sometimes I meet absolute clowns andstilltry to be normal.”
Pee-Pee sits back, watching me. Not with judgement, but with that therapisty stillness that makes you feel like you’ve walked straight into a trap made of your own logic.
“So why didn’t you walk away from him?” she asks.
I hesitate. “Because he talked about marriage. Not in a creepy ‘let’s name our kids’ way. Just… like it was on the table. And I thought maybe, for once…”
She lets the silence settle for a moment, careful, like she’s stepping over broken glass.
“I know you’ve had a lot taken from you,” she says, voice calm but warm. “And that sometimes, a promise—even a flimsy one—feels like something to cling to.”
