“You don’t need to apologize for talking to your therapist, Roxanne. That’s kind of why I’m here.”
We laugh together again, and I know I at least made the right choice when picking a therapist.
“The first thing I want to tell you is that you’ve already faced the first issue most people have to face,” Hélène begins. “Youwantto change. Youwantto grow. You want to overcome the obstacles in your path. The next part is figuring out how.”
“And let me guess,” I reply, “that’s the hard part?”
Hélène chuckles. “It can be. The hard part about change is that it starts from the bottom. From the roots. The foundation. You can’t just pick a spot in the middle and go from there.”
I don’t even know where my roots are. I think the first time I started seeing myself as aperson—as someone with dreams and possibilities and a future to believe in—was after I came to Montreal, but so much of my life from that time onwards is wrapped around Cole. Sometimes it feels like we’ve built ourselves around each other, like we can’t start over without one another, but every time we try to dig a new foundation, we just end up digging a grave. There has to be something below that, something stable, something solid I can stand on by myself.
There has to be a part of me that doesn’t need him. I just don’t know how much it’s going to hurt to find it.
* * *
“Roxanne Na...Nadeau?”
I stand up when the receptionist calls my name, cursing myself for deciding to wear high-waisted pants today. Really, it’s too hot for any kind of pants, but I decided to go with one of my most tried and true Young Professional Outfits.
Sherbrooke Station is playing in Hamilton tonight, a city about an hour outside of Toronto. We barely arrived in time for me to hop on a train and get to my interview at Whitestone.
I’ve been to Toronto a handful of times on weekend trips, and even after a whirlwind tour through a half dozen major American cities, I still feel strangely out of my depth when I’m here. Downtown at least, there are a lot of similarities between Toronto and Montreal. Stare for too long, though, and you start to notice everything that sets the two cities apart, like one of those ‘spot the difference’ games on the back of cereal boxes. There are fewer potholes in the streets here, less patched-up brick walls stained with soot. The old doesn’t last as long before it gets shuffled out to make room for the new. The buildings are taller, forcing you to throw your head back and look up, up, always up.
Montreal is a city for looking around—around the corners of alleys, around the edges of doors to odd shops and dim bars, around the crowd at a concert to meet the eyes of a stranger across the room.
Toronto is a city for those who look up. It’s a city for people who climb, and I’m about to try convincing the people at Whitestone that I can be one of them.
I follow the receptionist’s directions to an office down the hall, and I’m met by a willowy woman who’s probably in her mid-thirties.
“I’m Susan Won.” She introduces herself with a smile and a surprisingly firm handshake I do my best to return. It’s been years since I’ve done a job interview, and as Susan offers me a seat in front of her desk, I realize this is the first one I’ve ever done in an actual office.
Susan doesn’t waste any time getting down to business.
“So, Roxanne, why don’t we go ahead and get the inevitable out of the way first? Tell me why you want to work for Whitestone.”
“Je—oh, sorry, I mean, I...”
I try to laugh off my accidental slip into French. I always switch languages when I’m nervous. After spending most of last night and all of this morning preparing, I thought I’d feel closer to the top end of the scale between lady boss and hot mess. Hell, I even rehearsed an answer to this exact question.
I want to be part of a growing company that’s ready to lead and make new paths in this industry. I have the skills and background to help me succeed here, and I’m excited about the challenges of the role. I believe in what Whitestone is doing, and I want to help bring that vision to life.
The words play out in my head, and for some reason, all I can think of is Cole’s most likely reaction if I’d decided to practice them on him.
Bullshit.
He’d smirk and mutter, “Bullshit.” He’d be right, of course, and that’s exactly why I didn’t ask to practice on him.
Well, that and the fact that he still knows nothing about this interview. He kept bugging me to tell him where I was going today—until I snapped and yelled that I had athing, and for fuck’s sake, could we just leave it at that?
He let it go, and I instantly regretted getting angry, but it just made me more certain that I need this job. I need an escape route. I need to cut the cord for both of us, because I can already feel the way it’s wrapping itself around our necks. We’re not even really back together, but that old cycle of fighting and fucking and building each other up just to knock ourselves down is starting again.
We’re like two people grabbing a sword by the blade and refusing to let go even as it slices our skin. He doesn’t have it in him to let another person in his life slip away, and I don’t have it in me to walk away from him when he calls me back to his side.
So yes, deep down I know it’s bullshit to say I’m here because I’m ‘excited about the challenges of the role.’ It’s bullshit to say I have a ‘vision’ I want to ‘bring to life.’ It’s bullshit to pretend that the idea of leaving everything I’ve ever known or loved is some kind of fun adventure I’m craving to face, but I don’t know what else to do anymore. I’ve tried to burn this bridge a hundred times, and I always end up crossing back through the flames. The only thing left to try is blowing up the entire canyon underneath, to make sure there’s nothing to cross back to anymore.
If nothing else, I know that leaving this way will do that. It will break the things I’ve never been able to make myself break before. It will end us, but I have to hope that maybe, maybe it will set us free.
I fold my hands on the desk and do my best to smile at Susan.
“I want to be part of a growing company...”
She nods as I answer her questions and then tells me that’s exactly what she was looking to hear.
