Page 79 of Everything But Mine

Eric chuckles. “You’ll never be just an observer for me.”

My chest swells with warmth. And that’s the problem; every boundary has gone to hell. I hold the book tightly in my hands. I’m hanging onto self-preservation by a thread.

The door to the session room opens. Val steps out with a lanky redheaded man, mid-forties, who thanks her before heading out. Val’s in her impeccable professional attire, with her cat-eye glasses and gravity-defiant hair knot in the back of her head. They exchange a few logistical words as she walks him toward the door.

Val turns like she’s been expecting us. “Amanda, Eric.” She tilts her head in greeting.

My shoulders straighten with the stiffness of her tone. She looks at Eric. “Are you sure you want her here?”

Eric pauses for a second, then nods.

“Wait a minute,” I interject. “Val’s your therapist?”

Val smiles—her clinical one. “We’re not really calling it therapy… It’s more like…”

“We’re talking so I can unpack things,” Eric says.

Val arches a brow. “We’re learning and practicing tools to interrupt learned patterns of behavior,” she says, word for word, what’s on her university profile. Then she smirks, a rare crack in her formality. “It’s hard work.”

She gestures us into the session room. I’ve been here before. Drinking wine and eating sushi while going over studies and abstracts with her. It’s set up like a tasteful living room. Low chairs, soft lighting, a large peace lily in the corner. She takes her usual seat in the armchair angled toward the purple couch, where Eric and I sit.

“We’ve mostly been talking about early history,” she begins, folding her hands over a notebook she rarely writes in. “Parents, childhood dynamics, the first templates for intimacy and conflict. It’s where a lot of Eric’s shadows come from. And when those shadows aren’t named, they tend to distort things, magnifying insecurity into self-hatred. Turn mistakes into proof of worthlessness.”

Eric nods, jaw clenched. He glances at me, then looks away.

“But with you here,” Val continues, “it might help to move into what happened that night. If you’re up for it.”

Eric looks at me, like he’s waiting for permission. He doesn’t move until I nod. Then he clears his throat. “Yeah.”

He waits a beat too long. Then⁠—

“I know it was fear. I—” He pauses, struggling to find the right words. “Amanda said, ‘Be with me,’ and then we kissed. I have never been with anybody like that. I didn’t know how to deal, knowing I’d lose her if things didn’t work.” He swallows. “Amanda would go to Italy anyway, and I didn’t think I’d be enough to keep her interested.”

I blink. Eric lets out a humorless laugh, but he says nothing.

“It doesn’t take a genius, Mandy,” Val adds.

“I was so focused on figuring out how to go to Italy with her.” His voice isn’t unkind—if anything, it’s protective. He looks at Val. “I thought it was the only way to keep her with me. I was so focused on how—” He trembles.

I’m in awe of Val’s work. Eric’s not like this. He isn’t this vulnerable talker who rolls out his feelings for someone to tell him what to do with them.

“—on how bored she’d end up if all I could do for her was talk about books I was reading. So I begged my useless father to help me. What a fucking joke.”

Val nods slowly. “What did you hope that would accomplish?”

“I felt manic trying to find a way to be with her.” Eric eyes me briefly. “I know you didn’t mean it like that. I know now.” He exhales. “But I couldn’t stop thinking differently that day. I was physically incapable.”

Val leans back. “Why do you think you didn’t reach out to anyone who’d helped you reframe that urgency?”

Eric nods. “There was only one way my head could see not to fuck things up with her. If I couldn’t figure it out. There’s no way I was worth her time. I went to the wrong person.”

She nods. “But why go to him? Why not Amanda’s family or even Diego?”

He shakes his head. “I went to the wrong person.”

“Why go to the wrong person?” Val leads.

I know I should touch him—his hand, his back, anything. But I’m frozen. I’ve never seen him this exposed, not even last Saturday.