“I’m buying it, Ellie,” Hannah told her adamantly, adding the book to her ever-growing pile.
With a sigh of defeat, Ellie nodded reluctantly and wandered back into the romance section. I was coming to learn she was a huge sucker for a happy ending. We’d watched no less than three romantic dramas this week. However, before I overdosed on another Nicholas Sparks adaptation, I was determined that tonight we’d be watching Matt Damon crack some heads as Jason Bourne.
My cell rang and I scrambled around in my purse for it only to discover it was Rhian.
I’d emailed her last night.
“Will you be okay while I take this?” I asked Hannah.
She waved me off, her nose practically pressed against the bookshelf as she scanned the titles. With laughter on my lips I wandered away from her to answer the call in private.
“Hey.”
“Hi,” Rhian replied, almost tentatively.
I braced myself.
Shit. Maybe I shouldn’t have shared my news. Was she going to start treating me like a headcase from now on? As in carefully? Because that would be too weird. I’d miss being cursed at for one thing.
“How are you and James?” I asked before she could say anything.
“We’re a lot better. We’re getting there. Actually, he asked me to see someone. A therapist.”
I froze in the sci-fi aisle. “You’re kidding?”
“Nope. I didn’t tell him about your email, I swear. He just blurted it out. Some coincidence.” She took a deep breath. “You really went to see one?”
I glanced around to make sure I was alone. “I needed someone to talk to, and a professional with no personal interest in my life is the only person I trust to… well… to talk to about what I need to talk about…” I frowned. Ten points for language skills on that one.
“I see.”
I winced at her tone. There was a definite bite to it. “Rhian, I don’t mean to be hurtful.”
“I’m not hurt. I just think you should talk to someone who actually cares about you. Why do you think I told James all my shit? You know, you were right before. I trusted him. And I’m glad I did.”
“I’m not ready for that. I don’t have a James. I don’t want a James. And anyway, your James still wants you to talk to a therapist.”
She made a grumbling noise. “I think he thinks if I green light the whole therapy thing, then I’m serious about making this work with him.”
I thought about how devastated James had been the night he came to see me. “Then you should do it.”
“How was it? Was it weird?”
It was awful. “It was fine. Strange at first, but I’m going back.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Yeah, that’s why I’m paying one hundred pounds an hour to a professional, so I can talk to you. I held my sarcasm in check. “No, Rhian, I don’t.”
“Fine, you don’t have to snap at me, you grumpy cow.”
I rolled my eyes. “You know I miss your face-to-face insults. It’s just not the same over the phone.”
She snorted. “I miss someone who gets me. I called a woman on my research team a bitch—you know in a friendly way—and she told me to go to hell. And I think she really meant it.”
“Rhian, we’ve talked about this. Normal people don’t like to be called names. For some reason, they tend to take that personally. And you are a tad bitchy, by the way.”
“Normal people are so sensitive.”
“Joss, have you read this one?” Hannah appeared around the corner of the aisle, waving yet another dystopian at me. I had read it. What can I say? I had a thing for dystopia.
“Who’s that?” Rhian asked. “Where are you?”
I nodded at Hannah. “That’s a good one. And there’s a hot guy in it. I think you’ll really like it.”
Hannah was delighted at that and clutched the book to her chest, before lugging her hand-basket of goodies back to the teen fiction section.
“Joss?”
“That was Hannah.” I tilted my head at a Dan Simmons novel. Ooh, I hadn’t read that one.
“And Hannah is…?”
“Ellie’s fourteen year old sister.”
“And you’re with a teenager… why?”
What was with the tone? Her question might as well have been, ‘and you’re smoking crack… why?’
“We’re in the bookstore.”
“You’re shopping with a teenager?”
“Why do you keep saying it like that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because you’ve moved into an expensive flat, you’re spending money you were always weird about spending, you’re friends with a girl who’s seen The Notebook fifty-five times and, like, smiles a lot; you’re out for drinks with actual people on week nights, you saved my relationship, you’re seeing a therapist, and you’re babysitting teens. I moved to London and you got a fuckin’ lobotomy.”
I exhaled heavily. “You know you could just be grateful for the whole saving your relationship thing.”