Spending the afternoon with my sister made me feel good, even relieved. I'd always been the person who required reassurance from close family and friends. I was not at all conscious about what the world would think of my actions, but it was important that those close to me validated my big decisions in life. In that sense, I was nothing like my sister. My parents were supportive people in general, so they’d never explicitly told Jessica that they hated her fiancé at the time, and now they wish that they had. I was grateful that my sister had given me her blessing to go forward and have a chat with Wayne about whatever it was that he wanted instead of letting the whole thing rot in my brain and chew it away bit by bit.

I took the train back to Brad's condo and it was almost an hour-long ride all the way from Brooklyn. That gave me enough time to people watch and judge those who had their lunch spread across several seats on the train. It was baffling to me that they could be so inconsiderate and not offer the seats to those who were standing. I could only people watch so much, so eventually, I pulled out my phone and began reading a famous book on hard marriages that had been on my to-read list for a while but I’d never gotten around to it. That's usually what happened when you had a little baby who refused to share your time with anyone or anything. I was only a few pages into it when I felt the need to check on the live monitor in the condo and watch Shanaya babysit Max and offer him his favorite stuffed jellyfish. He was laughing, and I trailed my fingers across the screen, smiling at how lucky I was.

I would have had to be a fool to not realize that. I had the most adorable child ever born. Call it a mother's bias, but that is how I felt, and now I had Brad, who really fit into our incomplete lives. I pressed a thumb over my text messages icon, tempted to say something to him. Perhaps it was a really bad idea because most conversations over text were misinterpreted. That's usually what I told my patients, anyway, but I'd never been too good at following my own advice.

I went ahead and told him that I saw Jessica. I thought that would be the end of it and I'd catch him up on the rest when I talked to him over the phone or something, but of course, it never stopped there. One question led to the next and then the next. Before I knew it, the whole thing was out there, staring me in the face. Brad didn't have much of a reaction when I told him that I was going to meet Wayne, but I thought that was fair. I couldn't expect him to be enthused about it. Neutral was fine with me, but I hoped that he wasn't mad at me for not listening to his suggestion and staying miles away from the asshole who walked out of my life.

It wasn't until he told me that he was going to spend the night at the office that I really started to get worried. Luckily, I didn't have the time to sit in one corner and analyze every word that he'd typed. I would just have to wait for the next day to speak to him face to face, but just thinking about that made my heart thump.

I got my pen and paper in order shortly after I kissed my son and fed him. I only had fifteen minutes until my client showed up. It was Mindy, the same woman who made me feel good about being a single mom. Apparently, she was now determined that she wanted a divorce. At least, that is what I'd gathered from her emails that I never responded to. I always made it clear to my clients that I wouldn't be replying to their emails or texts unless it was an absolute emergency. That was my way of shutting off one person's problems and focusing on the next person and sometimes on myself. Mindy was one of those clients who wanted to continue talking way past that one hour that I would give her each week, and I'd developed a habit of communicating to her that she had to wait for another seven days to talk more.

For that reason, she would show up with a notepad in hand, the pages filled with thoughts and questions that she'd gathered over the course of seven days.

Instead of fixing myself two seats in the living room like I did at my old place, I was now using Brad's home office as my meeting spot. It was big enough for me to shove the desk to one corner and make some empty space between myself and the person I was talking to.

This was the first time Mindy was seeing this space, and she looked thoroughly impressed with it.

"Did you get married overnight?" she asked, the frown on her face fading.

"Hardly. This is my . . . friend's place."

I couldn't get myself to call Brad my boyfriend just yet. Was he even my boyfriend? We hadn't even had the talk.

I didn't blame her for not believing the guy was just a friend, but I ignored her and moved on to whatever it was that happened in her life.

The words "anxiety" and "breathlessness" escaped her lips like she'd done some research over the connection between them. She told me she wanted to leave her husband, that she hated him and couldn't stand to look at his face. But that didn't stop her from feeling anxious like never before.

"There's always this lump in my throat," Mindy continued. "I'm always on the verge of crying. I have no appetite and I can't sleep."

I leaned over and touched her knee, keeping my hand there for a little while to make her feel better.

I usually never shared my own personal stories with my patients, but every once in a while, I would feel as though I needed to. It would make them realize that it's normal to feel that way in certain situations and that tough times pass.

"I felt the same way when my ex-boyfriend broke up with me," I said. "But it wasn't the breakup that caused the anxiety. It was the fact that I was pregnant and would have to raise a child all by myself."

She bobbed her head and sniffed, then stared out the window.

"What a beautiful view."

I placed an elbow on my knee and glared at her. Technically, as a therapist, it was best to go with the flow of the client's thoughts. I never put myself in the position to tell the other person what to do. Rather, it was my job to give them clues, helping them realize what would be the best course of action for them. In this case, however, I was simply waiting for her to come back to the topic instead of wasting the precious hour discussing the view.

I couldn't tell her point-blank that she was being avoidant but rather make her realize that she was.

I placed my notepad on the floor and asked her how long it took for her to get to this neighborhood. It'd taken her over an hour to beat traffic, which was that much time away from her child. That fact alone made her realize that she was wasting time by not being straight with me and dancing around a difficult topic instead of confronting it head-on.

At the end of the hour-long session, I recommended a psychiatrist who could prescribe her a six-month-long prescription for anxiety, something I thought she really needed because of her depressing descriptions of how she felt in the mornings. She was then soon out the door and so was the nanny, Shanaya, because I could now give Max my undivided attention and spend the rest of the evening with him.

But who was I kidding? As a single mother who had to work full-time to generate income, the work never came to a halt. I distracted my son for just a few minutes so I could get the peace of mind of knowing that I'd really finished work for the day. Usually, after every appointment, I would transfer my notes to my laptop because knowing me, I would end up displacing the important piece of information, then not remember what it was that Mindy said to me in our hour-long discussion about how her husband sucked but she still couldn't make peace with the idea of breaking her family. In a way, she was the worst client that I could have had that evening. Though she’d reinforced my idea of what it feels like to be a slave to your own mind and having notions of what an ideal family should look like, it also left me feeling stupid again. I cleared my throat and stopped second-guessing myself and my decision.

Then my thoughts wandered off to Brad and how much I missed having him at home, spending late evenings with him and talking away among doing other things. Much naughtier things.

I twisted my lips as I looked at his assistant's number. Maybe it was a good idea to ask her if he was available to talk instead of bothering him in case he was busy.

I happened to know a thing or two about being someone's assistant. I used to assist a powerful man who ended up marrying my friend Dani, then became a friend instead of my boss. The point was that when you're micromanaging a person's work and taking care of anything he might need during the day, you start to feel as though you're their parent. I wasn't sure if that's how Kimberly Blake felt, because Bradley Coleman wasn't nearly as tough a boss as Zander Smallwood used to be. Regardless, sometimes, your boss ended up snapping at you and you would have to put up with it because one, you don't want to lose your job and two, you understand the pressure that they're under.

For that reason, I wanted to be really nice to Kimberly Blake when I called her.

Her voice was sweet but tired, and she cleared her throat when I told her my name. It was obvious that she knew I was someone special to Brad.

"Is he busy?" I wanted to know after several long minutes of pleasantries. I made sure to first ask about how her day was going and if she enjoyed work in general. It might have come across as straight-forward or too in the face for someone else, but I knew that an assistant would appreciate these questions. It was nice to have the attention on you for once instead of on your power hungry and narcissistic boss, which is exactly how most assistants thought of the influential people that they worked for.

"He is probably busy, but he's not in the building."

I narrowed my eyes. "He's not? I thought he was going to work all night."

"I'm not sure about that. He needed to get something done and he just left to go to the Marriott in New Jersey. That's where he's spending the night."

My stomach dropped. It meant that Brad was purposely not returning home, that he was really mad at me. My paranoia soon turned into anger when I realized that he'd lied to me. He could have easily worked from home if he really needed to. What was the need to go all the way to Jersey to spend the night? Unless, of course, he was up to something.

"No," I mumbled, pushing all thoughts about his potentially cheating on me out of my mind.

"No?" Kimberly said on the other line.

"Never mind," I told her, then just when I was about to hang up, she offered to give me the address of the hotel that was obviously of no use to me. It's not like I was going to go all the way there and ambush him.

"No, that's okay," I said. She thanked me for being thoughtful enough to inquire about her.

I smiled through pursed lips when I got done with the call. Holding my son in my arms, I wondered if I should reach out to him, catch him in his lie. But I settled on sending him another text and asking if he was still working at the office.

Yes. Still working. was his reply.

I slammed the phone on the empty space on the couch and clenched my jaw. I was so mad that I could have potentially lifted a flower vase and thrown it at the wall in front of me. Luckily, a new email caught my attention just in time.

"Rachel and Neil" were the senders and it had to do with their lavish engagement party in a few days. I'd been excited about the event up until that moment because my excitement had a lot to do with showing up with Brad as a couple. My face went red, for more reasons than just one. He had lied to me, and even if that wasn't his intention, I hated that he'd just run off to some stupid hotel instead of coming home to sort stuff out with me, to talk to me face to face so there wasn't any room for miscommunication. I hated that the man I thought I loved would just run in the face of confrontation and leave me hanging and wondering if we were going to get to a good place.

Fighting back my tears, I gave Rachel a call because she was the first person who came to mind when I thought about needing a friend.

"Hello?" she said, almost laughing like someone around her had just cracked a joke. Her joyful voice died down when she heard me sniff and then pressed me to tell her what had happened.

"Nothing," I kept on insisting before finally giving in and telling her everything.

"Motherfucker," she said, which I knew wasn't aimed at Brad but at the situation in general. She put on her attorney hat and pleaded his case.

"Maybe he just didn't want to be disturbed. Maybe he just needed space. Maybe he . . .“

That was it. She couldn't think of another reason he would lie.

“That might be true. But I just don't want him to feel like he can't come to his own home because I’m here,” I said, my voice almost a whisper. "I don't think I should be here anymore."

She sighed, and I could picture her looking to Neil for answers.

“I’ll pick you up as soon as I can."