up. My brother and dad chuckle but I stop when my mom gives me side eyes.
“Fine,” I grumble. I’m trying to keep it light on purpose—because I still don’t want to be here. Maybe I can will this time to fly by and be painless.
“Let’s pick up where we left off,” Dr. Majestic begins, and there goes any hope that this will go easy.
“Tory, we didn’t get to work through some of your speed bumps before you left.”
“Speed bumps?” I question.
“She calls our conflicts speed bumps. She says it makes them easier to acknowledge,” Hayden says, one brow raised.
I lock eyes with him.
“Ah. Speed bumps. Okay, well, no speed bumps for me. Smooth sailing, or driving rather. I’m a racetrack.” I show my hands and lift my shoulders, playing the part of an easy-going man, though I really have no idea what one of those looks like.
“I see,” she says, crossing her legs, clicking her pen open, and leaning forward, wrists crossed atop her knees. She has this way of drawing her breath in through her nose that makes her mouth look like it’s about to unleash a barrage of new questions. But all that happens is more silence, and more studying of my silence.
“Yep,” I finally say.
She nods, but still no words.
My head swivels to face my brother, who simply blinks back at me. No help at all. My dad is growing uncomfortable watching me under scrutiny and shifts his posture on his end of the couch.
“Honey, it’s fine. This is a safe space.” My mom finally gives.
The match to my lighter fluid.
“Safe space?” My voice is loud. I have no in-between.
“Yes, you are safe to be honest here,” she says, which sets off a fit of laughter in my brother’s belly. It brews slowly. Coming out through his tight lips, it spits until he finally has to cough it out.
“Are you all right?” My mom turns to him, coddling like she normally does, only this time my brother shirks off her attention.
“Oh, I’m totally fine. Race car ready just like Tory,” he says, and I smirk at his quick response and comradery.
“Me, too. More of a pace car, but smooth ride,” my dad adds in.
Unable to handle being ganged up on, my mom throws up her hands and covers her face. It’s a move we’ve seen her do often, crumbling in the face of confrontation to get everyone to stop. Thing is, that visual got my brother to tuck away the things he saw and knew. It forced him to be afraid of setting off a massive landslide of dominoes. And that . . . that is one hell of a speed bump.
“Natalia, do you want to share how this is making you feel?”
My mom milks the moment, her breath quivering with overdone emotion, until she waits too long and my brother takes over for her.
“It makes her nervous because she can’t control any of it. She can’t mess up and just make things go away,” he says.
“That’s not it at all, Hayden.”
“Oh, it is. And it’s more than that,” my brother unleashes. “Mom, I knew. I saw you and Mr. Fuller. I saw you at camp, and I saw the signs that it was still happening when we got home, and I saw the signs again months ago when I figured surely, they’ve ended things by now. But no, you just kept living double lives, throwing everything we are in the garbage because it wasn’t enough, and I spent four years pretending it was normal because I didn’t want our little bubble to burst.”
“Unbelievable,” my dad says under his breath, closing himself off more. He’s flawed too, just differently.
“Are you saying you didn’t know?” My brother lashes into him now, and while my instinct is to defend my dad, I think maybe that is my flaw. I pick sides without hearing the full story.
“Yes, Hayden. I just wrote it all off, figured she could go have her fun and I’d do all the work.” My dad waves his hand dismissively. He’s making a bad joke of all of this, out of us in a way, and his words only make my brother grow bolder.
“First of all, you’re lying. She didn’t hide it well, and there’s no way you weren’t suspicious. Hell, Dad, I had a girlfriend for like, six weeks, and I knew Tory was with her behind my back.”
My mouth widens and my lungs deflate with the sucker punch. It’s fair, but it’s also not the