“I know,” I say. I come back toward him and put my hand on his shoulder. “You need to take some things off your plate. It’s too crowded.”
“I want to.” He nods.
I look at Hudson. He looks tired but close to saying something important. Finally, he’s going to make me a priority. That must be what this is all about. So just come on out with it. Say it.
“So, you understand?” he asks.
“I think so.” I nod. “You’re going to try to get out of the internship?”
“Get out of the internship?” he asks. “You don’t really understand at all!”
“What are you talking about?”
“The internship is hard and time-consuming, but it’s also super important. I can’t believe that you still don’t get that. I mean, how many times do I have to tell you?”
I hear anger in his voice.
“Okay, okay.” I get it. “There’s no need to raise your voice. You’re just complaining about it so I thought…”
“So, I complain about it. So what? You’re supposed to be supportive. You’re supposed to be understanding about it.”
I shrug. I don’t understand anything that’s going on anymore.
“What I’m trying to say is that I’m a little confused with everything right now. That’s why we’re off. Why this is getting so complicated,” Hudson says.
He gestures, pointing to us. What he means is that we’re complicated. We’re off, as a couple.
“I’m confused about everything,” he says again.
“Stop saying that. I don’t know what you mean. Say what you really mean,” I say in my most insistent voice. His metaphor keeps going over my head, leaving me confused.
“I’m confused about us, Alice.”
The words hang in the air as if they are suspended on a string. I stare at him. What’s happening here?
“I think we need to take a break.”
My ears start to buzz. Hudson keeps on talking, explaining, but I don’t hear a thing. Everything turns to black.
16
I go see Dr. Greyson the next day. I want to stay in bed and never come out again, but I can’t miss the appointment or I’ll get kicked out of school. At this point, however, I can’t even imagine graduating. Nothing else happened last night after Hudson told me that he wants to take a break from us. At least not for me. Hudson kept talking, but I don’t know what he said. Eventually, I said that I had to go to bed and I haven’t seen him since.
I barely have the energy to change out of my sweats, but somehow, I manage to make it to Dr. Greyson’s office all the way across campus. I don’t know what to expect, but I also don’t stress out about it much. I’ve become a robot. Operating entirely on autopilot.
Unfortunately, there’s no line. Dr. Greyson comes out and greets me as soon as I arrive. I take a deep breath and walk into her office. Dr. Greyson is a beautiful, no-nonsense African-American woman in her early 40s. She has gorgeous olive skin and perfectly manicured nails. Her suit looks like it’s tailored and her heels look expensive—if only Juliet was here, then she’d tell me exactly how much they cost. When she asks me to sit down, her voice reminds me of Oprah’s, even though Dr. Greyson is about half her size.
Her office is decorated with photos of exotic places. Tropical islands, white sandy beaches, schools of fish swirling around corals—places that seem so far away from here they might as well be on another planet.
“You like to travel?” she asks, catching me staring at one photo with ‘Thailand’ written underneath. The photo has a long, wind-swept palm tree coming down to earth and kissing the sand.
“I like your photos,” I say. “Definitely not New York, huh?”
She nods. She doesn’t say another word. It takes me a moment to realize that she’s waiting for me to answer her question.
“Yes, I do,” I finally say. “I haven’t travelled too much, though. I really enjoy it when I do go. I hope to travel a lot more in the future.”
Somewhere warm, I continue talking in my head. Somewhere with coconut palms where you don’t need to wear layers of clothes to stay warm. I’ve never really thought of it until this very moment, but clothes insulate people. You put on these layers and they separate you from the world. Make you feel as if the world isn’t right there and other people aren’t like you. This isn’t really a complete thought yet. I don’t know what I’m thinking. It just feels like that, sitting in this office, wearing a t-shirt, a sweater, jeans, boots, a scarf, and holding my jacket on my lap. It just seems like too much right now. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be in a tank top, shorts, and flip-flops right about now.
“Professor Milner has filled me in about what happened in class,” Dr. Greyson says. Her voice shatters the silence of the room and brings me back to reality. I had let my mind drift off a bit.
“Yeah,” I say with a nod. I don’t really know what else to say about that incident.
“He told me about why you were sent here, but now I want to hear it from you.”
“I know you’re an alcohol abuse counselor, but I don’t really drink. Not really. Not at all. I have a beer and I’m completely drunk. That’s how much of a lightweight I am.”
“I understand.” She nods.
“So, I don’t really know what I’m doing here.”
“Well, you may not drink, but you did show up to class drunk and gave a drunken speech. So, you are dealing with something and I want to hear about it.”
I sigh and fill her in on the details. She listens carefully. When I’m done, she nods her head.
“So, what’s going on with your boyfriend, Hudson, now? It is all resolved?” she asks.
I shake my head no. Not even close.
“I don’t think we’re together
