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Me, being thoroughly against any kind of therapist wading throughhated being in other people’s houses

It wasn’t because I was a snob of any kind, if you knew even the slightest bit about ain, no one knew the slightest bit about my childhood, not even my closest friends, so whatever It didn’t matter whether the house in question was a studio apartment or a six-bedroom mansion outside New York

Pete’s family estate was a six-bedroom mansion outside New York On six acres There were seven point five bathrooht they needed uess

He’d get all pissy whenever I booked atherings He thought it was rude and because I hated his faht I did hate most of his family His stuck-up, frat boy brother orked in stocks and made sexist jokes and ordered his prim little wife around His father, as pretty oted

I liked his h Somehow, she’d remained married to her awful husband for twenty-five years, I had no idea how She came from money herself and didn’t ent, had a lish lit We spoke for hours about books, hidden away in her library, drinking expensive wine I didn’t have the heart to tell her I hated

I also had drunk enough of that wine to ask her why the fuck she was married to such an asshole

Because she was a kind woman with rich peoplebusiness She smiled softly and said, “There areto other people But he wakes ently with coffee and a kiss onHas for the past almost thirty years”

I blinked at her, waiting to say he also worshipped at her altar behind closed doors

“That’s it?” I blurted after a few beats of silence

She reached over and squeezed ”

She’d held on to that single thing for alli else horrible and selfish about the man That conversation had sent a chill down ht have with Pete

But Pete was dead to ain and never have to have argu on trips with friends

I hated everything about the experience of staying with people Walking quietly when getting up to pee in thewhere to putinto the kitchen for water, praying for it to be empty so I wouldn’t have to s were