Page 74 of Clinically Bewitched
When I pulled back, she was smiling.
“You’re going to do that a lot now, aren’t you?” she said.
“Probably.”
“Good.” She straightened my collar, her fingers gentle. “Because I really like it when you do.”
From outside my office, I heard voices, my colleagues, undoubtedly gathering to discuss the latest development in the ongoing disaster that was my life.
I should have been mortified.
I should have been planning damage control.
I should have been figuring out how to maintain my professional reputation after kissing my wife against my bookshelf while my best friend live-narrated it to the receptionist.
Instead, I just stood there, holding Athena, and thought:
Fitz is right.
I’m already in love with her.
God help me.
Chapter Sixteen
Julien
Life with Athena was a systematic dismantling of everything I had spent thirty-three years building.
Monday: I’d come home from a fourteen-hour surgery to find she had rearranged my entire apartment based on “energy flow.” My couch, which had been positioned at a precise ninety-degree angle to the window for optimal natural light, was now diagonal.Diagonal!When I’d asked why, she’d said something about “chi” and “blocked pathways” and “the universe needing room to breathe.”
The universe didn’t need room to breathe.
Ineeded room to breathe.
Tuesday:She had gone through my closet and removed everything that “didn’t spark joy.” This included... my favorite tie, which was “too rigid,” three perfectly good dress shirts because “the energy was off,” and inexplicably all of my black socks.
“But they’reblack socks,” I’d said, staring at the pile she had designated for donation.
“Exactly! They’re so serious. So heavy. You need more color in your life, Julien. More lightness. More—”
“I’m a neurosurgeon. I need black socks.”
“You think you need black socks. But what you actually need is happy socks.”
I bought new black socks the next day.
She’d found them and replaced them with socks that had tiny smiling suns on them.
I was currently wearing socks with tiny smiling suns on them.
Wednesday:She had shown up at the clinic again, and this time with homemade lavender sachets for “stress relief.” She’d distributed them to the entire staff. Winnie had been delighted. Fitz had been amused. Hayden had looked at me with something that might have been pity.
I found one in my desk drawer.
It actually did smell nice.
I hated that it smelled nice.
