We’re talking about Ryan, of course, he of the Loud Yelling and Defensive Reactions, as we walk toward Tabula Inscripta after grabbing breakfast at Davis Square Donuts & Bagels. Georgia’s munching on a Boston cream donut, and I’ve got a sesame bagel with honey walnut cream cheese. The warm sun filters through the trees lining the brick-paved sidewalk, and the distant melody of a street musician’s guitar mingles with the sounds of traffic and pedestrian chatter. It’s almost pretty enough to distract me from the twitchy feeling I get whenever I think about Ryan.

Not quite, though.

“He’s the antithesis of everything I value,” I continue. “He’s unkempt, disorganized, anti-intellectual, vulgar, and has serious issues with emotional reactivity.”

I’m hyperbolizing, and we both know it, but one of the best things about Georgia is that she’s unequivocally on my side. Bonus: she’s now psychoanalyzing him with zero evidence other than my highly biased recounting of our interactions. But what else are sisters for, if not to join in mutual hatred?

Another bonus: if she’s analyzing him, she’s not analyzing me and why I’m so fixated on him.

Which I am also trying to avoid analyzing.

“I bet he’s uncomfortable with successful women.” Georgia’s channeling a fairy princess today, her hair in a braid crown dotted with tiny flower pins, loose tendrils framing her face. “We had a whole discussion about this in my Gender Dynamics class. When men feel emasculated, they compensate with increasing hostility, sexism, homophobia—all sorts of toxic traits.”

“He’s definitely hostile.” Backing me into the bookcase, for example. Yelling at me. Ordering me to leave his store.

Although maybe I can see how he saw my comments as insulting, even if I didn’t intend them to be. I’ll give him some props for being protective of his store—though, come on, he insulted mine, too. He called it soulless and joyless. Organization is plenty joyful!

“Let me guess, he has short-man syndrome,” Georgia says.

“Well, no,” I admit. “He’s tall. Like, really tall. And big. Not in a gym-rat way, more like a sturdy, farm-boy kind of thing. Like he could heft a bale of hay in one hand and a sick baby cow in the other, walking three miles uphill, without breaking a sweat.”

Georgia eyes me. “That’s…specific.”

Oops. Before she can ask why I’ve spent so much time thinking about Ryan Lawson’s body, I say, “He’s probably overconfident because of his height, you know?”

Nodding, she takes a bite of her donut. “If it’s not short-man syndrome, it’s probably small-penis syndrome.”

I choke on my bagel.

“It’s a real diagnosis,” Georgia insists. “Well—it’s a type of body dysmorphic disorder. Men with anxiety about their penis size have increased rates of erectile dysfunction and lower intercourse satisfaction.”