I can’t meet her eyes. “I don’t want it!” I blurt with all the force built up inside me. “You’ve taken my one real friend and made her yours. You’ve turned me into this!”

“I haven’t taken anything. I haven’t turned you into anything! Wake up! You’re a real person with feelings and that’s normal and okay,” she bellows back. A yelling match from the other four people in the room rages behind us.

“Fuck off,” I tell her. “I can’t believe you did this after everything you went through with your backstabbing friend from the ballet company.”

Siri stands up, so she’s looking down at me. “That was so different, I can’t even begin to go into it. Intercourse you, Jamie. I see through your bullshit. You can stop throwing it at me because I’m not going to entertain it anymore. You’re being a selfish ass. The things you do, the choices you make, the words that come out of your mouth—they have a profound effect on the people around you.

“You use Dawn as an emotional crutch, Jamie. She gives you all of her and she has a tiny piece of you. And now you’re doing the same thing with Zarar.”

“What does that even mean?” I feel myself rise off the ground, but I don’t remember actually giving my body the order to do it. “You don’t know what you’re—”

“Your best friend didn’t know why you were at the retreat, Jamie. Your best friend didn’t know you had a sister. She thought your mom had died.”

“That doesn’t mean—” My words are a slur.

“How many times has Zarar asked you out, Jamie? When was the last time? How many times have you said no and still deemed it okay to monopolize his time—”

I shake my head. “You have no idea what’s going on there.”

She steps closer to me, her dark eyebrows lifting and falling to the rhythm of her words. “No, I see you now. You’re so scared of the people around you that you don’t form real relationships with anyone. You’ve always got one foot out the door. Relationships are about give and take, Jamie.