I picked up my notebook and reviewed my entry, my head spinning. But I shut down all the stirring, confused thoughts with one neat, safe, objective realization. “Well, you know,” I said. “This is definitely not going to work, anyway.”

Ainsley, ever patient Ainsley, nodded. “Why not?”

“Well, because he’s got an anxious attachment style, and if I’m fearful avoidant, which I might be, it’ll never work. It’ll just be toxic, like he and Winona were. We’ll drive each other up the wall. I’ll freak out and my freak-outs will freak him out and then he’ll freak out, which will freak me out even more.”

“Are you sure you’re fearful avoidant?”

I shook my head. “I need to do some tests to be sure. But if I am, it’s all over. Unless we’re both able to work on our coping mechanisms, but that’s a huge effort, and really, I’ve invested nothing at this point so it’s probably a lot easier to walk away while it won’t hurt.”

“Darcy?”

“Hmm?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I had a thought. I know you’re really into all of this relationship advice stuff. And you’re great at it, don’t get me wrong.”

I didn’t love where this was going. No compliments ever started this way. “Okay?”

“But … do you think there’s a chance that—with Brougham and Brooke, anyway—you’re intellectualizing things so you don’t have to, you know, feel them?”

I puffed out my cheeks while I thought about that one. Was this what it was like to get blunt feedback from locker eighty-nine? Because it was confronting. “Maybe?”

Maybe Brooke was a fantasy for me. One that felt exciting, and a little breathless, but, most of all, safe. In real life, though, she wasn’t my imaginary wife. She was my best friend, a real person. And in real life, I didn’t challenge her, or light a fire in her the way she needed and deserved.

And if I was honest with myself, I could say the same for me. Only I’d ignored that in favor of fantasies about how she would challenge me, how she would set me alight—when, if, maybe. Ainsley grabbed a pillow and fluffed it in her lap before resting her elbows on it. “Don’t be afraid of hard emotions, okay? Maybe just let your feelings happen, even if it’s just for the night. See how that goes?”

On an intellectual level, I knew Ainsley might be right. Maybe I wasn’t fearful avoidant. Maybe I was just … fearful. Because if I liked Brougham, and he liked me, I could get hurt, the kind of hurt that unrequited love couldn’t compare to. Right now, I was sitting in the space between a sound and its echo. Brougham had asked a question, and I had to answer it.