Free Always Something There to Remind Me by Beth Harbison

expected that when he started dating a fifteen-year-old. I don’t care how slowly boys mature, he was three years older than I was.
    It didn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out why that had been traumatic for me.
    “Well,” I said, impatient with the truth. “I’m pretty much developed now, so I don’t see why he’d come to mind at all.”
    “You don’t?” I could picture her leaning back on her office chair, thoughtfully removing her glasses. “Seriously?”
    “Not really. I mean…” I tried to think what deep, dark thing she might be getting at. That was then, this was now, the ’tween didn’t meet. “He was important to me once. Not anymore.”
    Her voice was measured. “Honey, you kind of had a nervous breakdown when you guys broke up.”
    I grimaced. “I wouldn’t call running around the neighborhood in my underwear at midnight singing Bon Jovi songs exactly a nervous breakdown,” I said.
    I started running again.
    There was an audible silence, before she asked, “You’re kidding, right?”
    I rolled my eyes to myself. “Yes, Jordan, I’m kidding.” Like she wouldn’t have known if I’d run around the neighborhood in my skivvies singing hard rock ballads. But the fact that she remembered me as so bad off that, even now as a professional, she found that conceivable was disturbing. “I got depressed. Had some panic attacks. It was a bad time, but not a serious psychological trauma.”
    “You dropped out of school.”
    “For one semester.” Yeah, that was bad.
    “Your parents took you to Chestnut Lodge!”
    “They didn’t leave me there!” It was an outpatient thing. A psychologist who was supposedly good at helping teenagers with anxiety problems. It wasn’t like I’d really gone crazy .
    “Mm-hm.” Her chair squeaked and I knew now she was leaning over her desk, toward an imaginary me across from her. She was in full therapist mode. “It was bad. I don’t think you ever got over that experience.”
    “Yes, I did!”
    “You want my professional opinion?”
    “That wasn’t it?”
    She laughed softly. “There’s more. I think you need to find Nate and meet him face-to-face, to exorcise this demon once and for all. It will help you make your decision about Rick.”
    I laughed out loud. In fact, I had to stop running for a moment, the idea was so preposterous. “You’re out of your mind.”
    “I’m serious,” Jordan said.
    “ That is the worst idea you’ve ever had,” I said shortly. “And you’re the one who thought we could turn a Ping-Pong table into a raft and sunbathe on it in the middle of Conroy’s Pond.”
    She clicked her tongue against her teeth. “First off, that wasn’t my idea, that was our idea, and second, I didn’t spend six years at Vanderbilt so some punk I’ve known since before we got our periods can tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. I knew you and Nate together. You were unusually close. You were way too young to be so close. My studied opinion is that it’s still working on you on some really base level.” She sighed, and I recognized it as a sound of sympathy. “I’m serious about this, Erin. It’s not the first time I’ve thought this.”
    “What are you talking about? Nate has nothing to do with my daily life!”
    “Really? It’s not like you dated for just a few months, it was years . During crucial developmental years.”
    I didn’t want to think about this.
    “And you never really let another guy in,” she went on. “Which, I think, is the root of your dilemma now.”
    “All right, so what if there is some kind of unresolved thing there? What good will it do to talk to a guy who might barely remember me? A guy who, in fact, might think I’m crazy to be holding on to any lingering thoughts. You know, if someone like Stuart Heeley called me and said he had unresolved issues with me, I’d seriously think about calling the police and getting a restraining order just because it would be so wildly out of