Teaching My Fiancé’s Mistress How To Keep Him

The first time my client, Zara Ellis, said her boyfriend's name, I paused.Half the men in this city were named Alex. I told myself that and let it go. But some part of me kept turning it over long after she’d moved on.

The second time the name slipped out of her mouth, I found myself looking up at her without meaning to.

She held out her phone, a photo of her boyfriend glowing on the screen.

“This is him,” Zara said, her voice soft with affection.

My eyes moved quickly to the photograph out of nothing more than professional curiosity, the kind you feel when a client has spent the past twenty minutes describing a stranger to you.

At first, I caught only pieces of him, his height, his broad shoulders, his dark hair. Something about him felt familiar, but I was too far away to make out his face.

I leaned forward and looked closer, and the recognition arrived before I was ready for it, a kind of cold understanding that started somewhere behind my ribs.

That was Alex. There was no mistaking the small crease beneath his left eye when he smiled, or the way his hands sat comfortably around Zara’s waist, like they belonged there.

I stared at the photograph, then at Zara, my client, then back to the photograph, my mind fighting hard to connect the dots.

Zara turned the phone to herself, smiling, and swiped to another photo, before turning it back to me. “Here's both of us, this was in Mexico last year.” She said.

Mexico landed like a slap she didn’t know she’d thrown. I made myself look at the photo again instead of her face.

Alex was holding Zara in his arms. One arm tucked beneath her knees, the other securely around her back. They were both smiling at the camera. They stood on a beach, the ocean stretching out behind them as sunlight shimmered across the water.

I remembered pieces of that week. Alex had told me he was going on a business trip. He kissed my forehead and promised to bring me something special. He came home with an armload of gifts for me. I thanked him and called him thoughtful. I didn't question the tan on his shoulders or the sand I found in his suitcase weeks later.

And now I sat across from the woman he had apparently taken on vacation instead.

I felt my expression harden, not much, but enough for Zara's brows to furrow slightly.

“Dr. Eloise?” She was watching me now, her smile gone. “Are you okay?”

This woman had no idea. She had no idea that the man she'd been describing for the past thirty minutes, the man who made her feel manipulated, the man she said hurt her and then took her on vacation to make up for it, was the same man I was supposed to marry in a few months. She had no idea I was his fiancée.

I forced my expression back into something professional even as something in me went cold and still. I'm sorry. I was processing what you've shared.”

She nodded, apparently satisfied.

The most ethical thing to do would have been to refer Zara to another therapist the moment I recognized Alex. That was the rule, and I knew it. But I didn’t do it, and the guilt of using a vulnerable client for my own reasons sat right alongside the part of me that was still willing to do exactly that.

I turned my pen over between my fingers, harder than I meant to.

I leaned back into my chair slowly and let my professional mask slip back into place. “Zara, what Alex does after he hurts you, doesn't undo the hurt. Apologies don't erase the behavior and neither do gifts or vacations.”

Her expression tightened. “I know.”

“Do you?”

Her gaze dropped to her lap. “I think I want to believe I can fix it.”

“Even if he buys you every gift in the world, Zara, you can't fix another person's decision to hurt you.”

It was hard to believe that the same Alex who had kissed my forehead this morning had laid his hands on this woman sitting across from me.

I let some silence settle and press against the walls for a moment before she spoke again.

Her fingers twisted together in her lap. “Then what am I supposed to do?”

“You asked the right question,” I told her, and I had to remind myself, again, that I was still her therapist. Whatever I felt about Alex had to stay outside this room, not while she was sitting in front of me, fragile and trusting.

From experience, telling her to leave the relationship outright would backfire. Clients in this kind of situation had to arrive at that decision on their own; push too hard, and they cling tighter.

“Start with your safety. You should have somewhere to run to when things turn messy,” I said

Zara nodded slowly. “I can stay with my sister.”

“Good. And if you decide you want to leave, don't announce it before you're prepared.”

Her eyes lifted to mine. “I'll think about it.”

Something about her response irritated me more than it should have. “That's all I'm asking you to do right now. Think.” It came out sharper than I intended, and I shifted in my seat and cleared my throat to cover it.

Calm down, Eloise. I told myself, the words running through my head like something I’d said too many times before. She's no good to you if you fall apart.

She nodded again and let out a long, tired breath. “I'll come back and tell you what I decide.”

She stood sliding her bag over her shoulder, and paused at the door with her hand on the knob before turning back. “I'm supposed to have lunch with him today.”

A small, unwelcome ache settled behind my sternum.

“Today?” The word slipped before I could soften it, and I composed myself quickly. “Then don't feel pressured to make any decisions during that lunch. Pay attention to how you feel around him. If you feel unsafe at any point, leave.”

“Okay.” She gave me a small, grateful smile and left, the door clicking shut behind her.

I sat in silence for a long moment, turning over everything that had just happened. My eyes drifted to the clock on the wall.

Lunch with Alex. I hated that the information mattered to me at all.

It still felt as though I was dreaming. How could he? I wasn't just a therapist; I was the woman who had built her whole career on walking into rooms where other people’s lives were on fire and walking back out with a plan.

Alex had been the one place I didn’t have to be in control, the one thing that made my apartment feel less empty. I’d told myself he had filled that void in my life, and I finally understood why letting him go felt so impossible.

I’m going to break out of this, I told myself. And if Zara was the way out, I would use her, even if it cost me my career.

Hot tears had run down my cheeks before I even noticed they’d started. I had no idea how long I sat there crying. My phone buzzed. It was a message from Alex.

[Hey love, I’m at the mall. Would you like to get anything?]

A laugh nearly escaped me as I read it again. I wiped my cheeks and typed back: [No, I'm good baby.]

I hit send before I could overthink it and slowly set the phone down, my eyes fixed on the ring on my finger. All I could do now was to pretend and let him think he was still in control, while I watched every one of his lies unfold in silence.

My phone screen lit up again. A reminder for my three o’clock creative writing group. I’d nearly forgotten it.

Every Tuesday I met with five other women at the library downtown, where we discussed and composed terrible poetry and stories. It was the only place I got to exist as just Eloise instead of Dr. Eloise.

The thought of going today, sitting in that circle where we talk about characters and emotional stakes while my whole life fell apart, felt absurd. But I knew if I didn't go, I'd spend the whole evening replaying Zara's words and keep wondering how I had been so blind. So I grabbed my bag and went.

***

The old library meeting room smelled like old books and someone's citrus hair shampoo. Maya was already there, her eyes fixed on the laptop balanced on her knees, while Louis read aloud from the romance she had been drafting for months.

“You're late again,” Maya said, not looking up. “Third Tuesday in a row, I'm definitely docking your pay.”

I’d been rewriting the same forty pages of my own novel for two years, always circling back to chapter three, always finding a reason it wasn’t ready. Maya liked to say I’d let a therapist’s patience ruin me as a writer, that I’d analyze a sentence to death before I ever let it exist. She wasn’t wrong. It was easier to fix other people’s stories than finish my own.

I laughed despite myself. “Tell me what I missed?”

Louis paused her reading. “I was just getting to the good part. You’re not allowed to interrupt until we’re through with it.”

The group laughed, and I let myself laugh along, and for two hours I disappeared into the meeting entirely. I wasn’t Dr. Eloise in that room. I was just Eloise, who wrote bad fiction and loved every minute of it.