After the Kiss: The Purple Chair, #5

By Bronnie Ware

Gwen is known as someone who listens well and solves problems. Clients pay for her counsel as they sit in the purple chair and untangle their emotions and stories. Word of mouth keeps people coming to her door.

 

But who listens to Gwen? Who helps solve her own problems?

 

As she supports clients to heal, her own life swirls in pain. She is sliding further down. Will she ever learn to take her own advice and who will catch her if she doesn't?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bronnie Ware
• Release date: Mar 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9780645935172

Book preview

Three days had gone by since Gwen and Russ had kissed. It had been years since she had kissed anyone. Well, anyone she actually knew and liked. She didn’t count the strangers she’d had casual sex with. This was an actual kiss, with butterflies, a throbbing heart, nervousness, the whole thing. Three days and not a word.

As they parted, he had whispered that he would call the next day. Since he hadn’t honoured that, there was no point in chasing him. His silence said enough.

Gwen tried to practice what she often taught her clients, people who came and sat in the purple chair in her clinic to offload their problems and untangle their thoughts. Try to be as mindful as possible, as present as you can, she would tell them.

Her mind seemed determined to obsess over his silence, though. It wasn’t like him. Or was it? They had been friends for months and he seemed reliable, and yet he had kissed her and disappeared. She might have understood it if they had gone all the way. That might have been too much too soon for someone who had lost his wife only a few years ago. But a kiss and he ran. She couldn’t wrap her head around it. She found herself fighting a constant battle with her thoughts, to take back whatever tiny bit of control she could to function in her life.

She felt like a desperate teenager with a crush on a boy who was more focused on playing it cool in front of his mates.

I could ring him, text him, visit him, she kept thinking, before reprimanding herself once more. Decades of life experience and she was back to being a teenager. It threatened to drive her quietly mad.

It was a beautiful morning as she rode her bicycle to work. She chose to focus on the clean air, gentle sunshine and the birds in their morning song. By the time she arrived at work, she had pedalled out most of her frustrations. With all the administration done before opening time, she lit a candle, watered the plants and then welcomed