My Girlfriend the Mentalist

by Luc Reid

Note from the author: Although my girlfriend does read my mind sometimes, this story is not about either one of us. Occasional mind-reading is fun and exciting; it’s only constant mind-reading that’s a problem.

“That’s sweet that you like me better,” Leanne said, reading my thoughts as a jogger passed us, “but you’re right: she has a nicer ass.”

It was great that Leanne always told me what was on her mind, but I found it harder to like hearing what was on my mind. Which, unfortunately, she knew. It was also impossible to surprise her.

“But I don’t need surprises,” she said. We were walking in the postage stamp-sized park two blocks from our apartment on a Sunday morning. “Believe me, I get enough surprises just hearing what people think. The old guy at the Korner Mart yesterday: he wanted to smear–”

“Look: ducks!” I said. It was true, there were actually two ducks today in the bathtub-sized pond in the middle of the tiny park. Of course, I was just changing the subject.

“Sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t bring things like that up.”

As usual, she ignored what I said and responded to what I thought. It wasn’t even a matter of privacy: it was a matter of being able to conduct a relationship instead of having my instincts conduct it for me. For just a while, I wanted her out of my head. And she’d probably just overheard that thought, proving the importance of my point. God, I seriously needed to break up with her.

Leanne looked at me disgustedly. “Fine,” she said. “You … just … fine!”

She strode off in the direction we’d come. She was probably starting to cry already, and knowing that I knew that probably was making her cry even harder.

“Hey, get back here!” I shouted after her.

She turned, but shook her head furiously. Her tears glimmered on her cheeks. “I know what you think,” she said.

“Thinking isn’t the same as deciding,” I said, walking toward her. “If you’re going to hear everything I think, fine, but some of that stuff is crap.”

“It’s not crap!” she said. “You thought–”

I pictured crap, a big, gloppy pile of it. She snorted with laughter that she was trying not to have and made an I’m-really-amused-but-I’m-trying-to-be-angry face.

“Come on, Houdini,” I went up and took her hand. “You didn’t even look at the ducks.”

The ducks had flown away when we went back to the pond, but I remembered what they had looked like for us both, and that was almost as good.