Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91504 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91504 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“This is a different ex than the one you just broke up with?”
Rebecca nods.
“Okay, and that’s what’s upsetting you? Interfering with your sleep?”
“Of course it’s upsetting me. We should still be together. He was the love of my life. And I was his.”
“And what happened to end your relationship with him?”
“He was married.”
“Oh.” I’m not sure what else to say. So I wait until she speaks again.
“He was going to leave his wife for me.”
Of course he was. Aren’t they all?
“Why didn’t he?”
“How should I know!” Her raised voice catches me off guard. I startle and sit back, putting a few more inches between us. I don’t usually do that. In my line of work, patients have outbursts. I’m fairly used to it. Today I’m just jumpy. On edge. Because he still hasn’t made contact. Because I haven’t been sleeping well, either.
“How long ago did you and your ex break up?”
“I don’t know. A while ago.” She looks out the window again, then very randomly smiles. “I slept with someone the day before I broke up with him.”
“Him? You mean Steve? The man you just broke up with?” I’m getting lost in all of these unnamed men.
Rebecca rolls her eyes. “Who else would it be?”
I’m not about to point out that she’s talked about three men in the first five minutes of our session, so it would be reasonable to be confused. Instead, I nod and offer a smile. “Right. Okay. Do you like this other man? The one you slept with before breaking things off with Steve?”
She shrugs. “Not particularly. He was nice, I guess.”
Rebecca and I are probably only a little more than a decade apart, yet I feel like it’s an entire generation when it comes to sex and dating. I’d never used an app for dating until recently, nor had a one-night stand. Hell, the term hookup hadn’t even been coined when I started dating Connor—at least, not in my vocabulary.
“So this other man wasn’t the reason you broke up with Steve? It was just sex?”
“Steve and I had a fight, so I stopped at a bar on my way home. A guy came over and tried to buy me a drink. I didn’t want to waste time if he was like Steve in bed, so I told him I liked it rough and asked if he could do that for me. If he was into that, I said he should keep his wallet in his pocket and come to my place instead.”
Oh my. That doesn’t sound safe.
“So you went back to your place and he… fulfilled your need?”
Rebecca shrugged. “It was better than with Steve. But something was missing. He smacked my ass and pulled my hair and stuff. But I could tell he was just doing it for me. It wasn’t really driven by passion, like it was with my ex.”
I look over at my desk, the spot of my own passionate encounter. I picture Gabriel behind me, holding me down. Pinning me. Goose bumps prickle my arms. And I realize Rebecca is talking again, yet I haven’t heard her.
“Anyway, he texted again. But I don’t think I’m going to see him.”
“The guy from the bar?”
She nods. “I’ll just ghost him.”
Ghost him. Like Gabriel seems to have done to me. I shift in my seat and recross my legs. Let’s talk about that a little more…
“May I ask why you would ghost him, rather than telling him you had a nice time but aren’t interested in seeing him again?”
“Why should I? It’s not like we were dating. He didn’t take me out to dinner or bring me flowers. I didn’t make a commitment to him. We didn’t even talk much. If he doesn’t see it for what it is, then he’s dumb.”
My shoulders slump. I am to Gabriel what the bar guy is to Rebecca—not even worthy of a courtesy text. But Gabriel and I have more than that, don’t we? We’ve been talking for a while. Albeit because I’m his therapist and he’s my patient, but we have something more than a bar pickup, right?
Or maybe we don’t.
Maybe I’m the only one even thinking about it after.
It dawns on me that my patient is counseling me now. Worse, I’m asking questions and probing, in search of advice for myself, rather than trying to counsel her. Not to mention my patient has compulsion issues. Probably not the best place to procure dating advice for myself. Or sex advice. Because Gabriel and I are not dating. And I need to remember that.
I muddle through the rest of the session with Rebecca, doing my best to counsel a woman who is obsessive with men, when I’ve spent the last week, the last few months, even, with my own obsession.
I’m exhausted when it’s over, thrilled she’s my last patient of the day. On my way home, I stop at the liquor store and pick up two bottles of wine. Not because I plan on drinking both tonight but because the guy behind the counter smiled at me like I was a regular. It’s semantics, I know. Buying two at once or going in twice means I drink the same amount of wine, but at least I don’t have to become the Norm of Cheers at the local liquor store.