Me: Nope, I’m coming now.
After my shower and a quick cup of brewed coffee, I give Butters a kiss on her snout and tell her to be a good girl. “I’ll be back soon for your evening walk. I’m going to see the guy you met the other day at the park,” I tell her, as if she can understand a thing I’m saying. “Don’t chew anything bad while I’m gone.”
“When am I going to get to see your apartment?” Dak immediately asks as I climb into the passenger seat of his black Maserati SUV.
“We’re not doing apartments yet,” I tell him.
“We can’t fuck in your office indefinitely, Doc. I’ve been by there to serve your carnal needs on non-appointment days. They’d be idiots if they haven’t figured it out yet.”
“My carnal needs?” I laugh.
“Okay, our carnal needs, but I just want to state for the record that I wasn’t the one sitting on your desk in my birthday suit with my legs spread eagle at 10am.”
“Fatima wasn’t in that day.”
“While it was a pleasure to serve you, madam, it seems that we’re being kind of obvious. I’m thinking we should move things to one of our places if we don’t want to get caught. You still don’t want to get caught, right?”
“While I appreciate the concern, I promise you that we aren’t being obvious. I see clients outside of their regularly scheduled appointments all the time.”
“Do you now?” he asks with a slight edge to his voice.
“You’re one of the most suspicious men I’ve ever met,” I scoff. “What do you think I’m doing? Sleeping with all of my male clients?”
“You better be sleeping with one.”
“You’re the only one crazy enough to even try.”
“Ha! I bet they’re all in love with you.”
“I’m lucky if half of them even like me.”
“So, um, can you tell me about your last boyfriend? The one who died.”
“That’s what you want to talk about on our date?”
“You know so much about me because of the nature of our relationship and how deep you go in our sessions. I just want to know more about the woman who has my head completely spun around.”
“His name was Aaron, and I wasn’t with him for that long.”
Dak is quiet, giving me the space I need to continue telling the story I’ve been running from talking about for months.
“I met him when he came for to California for a six-week work project. We hit it off and then continued a long distance relationship with each other when he went home. I, um, was really missing him, and since we were getting serious, I decided to throw caution to the wind and move out here to New York to be with him. I knew there’d be plenty of work opportunities here, and it seemed like a great plan for a new adventure. I’d never left California before.”
“Mm-hmm,” he listens with tight lips. “That makes sense.”
“Except it wasn’t sensible at all. Aaron never asked me to move out here. I did that all by myself. When I got here, I found out that I’d only been his California girlfriend and that’s the way he wanted to keep it.”
“Did he have someone out here?”
“Yes, but I didn’t know at first. I was easy to fool. I was fresh out of graduate school and spent a lot of time establishing a life here. I needed a place to live, and I had to find a therapy practice to work for, so I only saw him on random evenings. I never suspected a thing. I didn’t find out about her until he died and stumbled upon her social media. She tagged him in everything she posted after that. Called him the love of her life.”
“Damn.”
I wipe a lone tear from the corner of my eye.
“I haven’t even told Pat about the girlfriend.”
“Why?”
