I text her.
Me: Do you still want to link up tonight?
Doc: Yes, um, maybe you come to my apartment?
Me: I’ll be there in an hour.
Doc: Oh, so, it’s not where you dropped me off. It’s actually a block over on 72nd. I’ll send you the address.
What in the actual fuck?
Me: So I’ve been dropping you off a block from where you live this whole time?
Now I’m furious.
How I allowed her to pull that old trick on me is shameful. And for what? If she didn’t want me to know where she lived that badly, she shouldn’t have been fucking me!
I should have listened to my instincts the first day she teetered into our intake session completely oblivious of who she was meeting and what damn day it was. I should have walked right back out of that office.
She can’t be trusted.
Lying is like breathing to her.
The only woman I should trust with my heart is my little girl. This is what happens when you try “serious”.
Doc: Can we talk about it when you get here?
Me: Yeah, let’s do that.
We’re going to have a conversation about a lot of things.
***
I’m incapable of bullshit.
It’s just not in my DNA.
So when I walk into Katrina’s apartment for the first time, I give her a lackluster hug hello and immediately start exploring the place. She can sense that my energy is way off by my lukewarm greeting, but she doesn’t say anything about it and allows me to walk around.
Her apartment is small but clean and sparsely furnished with the basics. I don’t bother with the bedroom since I’ll never see the inside of it at this point, so instead, I take a seat on the small tan sofa in her main living area.
“So what were we on, the fifth session now?” I say snidely and I almost fall for the obvious hurt look in her eyes, but not quite. Frankly, it’s pissing me off. Not to mention that the ring light on one of her smart devices keeps pulsing an irritating yellow light that’s only amplifying my anger.
“What’s going on with you, Dak?” she asks in an unusually timid voice. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t even beat around the bush. I’m just not built that way. So I’m going to straight out ask you and I need you to be honest if you’re even capable of that. Are you trying to end my career, Katrina?” I blurt out.
“Me?” She blinks at me, surprised. “Why would you think that?”
I thrust my cell phone forward, showing her the letter that Cap forwarded me. It’s a letter from Well Minds LLC to the National Football League stating that based on their mental health assessment of one Dakota Warner, it is their recommendation that they extend my hiatus from the game, and continue therapy with a plan to revisit in another six to eight weeks.
She reads and rereads the letter as if she’s never seen it before.
“I thought I could trust you,” I say, my voice cracking.
“Dak, I promise I didn’t write this.”
She moves toward me, but the stony look on my face tells her to keep her distance.
