Sara:Has to be the trauma fellow, doesn't it?
Alex:He's noticed that you and Stremmel seem to avoid each other on Thursdays.
Sara:Hmm. That's an interesting observation. Can't say I avoid him more on Thursdays than I do any other day of the week.
Alex:Like I said, chatter.
Alex:Anyway, Riley and I are going to a new restaurant tonight. Will you come with us?
Sara:I am not a great third wheel but thank you so much for thinking of me.
Alex:One of these times, I'll get you!
Sara:Just be honest…you're really looking for a third in your threesome, aren't you?
Alex:It's a damn good thing you didn't say that around my husband because he'd never be able to unhear it, babe.
Chapter18
Sara
In this week's session,we had to complete a maze game using vague clues Milana read from a set of cards she kept in a janky old Ziploc bag. We had to navigate taped-off squares on the floor using these clues. Any time we misinterpreted the clues, we were sent back to the beginning. We went back to the beginning eleven times before Sebastian insisted that requirement be suspended.
He'd demanded my bag of trail mix upon arrival. It was mostly pretzels on account of an overly ambitious run-in with baby carrots the previous day, and he sorted out the raisins as I watched.
That evening, he'd bent me over the back of my sofa. When we were finished and I was a hoarse, boneless wreck, he left me on that sofa, a blanket tucked up to my chin and a glass of water within reach.
The following week,we roleplayed difficult conversations from a binder withDemanding Dialogues in Healthcaresplashed across the front. Sebastian rolled his eyes into next month at my croutons and then helped himself to the rye, which were my least favorite.
We yelled and stumbled over several of the conversations until Sebastian plucked a pen from the pocket of my white coat and started rewriting the prompts on account of them lacking any connection to reality. He told Milana he was doing her a favor.
After the session, Sebastian followed me around while I visited a few patients. The scowl I received upon informing those patients that Dr. Stremmel was observing me for his skill development was worth the torture he inflicted upon me later.
It was good torture, the likes of which I'd only heard about from clickbait headlines and the noises coming from Alex and Riley's apartment. It wasreally goodtorture.
We didn't talk about it. We didn't even talk when it was over. He tore me to shreds and then put me to bed with a glass of water and a growly warning to lock the door, and that was our routine. He didn't stay and I didn't offer. There was no cuddling, no kisses good night, no promises to text later, not even a shuddering laugh and somewow, I didn't know my body could do that.
We never ventured into the waters ofwhat the fuck are we doingorwhy can't we stop?
That was safer, which only spoke to the unbelievable danger of the situation we'd chosen for ourselves. It was bound to blow up on us at any moment and it was going to hurt like hell when it did. It was going to leave marks.
My perfectionist desperately, urgently needed me to stop doing things that made my career, my reputation, my entire life messier. I didn't pay attention to her often, but when I did, she wasthis closeto losing it. I was really testing her.
My bitch stood stoic against the chaos and kept insisting I was allowed to feel good and I didn't need to build a firewall of distance and denial to protect myself from that. I sure as shit didn't need to apologize for it. Most of all, I didn't have to run away from it.
I wanted to believe her.
The next sessionwas an especially spicy one where we were been tasked with building a bridge using marshmallows and pipe cleaners. We'd spent the majority of the time arguing about engineering and the last few minutes actually building the thing while Sebastian treated us to a chorus of, "This is a waste of marshmallows. It's a damn waste."
Once we were dismissed, he'd tucked his fingers into my waistband and steered me out of the hospital, up the street, into our building. The press of his knuckles against my flank did wild things to me. It made me forget myself, forget everything. He'd fucked me slow that evening, so slow, like we had all the time in the world. Like there wasn't a cliff coming for us, an end whether we accepted the inevitability or not.
Much like the perfectionist and the bitch who shared a hostile existence in my head, my feelings for Sebastian Stremmel were contradictory, one never more than a minute away from declaring war on the other. Part of me despised him in the stickiest, most unbearable way. The other part of me…that part did not despise him.
And as these days and weeks passed, it was becoming clear that those parts were unequal. Unbalanced. One side was much, much greater than the other, even if they did exist on the brink of total annihilation. There were moments when I struggled to believe that the other side existed at all. I had to search for it, press it like the echo of a bruise to dredge up the last twinges of pain.
I knew his scowls now. I could decode them with a single glance. I knew when he was tired, stressed, annoyed. I knew when he was irritable about his cases rather than irritable over the waning November sunlight.
I also knew that the scowl was his drawbridge, the mechanism he'd perfected for keeping everyone at an arm's length. In most cases, he'd succeeded in doing that. I'd been one of those success stories. I'd written him off, filed him away as arrogant and unpleasant and too self-involved to bother acknowledging me in the halls.
