“That’s not what I’m asking Lilly. You said what you don’t trust, butwhydon’t you trust it?” I looked back to Greg and thought long and hard about the feelings I had two years ago when he first kissed me, the night of our wedding, the morning after our wedding, and everything in between. I knew what I felt, but I still had no idea what Greg felt, and that was the biggest fear in all of this. Laying my heart on the line and not being able to see an outcome.
“I don’t trust that he’ll be able to stay. That he won’t leave me. That he’ll love me as much as I love him.” There. I had said it out in the open. The one word I had been feeling for years, but hadn’t really given in to.
I knew people who worked in this field weren’t supposed to show emotions to their patients, but the sad look in Tessa’s eyes almost shattered me. This person I barely knew was seeing a part of me that almost no one had ever seen before. The lump in my throat tried to break free, but I pushed it back down. I pushed down every sad and happy feeling inside of me. This was just a conversation with our marriage counselor, that’s all it was, nothing more.
“How do you feel about this, Greg?” After Tessa’s question, silence filled the office. I didn’t look back over to Greg, but waited to hear his response. The couch moved beside me and I snuck a peak of Greg moving back to the other end, where he had been before, and my heart dropped. I just admitted why I didn’t trust this and he was already pulling away.
I looked around the room, trying to make it so my eyes didn’t land on Greg or Tessa and tried to count the minutes as they passed by.
“Let’s try a different question.” Tessa broke the silence. “How long have you two known each other?”
“Over five years.” We said in unison.
“So, you are knowledgeable about each other then?”
“Humph.” I made a noise at her next question. “You could say that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Greg shot back at me. I still wasn’t facing him, but was now concentrating on the far wall off to my side. “I’m pretty sure I know you better than anyone else.”
“Now, that’s a lie.” I laughed at his comment.
“How so?” I felt the couch move, but I willed myself not to look his way. “We’ve been best friends for five years, Lilly. We’ve even lived together at one point. You used to come to family dinner every week. We see each other every damn day at work. How can you say it’s a lie that I don’t know you?”
I turned only my head towards him to answer.
“Before you answer that or have any reason to say it’s still not true. Your favorite flowers are black roses. You love the color blue. You first learned to ride a bike when you were twelve and that’s only because one of the neighbor boys showed you how to. You love to create new concoctions when you eat food and are addicted to condiments. You sleep on your back, like a freaking vampire and only snore if you go to bed early. I don’t know what else you want me to say when you think I don’t know you, because fucking hell Lilly, I know you!”
He had screamed his response not at me but to the whole room. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, but I needed him to know that this was so much more than him knowing what I like and didn’t like in my life, but that he had no focus on knowing anything aboutus.
“Even though we’ve been best friends for over five years, have lived together, and see each other every day at work, and you happen to know what foods I like and how I sleep, doesn’t mean you know me Greg. It doesn’t mean you know us.” That caught his attention and he moved his focus back to me. “You still couldn’t see that I’ve been in love with you for five years, that’s basically the whole time we’ve known each other. You had no idea that these feelings I have aren’t something new. This isn’t something that just came about, Greg.”
I turned away from him again and Greg didn’t respond back to me this time. I watched Tessa out of the corner of my eye as she quickly wrote on her pad.
More silence dragged on in the small room and I wasn’t sure how much time had passed as I looked over each book on Tessa’s shelves, reading the titles from where I sat on the couch. When I finally couldn’t stand it anymore, I turned towards Tessa and could see that Greg was also staring off into space on his end.
“Are we done here?” I looked up at the clock on the wall, seeing that it was almost seven. “Hehas somewhere to be.”
I laid the excuse on Greg needing to go to his parents’ house, but truthfully I didn’t care where he went or what he did. Okay, maybe that was a lie, but I needed out of this damn room. It was starting to suffocate me.
“Not yet.” Tessa readjusted herself and put her pad and pen down. “There is clearly a disconnection here that you both need to work on, communication being the key part.”
I rolled my eyes at her comment, but Greg chimed in.
“Ya think?” His sarcastic tone didn’t go over my head.
“It’s not like you are one for communication, either.” I looked over to him. I could tell he had been running his hand along his face, a nervous habit, his cheeks were turning a light shade of pink from the friction. The top button of his dress shirt was undone and the tie he was wearing had been loosened. I didn’t remember seeing him this casual when I walked in. “Just save it all for when you talk to your mom tonight, like you always do. Mama’s boy.”
“Don’t bring Mom into this.” Greg stood up from the couch. “This is about us, not her.”
He ran his hands over his face again and I sank back into the couch. Just a few more minutes. I watched as the clock got closer to the seven mark, so close to freedom.
“Don’t worry,” I tried to sound chipper, with my arms crossed and frustration radiating off me. “When you see her tonight for family dinner, she’ll make sure you are fully taken care of. She probably already invited someone over to keep you company.”
Greg narrowed his eyes at me, but when they softened, I knew he knew I was right. It had happened too many times. Margaret had taken it upon herself to invite women over on occasion, so that Greg would have a dinner date for the night. But it wasn’t like his parents knew we were married, so I technically couldn’t blame her.
“Why don’t you go to family dinner tonight, Lilly?” Tessa’s question wasn’t one I was expecting.
“No.” I responded with distaste at going to family dinner tonight. It had been way too long since I had been there and right now just didn’t seem like the time to go back.
