“Thank you.”
“If you decide to self-report, I can speak to some people.You violated the code, Nic, but I don’t think losing your license is an appropriate punishment here.”
“I’m still considering it,” I say and it’s an awful feeling to be grateful to my friend but also, at the same time, to be deceiving her.Because that’s exactly what I’m doing.Because I slept with Avery again—a fact Avery clearly didn’t share with her new therapist.
“Keep me in the loop,” Jan says.“How are you doing?”she asks, surprising me.
I can’t tell her I’m this close to falling apart.That I barely recognize my reflection in the mirror because of how I feel about Avery.That I hate myself for omitting a crucial fact but not enough to do the right thing.This kind of ambivalence can’t go on for too long.I will only drive myself up the wall.
“I’ll be fine,” I say, because, in the end, won’t I be?There’s no real reason to believe I can’t get past this.I know exactly what to do—or not do—yet it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.Not see Avery again.To accept that I may never again feel how she made me feel.
“I’m here if you need me,” Jan says.“As your friend.”
After we hang up, it’s not relief that floods me.It’s an intolerable combination of lust, not feeling like myself, and the same agonizing restlessness that settled over me after Lois died, that I thought I had expelled.That foreboding sense that nothing will ever be the same again.
What worries me most, however, is that I’m wholly unable to put this into perspective.As a fifty-four-year-old therapist with decades of experience who has had to process her wife’s unexpected death, I should have the required tools to give this fling its rightful place.To clearly see it for what it is.A two-night stand that has nowhere to go.I know this, but the problem is that I don’t feel it.
That’s why I only make it until Friday.
Friday evening, I do the opposite of what I should be doing.Instead of deleting Avery’s contact details from my phone, I send her a text message.
Can we talk?
I ask.
She replies immediately.
Yes.Come over?
Our text exchange is brief and lightning quick—possibly the only way it can be—and twelve minutes later, I park my car in her driveway.
She opens the door before I can announce myself, as though she’s been scanning the street for my arrival.
The second I clasp eyes on her, I know I’ve completely lost it.When I speak, when I say the one thing I’ve come to say—the very thing I’ve not been able to get out of my head—I’m absolutely certain that the last of my common sense has crumbled into a pile of dust.
“I need you to fuck me with that strap-on,” I say.
“Nic.”Avery all but pushes me against the front door.“Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything,” I say and as I do, I throw my career out of the window.I know it now and I knew it on the drive over and I knew it when I texted her.Because I might have told myself a fairytale of wanting to see her one last time—wanting her to finally fuck me the way she promised me on our first night—and then be totally done with it, but I’m not too far gone to know, in my heart of hearts, where it really matters, that it’s just another lie.
I’m a junkie for her.I can’t stop.I can’t get enough.And there’s no rehab for this particular kind of infatuation.
“Your wish is my command, Doc,” Avery whispers in my ear.
I nearly crash to my knees as she presses her lips to my neck, then kisses me full on the mouth.
“Come on,” she says when she breaks the kiss and holds out her hand to me.I have no idea what her house looks like on the inside—and don’t ask me what it looks like on the outside, either.I only have eyes for her.Avery is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.She gets under my skin in a way that completely undoes me.I want her with a ferociousness that’s so powerful, I will let it destroy my entire professional life.
There are no straps on the toy Avery is holding.Times have changed since I last did this.So much has changed.I have changed most of all—into the kind of woman who does this.Who drove over here with only this as her purpose.
“I need you to get me ready first.”Avery’s fully naked, her spectacular breasts rising with each breath.She’s like a flame I’m about to step into, knowing full well how I’ll burn.
Avery cups her breasts for a moment, as if offering them to me, before sliding one palm down her stomach.
Her fingers dip between her thighs, easing herself open, and it’s a sight I never want to look away from.
“On your knees,” she says, as though it’s completely normal for her to speak to me like that.
