Jane was good, but I didn’t think she was telepathic, and I’d all but proved her guess about insecure feelings with that reaction.
I groaned.
“Jesse, you have no control over when I retire, which isn’t going to be soon enough. Panicking that I might not be here is not helpful, which you know.”
I stared at the coffee table between us, the usual jug of water and two glasses on it, like always. Like always, I wouldn’t touch the water until about halfway through. Like always, I’d down whatever was left in it before I left her room.
I was perfectly aware of my routines. I was perfectly aware of why I had them and the function they provided.
When I started therapy, I’d done so out of curiosity. I’d been wary. By the sixth session, I was starting to not look forward to seeing Jane but needing it. The space she provided for me to talk was safe. I was listened to by someone who had no agenda, someone whose job was to be only what I needed at that time.
“What happens when you retire?”
She shook her head. “If you’re still having therapy by that point, I’ll have someone to recommend you to. We will have a planned ending, however long that takes, and you will be fine. You know yourself better than you ever thought you could, and there are days when we meet and I feel like I’m stealing your money. Then there are days like today, where I feel like you should probably pay me double, which is a very non-therapeutic thing to say, but I’m trying to provide you with an opening from which you can talk.”
I inhaled. She understood that sometimes I needed another person’s recognition of where I was at, otherwise I’d try to bury it and move on.
“I slept with Jerrica.”
Jane already knew all about Jerrica. She knew how I lost my licence.
“Did the world end? Has her brother hired a hitman yet?”
I shook my head. “Sarcasm shouldn’t become a therapist.”
She smiled. “Without giving me details, talk me through how it’s left you feeling.”
I sat back and folded my arms. When I started these sessions, I’d deviate from the point in these sorts of conversations, find something easier to talk about. Jane would let me for her given amount of time and then pull me back around to what it was I was meant to be focusing on. I stopped trying to deviate now and just considered my words instead.
“I don’t know. We had sex my way, and then she… I guess she took the lead.” My words faded out. Finding the right ones was hard. I’d tried not to replay parts of the last few days because I couldn’t process how it had been, how I’d felt when I took away my dirty words and demands, when Jerrica had ridden me or I’d spooned her from behind.
Or I’d fallen asleep with her head on my chest and my hands wrapped around her as if she was the only thing stopping me from floating away.
“Did you like it?”
I gave a single nod. “I came, so yeah.”
Jane didn’t flinch. There had been a week when I’d seen her for four sessions, around the time when I’d gotten heavily into bondage and realised it was becoming something that controlled me rather than the other way around. I’d freaked the fuck out, arguing myself into a corner, but instead of repeating the mistakes of my mother, I took refuge in Jane’s room, learning to talk myself down from a ledge.
“Which is irrelevant. Afterwards. Did you want to leave? Did you want to create distance?”
Because being emotionally close to someone was foreign to me. Boy Jesse hadn’t had anyone to hug him, so my brain was never wired that way. Sex, when I discovered it, was great, but I couldn’t cope with the aftermath, the aftercare, unless it was aftercare in the scripted sense of making sure my partner came out of subspace safely.
“No. But it’s scared me that I didn’t.”
“Tell me more about Jerrica. How was spending so much time with her?”
“Easy. She can talk about anything, but she likes to be silent too. She didn’t just talk for the sake of it and she told me what she wanted. It was like she knew I needed directions sometimes.”
“Instead of it being you giving them?”
“She told me what she needed me to do.”
“So she gave you a choice. Did you give her a choice?”
“Many times. She was really clear about what she wanted. She’s a writer. She's good with words.”
Jane nodded and left the air silent.
