Alex
“Would you say you have trouble letting yourselfenjoy things?”
Of course, in response to this, Patricia’s chair protests embarrassingly. We’re three-quarters of the way through our third session, and I still haven’t quite mastered how to keep the thing quiet, even when it feels like I’m freeze-drying myself into immobility. I’m tired, a whole night of restlessness behind me, and since it wasn’t panic related—it was erection related—I’m feeling irrationally resentful of Patricia.
“You need a new chair.” I sound so grouchy.Get off my lawngrouchy.
“Enjoying things,” Patricia says slowly, as if I didn’t hear her. “Do you have trouble doing that?”
I rub a hand over my jaw, considering. Last night, I’d enjoyed things. I’d enjoyed walking beside Greer, talking to her. I’d enjoyed throwing paint balloons against a brick wall, laughing with her. I enjoyed every hot, perfect second of having her against me. I’d even grudgingly enjoyed thinking about it again later, my hand on my cock, my head full of Greer and the sounds she’d made when she’d come against my fingers.
Of course then I’d been humiliated that I’d defiled my sister’s shower, and I’d spent the next twenty minutes scrubbing it, which is probably something Patricia could find a definition for in one of the fancy textbooks on her poorly constructed shelves.
Well, it needed cleaning, anyway.
“Yes,” I say. “I have trouble doing that.”
“I’m concerned, Alex, that you don’t prioritize self-care.”
I snort, trying not to think about the self-care I did with my right hand. “Someone else said that to me recently. Greer.”New coping mechanisms.You need them.
“Ah.” Patricia makes a little note on her tablet. “You’ve been around her quite a bit while you’ve been here.” I look up at her, narrow my eyes, and she puts up her hands in surrender. “You’ve mentioned her several times.” The way Patricia says “times.” It sounds liketoimes, which makes me smile in spite of the fact that she’s just pointed out my utter transparency when itcomes to Greer.
“She’s—a friend.”
“Let’s talk about that.”Oh, hell. Maybe Patricia has some kind of divining rod that tells her when I’m being dishonest. Maybe the chair is the divining rod. Maybe when I leave here the chair will tell Patricia about how I’ve been waiting for Greer to call me, waiting for her to tell me we can finish what we started. “About your friendships, I mean,”she clarifies.
“Oh.”
“Do you havemany friends?”
“Do you want to see my homework? Because I did the worksheetsin that book.”
Patriciarolls her eyes.
“My agent, he’s a friend. I’ve got colleagues I’m friendly with, other journalists I see on the job. My sister and her new husband, they’re friends.”
“Excuse me,” Patricia says. “I need to find some sad music to put on.”
“This is the strangest therapy.”
“How would you know?”
That’s a good point. I swipe a hand over my face and laugh. Whatever the fuck Patricia is doing, it makes me feel oddly better about the things I tell her in here. It’s some strange version of poking a bear and then swatting it on the nose so it’ll be too surprised to get angry. I doubt she does it with everyone, but damn if it doesn’t work on me.
“I have trouble making friends, I always have. Kit was my best friend growing up. She was enough.”
“Kit wasn’t your best friend. She was your responsibility.”
I shrug.“She was both.”
“Alex, what I’m getting at here is that you don’t have a lot of mechanisms in your life—human or otherwise—to support the self-care you need more of. You had two years where you were dealing with panic attacks. You told no one.” That sounds bad, the way she says it. My neck heats in embarrassment. Patricia stays quiet, knowing the right timesto wait me out.
“When I was young, making friends—it was a lot of work. I told you, we moved so much, and the way things were with me and Kit—there just wasn’t a lot of time. I still think of it that way, I guess. It’s work to get to know people, to have relationships.” I swallow, hoping ther-word doesn’t result in a conversation about my love life, which is basically a series of three- to seven-day-long affairs with women who are as uninterested in intimacy as I am. “And I’m obviously still on the move a lot.”
“Does it always feel that way to get to know people? Like work?” I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but I think I hear something in how she’s asked it, as though Greer—you’ve mentioned her several toimes—is a specter in the room with us.
I lean my head back in the chair, close my eyes briefly, see the constellation of paint and freckles on Greer’s cheeks. It’d been a brief moment of shock, right after, when I’d been about to invite her back to Kit’s. But it wouldn’t have stopped me. I hadn’t wanted to leave her. I wanted to spend the evening with her—in bed, sure, finishing what we’d started, but also out of bed. Talking and laughing, looking at those pictures she’s taken without me. Intimacy, I guess. I wanted it all, and that guest bedroom at Kit’s would’vedone just fine.
