When I came in for my session today, I didn’t intend to tell her anything about Elena. I’ve never mentioned Elena’s name to Kelsey before. I’ve hardly uttered it inside my own head over the last four years. But somehow, once I was on the couch and all the events of the last couple of weeks fell down on me, the words spilled from my mouth of their own accord.
All of my friends think it’s a terrible idea, even without them knowing the true depths of our fractured relationship. The fact that we haven’t spoken in four years—and that our friendship was unable to survive my brother’s death—was enough for them to encourage us to steer clear of each other.
Darby suggested I bring it up in therapy today before my session. I told her it wasn’t something worth talking to Kelsey about, and yet here I am.
“Who has told you it’s a bad idea?” she asks.
“I mean, Darby and Leo both expressed concern, and I know Everett is planning on telling the same thing to his sister. Plus, you don’t sound thrilled.”
She laughs under her breath, shaking her head as she types into the iPad in her lap. “I’m intrigued that you thought my question was presented as a concern. I was genuinely asking how you feel about it. That’s what matters to me.”
“Like I said, in the heat of the moment, it just felt like the right decision. I don’t really know how to explain why.”
“Does there need to be a reason?” Kelsey asks. “Maybe you should trust your instincts.”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
“Do you want to talk about Elena more today? I understand you two grew up together, she dated your brother, and that ended poorly.” She crosses her legs, gently placing her hands in her lap. “I suppose what I’m struggling to understand is how her relationship with your brother and his passing has had such an adverse effect on your relationship with her. I assume there is something I am missing?”
So many things.
“I’m not quite sure I’m ready to go there yet,” I admit reluctantly.
“That’s okay. Baby steps.” She smiles. “You’ve made great progress over the last few months. Do you think it’s had any kind of effect on your day-to-day life?”
“I do.”
A few months ago, I don’t think I could’ve been in the same room as Elena. I couldn’t have said her name or looked her in the face. Granted, being around her is still a torment and a challenge, but I haven’t burst into flames quite yet—at least not literally.
Therapy has helped me compartmentalize my brother’s passing, my grief, my relationship with him, and with others inways I wasn’t able to do before—and somehow, that’s helping me unravel where she fits into all of it. I’m beginning to realize I’m entitled to a wide range of emotions and feelings—whereas before I thought that space was only reserved for guilt and blame.
“We’re coming up on time for our session today, but I think things went well. Is there anything else you’d like to cover before we end?”
I shake my head, though part of me wants to ask her about the raging attraction I still have to Elena—about the way that I get aroused when she argues with me, and how I can’t stop thinking about her in the filthiest of ways whenever I close my eyes.
I want to ask her why I feel like that, what it says about me, and how the fuck I get it to stop, but I’m too afraid of the answer. I fear she may tell me I’m sexually deranged, bound for hell, and doomed to eventually succumb to my most base desires and fall victim to the sorceress herself.
“Nope.” I force a smile. “I’m feeling great.”
I’m tired as hell when I get home from my session. I decided not to go back to the shop today since Maggie is there, and I have two other freelance artists onsite. There is no need for me, and it can be hard to readjust after therapy.
I know Elena will be home, but she’s typically already down for the count by this time of day. It’s been two weeks since she officially moved in. Just as I claimed we’d be, we act as nothing more than passing ships. In theory, avoidance should be effortless. If I kept her out of my sight, she’d be out of my mind. Though, I must’ve forgotten just how deeply burrowed into my brain she truly is. It doesn’t matter if she’s standing right in front of me, or on another planet entirely, I’m thinking of her, dreaming of her, sometimes dreading her.
Even in the moments I’m convinced I hate her, I’m fighting the urge to seek her out. To look at her. Touch her. Know her.
She’s been working early mornings with Dahlia at the bakery, and I don’t get home most evenings until after nine. I think she sleeps through most of the day and scurries around at night like a fucking cat before working her shift at the bakery, then comes home to crash after. I stay up late, too, and while I can hear her soft footsteps above my head when I’m lying in the dark, we don’t speak to each other. She’s gone when I wake in the mornings, and I’m at work by the time she gets home.
I’m earlier than usual today, but it’s late enough in the afternoon that I’ll likely be able to avoid her. To be safe, I’m quiet when I enter the house, shutting the front door softly and heading straight into my bedroom. Sometimes therapy feels like the washing away of dark clouds that weigh me down, and I like to take a shower afterward to truly cement that feeling.
As I’m stripping off my clothes, I hear a soft, incessant buzz coming from somewhere in the house.
It doesn’t take me long to realize the low vibration is coming from above my head. The sound bleeds through the floorboards from the room directly above mine. Elena’s room. Assuming it might be a toothbrush or some weird white-noise machine she uses when sleeping during the day, I do my best to ignore it, unbuckling my jeans and shucking them down my legs.
Then, she moans my fucking name.
It’s the all-too-familiar mewl that’s been imprinted on my bones for years. She’s coming. It’s a breathless, muffled scream, but the three syllables that make up my name are unmistakably present in her voice.
Just as the sound passes, that buzzing stops, and silence rains down on me like acid.
