I shake my head. “She’s busy with auditions and she can’t afford totake time off. And it’s not like we can afford for me to go over right now.” A thought. “But it has been a while since I’ve hung out with my friends,” I say.
“Friends” is a loose term. It’s still the case that very few of my friendships, if any, feel real in the way that my friendship with Emily was, but I haven’t seen her since the Big Fallout. She wasn’t even at my wedding. Not that many people I knew were.
He studies me a moment longer, cool eyes scraping my skin. His mouth opens, closes, then opens again. I think, a little unkindly, that he resembles a goldfish.
“Maybe you do need to go out, blow off some steam,” he eventually says.
I do. I need to get out of the house, broaden my world beyond James. He’s kind, generous, and loves me. My rational mind knows he’s safe, safer than anyone else. Even my family. Especially my family. But I can’t shake the irrational feeling of needing a safety net. Like knowing there’s almost no chance of dying on a flight, but spending the whole journey with visions of plummeting planes and smoking wreckage anyway. I might have lost touch with my uni friends, with almost everyone who might remind me of the horrors of my past, but I need to nurture the friendships I have left.
A wine-soaked night with a couple of friends will be just what I need. Maybe a girl just needs to let her hair down to stop herself from falling apart. It feels like a good idea. But then again, so many of my worst ones do.
21
Now
Dimple
Dimple’s enviously thick hair is straight again today. An attempt to tuck it behind her ears has been made, but as usual, it pushes forward of its own accord. Her probing style is similar; an attempt at reining in an irrepressible curiosity.
“How are you feeling today?”
I shrug. It’s knowingly petulant, but I resent how much she’s making me dredge up and I want her to know it.
“I’m uncomfortable. Apprehensive, I guess. These sessions haven’t been easy for me; I’ve told you too much, and I’ve no idea which scab you’re going to want to pick at today. But I know it’s important I’m here if I’m going to straighten myself out.” After all, I love James. My love for him and his longevity are proof of my ability to get it right, my potential to be a good human being. The kind who’ll make a great mother.
“That’s an interesting expression.”
“What is?”
“Your framing of our sessions as picking at scabs. Why do you think of them that way?”
I sigh, knead the flesh of my thighs with the heels of my hands, then bring the movement to an end.
“I don’t like it when you do that, by the way.”
“What?” she asks.
“Ask questions you already know the answers to.”
She smiles, taps the back of her pen against her notepad. “It’s not my job to put words in your mouth or assume how you’re feeling. I wouldn’t be a very good therapist if I just made these sessions about what I think,” she says. “So, why do you describe our sessions as like picking at scabs?”
Inside, I’m twisting my mouth, stretching my fingers across her intent. I still think she’s on my side, that she wants to help me. But how do I know? At the very least, I know I can’t let the knot of paranoia that’s beginning to churn in my gut grow. I don’t need more problems.
“I describe it that way,” I say, “because it hurts to pick at it. I don’t think those old wounds ever properly healed.”
Dimple simply nods once—whether intentional encouragement or a betrayal of inner thoughts, I don’t know.
In the gap, I finally build up the courage to ask my next, most important question. “I need to know I can trust you if I continue. That being open with you isn’t going to land me in trouble.”
“Given what I already know, and what you’ve already disclosed, it would be difficult at this stage for you to shock me. But please feel free to try.” She gives me a look that I imagine is meant to be encouraging. “We ran out of time last week, but you were telling me about the day you found your father dead.”
I try to shift my brain into gear, to focus back on where we are in the room. The thought of my dad is still a complicated one. It’s difficult to disentangle the emotions knotted together around it. All I know is that it hurts.
“Yes, it’s—it’s a difficult memory.”
“I noticed your retelling was suggestive, but unspecific about how your father died.”
My eyes snap onto hers. “What do you mean?”
