“Whyareyou here?” Victoria asked, curious. “Do you come here often?”
“I know one of the owners. I came here for a heart to heart with her but… then you turned up.” Anna cocked her head to the side. “Why areyouhere? Have you ever been here?”
“Once. Long ago. Ashley wanted to celebrate my clearance tonight, and I like the artist they’ve got booked in.” The doors to the Lounge were open, and Victoria could hear Lucy beginning to play, gentle guitar wafting out of the club and into the night around them.
To her surprise, Anna looked disappointed. “Oh.”
“Oh?” Victoria frowned.
“I was going to ask if you wanted to get out of here and come back to my place to talk, but I don’t want you to miss out on…”
“Anna.” Victoria reached out and grabbed Anna’s arm with one hand, and began fishing her mobile out with the other, frantically thumbing it open so she could message Ashley and then summon another Uber. “I have never wanted to leave anywhere so quickly in my life.”
One day she was going to meet Anna somewhere and not immediately drag her home, but today was not that day.
They sat as far apart as possible in the back seat of the Uber, resisting the urge to even hold hands. Talk was kept small, simple, happy. Most of the ride, they were content to remain companionably silent.
The back seat of someone else’s car just didn’t seem to be the place for as big a conversation as the one they needed to have, and if Victoria so much as brushed Anna’s pinky finger with her own, she would start kissing her and never, ever stop.
The ride felt interminable, but at last, they got to Anna’s Hancock Park flat. It did not surprise Victoria to find, as she was ushered through the door, that Anna’s small flat was as cozy and inviting as her office. There was the same sort of overstuffed furniture, the long sheer draperies, and walls lined with bookshelves, full to the brim of battered paperbacks and assorted knickknacks. Victoria pulled out a squat, ink-annotated, well-thumbed copy of Sylvia Plat’sThe Bell Jarand let out a low whistle. “Heavy stuff, this.”
“I think it should be required reading for every mental health professional,” Anna said from her nook of a kitchen, where she was putting the kettle on and getting down cups for tea. “But it’s not exactly light work, no.” She flashed Victoria a quick smile. “Have you read it?”
“Once, in uni. That was more than enough.” She replaced the book and then sat on the sofa, watching Anna move around toprepare tea for them.Could I get used to this?she wondered, leaning down to unzip her boots and place them neatly alongside the sofa. Sitting back, she curled her feet up under her and tried to allow herself to surrender to the feeling of being cared for. Cherished, perhaps. Supported by someone besides herself. Victoria closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of a truly peaceful life.
The rustle of a waxed paper bag and the hushed brush of loose-leaf tea being measured into delicate metal strainers. The click as the spoon was set down on the polished tile countertop. The burble of the kettle as it boiled. Water streaming into cups. Anna humming something unidentifiable as she picked up the tray and?—
Victoria’s eyes opened as Anna set a tray down on the coffee table. “We’ll let the tea steep for a bit,” Anna said, sitting down and sliding herself up against the back of the sofa. Turning, she propped her elbow on the cushions and leaned her head onto her hand, a soft smile lighting up her face as she focused on Victoria at last. “Hi, there.”
“Hi, there,” Victoria echoed, unable to stop her own responding smile. It was so easy, too easy, to imagine coming home to this.
It was less easy to let herself believe that she might be allowed to.
She twisted in her seat to face Anna, letting her fingers spiderwalk along the back of the sofa. “So.”
“So.” Anna reached forward to brush a slender lock of hair out of Victoria’s face. “You were cleared.”
“Provisionally,” Victoria murmured, resisting the urge to grab Anna’s hand and press a kiss into her palm.
“I think the next six months are going to be a walk in the park for you.” Her hand dropped to Victoria’s knee. “I’m proud of you.”
“I’m terrified,” Victoria confessed, the words feeling wrenched out of some sticky, dark pit deep in her soul. “It was always just me. My mother made me so damned independent. So I relied on myself, because I could only trust myself.”
“Until you couldn’t anymore.” Anna’s fingers squeezed around Victoria’s knee.”
“Until then. But even then… you see how hard it is for me to accept any weakness in myself. To accept help.” To evenadmitto it was still difficult, but she had come too far over the last weeks and months, was feeling too much better after every peaceful night and emotional purge, to go back now. “To admit I was wrong. I should never have taken Hilary’s case. But she only trusted me…how could I…” She looked down at her hands and tried to blink back tears. “She shouldn’t have trusted me. I should have disclosed our relationship. Maybe she would still be alive if I had…”
“Stop.” Anna shifted forward and took Victoria’s twisting, tormented hands in hers. “You can’t change what happened. You have no way of knowing how thingsmight havegone. We have to live in the here and now.” Her thumb stroked over Victoria’s fingers, soft, soothing, loving. “And here, now, you’re so amazing. And Victoria, I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have lost my temper. Oh, and…” Her face was bright, burning red. “I said such awful, nasty things.”
“Usually you’d be the first to say that fear will do that,” Victoria remarked wryly.
“It was fear, I live every day with a fear of crossing ethical lines or causing harm to a patient or doing any number of things so catastrophically wrong that it costs me my career.” The confession tumbled out of Anna in a rush.
“And I had been quite deeply fearful of another Hilary situation happening,” Victoria said quietly, briefly pulling one hand free from Anna’s grip so that she could stroke away atear she saw trickling from one sad green eye. “When it did, it knocked all the wobbly foundation out from under me. Poor Daniel Jennings.”
“Poor you,” Anna corrected, blinking further tears away.
“Poor you as well,” Victoria said softly. Then she leaned forward to press her forehead against Anna’s.
