12. Robert
twelve
Robert
“Robert, I’m ready for you,” Jeremy said, opening the door and looking at me seriously. I hated it when Jeremy got into therapist mode. I knew I needed him to, but I hated it. I hated that I was in therapy at all.
But this week had been hard, and I knew I couldn’t avoid it anymore. I needed his help, even if it was hard to get through.
Sighing, I stood up, looking down the hall where Delia had left in a hurry. Jeremy was studying me as he held the door open, and I finally walked in, settling on the couch.
“No camera?” I asked, pointing.
“No student, no camera,” he said wryly, sitting in his chair and pulling his notepad into his lap.
“Is Delia okay?” I asked, looking behind me at the door as though she may come in, saying, “Sorry about that.”
I knew it wouldn’t happen. I had seen something murderous in her eyes. She wasn’t happy about whatever conversation had taken place.
She had to know that Jeremy was my therapist. Why was she so surprised? Where did she get off trying to make me uncomfortable in my own therapist’s office?
Still, I was worried. She had looked not just angry but also upset. I wondered if Jeremy had said something.
Jeremy didn’t glance up from his notes. He scribbled something down and tapped his pen, saying, “She’s fine, Robert. How about you tell me about you? How did your week go?”
I smirked uncomfortably and reminded him, “Well, you already know some of it.”
“Sure, but as I recall…” Jeremy shifted in his spot in the chair, finally looking up from his notepad, “… you wanted to cut the conversation short, so we did.”
Well, he got me there. Looking down at my clasped hands, I grumbled, “Yeah, I guess we did.”
Jeremy smiled thinly and prodded, “So, what did you want to talk about? The panic attacks? Corinne? Delia? How’s work?”
Work. A safe topic. Breathing a sigh of relief, I launched into a diatribe about my woes with work selling self-defense weapons. It was a bit of a passion project for me. I didn’t really need the money, which is how I was able to make decisions that put the company in jeopardy in the name of women’s safety sometimes.
After Quinn had died, I’d been awarded quite a sum from her murderer, not that I’d ever seen the entire amount. But when he went to prison, I got the amount he’d had in his bank and some liquidated assets. Occasionally, I got garnished wages from his prison job, not much at all, like getting a royalty check from the worst movie of my life.
But Quinn had set us up nicely with her life insurance. She was always the prepared one of the two of us. Neither of us had thought we’d see that money for a long time. I’d hoped I’d never see it, that I’d go first. We probably both assumed I’d go first, being in the Navy at the time.
I’d invested that money, which amounted to roughly half a million, and I’d made slightly over two million from it after just three years. It was one of the best achievements of my life till that point. Then I got a financial advisor and started investing larger sums with the help of more knowledgeable people. I started my business, and after seven years, I had made a little over a billion dollars. And then that was the greatest achievement of my life, setting Corinne up for success like that.
“Oh, I’ve got an issue with getting inventory to the UK, which of course I’m pissed about. Apparently, you can’t carry weapons of any kind in the UK, and that includes self-defense weapons, so now I’ve got to figure out how to get my stuff over there without putting women at risk for being arrested.”
I planned on talking more, but Jeremy interrupted me, “Are you pissed off? Or do you feel out of control? I know you have issues with control. Especially lately.”
I narrowed my eyes and snapped out of my safe space, talking about work. He was steering it back to feelings like always. Sarcastically, I asked, “What do you mean issues with control?”
“Come on, Robby, we talked about this.” Jeremy looked frustrated with me, but he used a gentle voice, his therapist's voice. “Trying to decide for someone else whether or not their job is dangerous is an issue of control.”
Oh, right. Telling Delia that working at a place where men tried to shove money into her bra was wrong, apparently. Or unhealed. Or whatever garbage word therapists used to say that someone should never give their opinion to others anymore.
Still on edge from the way Delia disappeared, I asked again, “Where did Delia go? Can you just tell me why she left?”
Jeremy said flippantly, “She was concerned about trying to therapize you when she knows you.” I swallowed and looked down.
Of course. Here I was thinking that she was angry at me, and really she was trying to protect me. Jeremy continued, “That seems to upset you. Does that upset you?”
I scoffed, looking up at the ceiling and spreading my arms out around the back of the couch. “I’m not upset. I’m not a kid.”
“Adults can feel upset.”
I chewed on that open wound in my cheek, the one I’d broken open when Jeremy wouldn’t stop bringing up my late wife. I prodded it with my tongue, indulging the stinging feeling it provided.
“The thing is, when I saw her at the bar, I guess my ‘control issues’ took over since that’s what we’re calling them. And the way I talked to her was…well, I feel bad.”
“Ah,” Jeremy said noncommittally. He closed his notebook. No more notes to take. I guess he thought he had me figured out at this point, then. “You spoke with Delia?”
“Yeah, I spoke with her,” I sighed, “in a way that was…unkind. I was rattled seeing her there, knowing she was…in my class. I was worried. It came from a place of fear.”
“That’s right!” Jeremy crowed, excited that I was using ‘feelings’ words. “Fear. Fear is trauma’s best friend. It’s holding you back, Robert. Can you tell me what coping skills you ended up using that night?”
I laughed a little. “To tell you the truth, I took some sleeping pills to knock me out.”
“That’s not great, Robert,” Jeremy tsked, opening his notebook again.
“Lesser of two evils,” I responded, poking that godforsaken hole in my mouth.
Really, it was the lesser of four evils. He knew what alcohol did to me. He knew about the nightmares. He didn’t know about the fantasizing I’d been doing about Delia in my sleep, the dreams where I sucked on her nipples, where I ran my hands along her body, and she melted under my touch. I couldn’t afford to drink, and I couldn’t afford to dream. I had to be knocked out to avoid it all.
Jeremy looked at me with a disappointed face. I wondered how disappointed that face could get.
What would his face look like if he knew I’d sucked on his ex’s bottom lip while he taught my class in the next room? Or if he knew I’d held a man by the collar and forced him to empty his wallet for Delia?
Jeremy said, “That’s one way of looking at it. I’m more concerned with your health than with vilifying your actions, though.”
“Right. Seems like some people could stand to vilify their actions a bit more than they do,” I grunted, thinking of the man in the bar.
“But we’re talking about you. You’re a good man, and you’re very hard on yourself. Do you agree?”
“Sure, I’m okay.”
No, I wasn’t. I was a bad, bad man. I was a disloyal man.
“Can you say out loud ‘I’m a good person’?”
“I’m a good person,” I said stiffly.
But it sounded like a lie even to me. How could I look into my best friend’s eyes and lie that I was a good person when I knew what I had done with Delia not so long ago?
And when I knew that I wanted to do it again.