CHAPTER 34
I’LL TAKE “MORE THINGS TRYING TO RUIN MY LIFE” FOR $1,000, ALEX
I stood outside the therapist’s office, reading the number 1-0-0 over and over again until the zeros turned into eyes that started boring into me.
I’d picked a therapist at random. Well, not completely random. When I’d opened my eyes, my finger was pointing to a Chandler Taylor. Chandler sounded too much like Chad. I fudged a little and went with Dr. E. Schultz, a few names above, because the name Schultz sounded vaguely familiar, like the universe was giving me a sign.
My arm shook as I pulled the door open and walked up to the white wood reception desk with a tiny succulent in a marbled pot, comforting myself with the idea of a ride after I left. (Grant had insisted I take Gaia. And I melted a little that he trusted me with his prized possession.)
“I’m here to see Dr. Schultz. My name is Penvelope.” I shook my head. “Penelope Auberge.” I needed to breathe, to calm down. I needed to picture this woman as a number. I concentrated. Her tortoiseshell glasses said she was an eight. She morphed from scary receptionist to a delightful number eight with turtle essence.
“Yes, of course.” The eight’s smile reflected in her eyes. “I see you’ve already filled out our new-client forms online. Thank you. Let me grab today’s intake paperwork. You can bring it back to the room with you.” She disappeared for a few seconds, and I looked around the empty waiting room.
Thankfully, this place looked nothing like a medical facility. The chairs were like ones you’d find in a posh living room, in varying pastels, sitting atop abstract rugs of the same shades. Despite the room’s attempt to make people feel like they were visiting a friend rather than seeking psychological guidance, I was pulled into the past. Aunt Tif. The little girl. The numbers. My mother. That memory sharpened. My limbs turned to gelatin, and my eyes cut to the door as I waited for my mother to walk in and pull me out again, to tell me I didn’t need to see a therapist. Therapists asked questions.
But my past wasn’t going away, no matter how much better my life became. Loss had made my existence a colander; everything fluid had been drained away, leaving a hard shell of a person behind. I’d been this way for too long to change what was now a fundamental part of me, at least on my own.
I recognized my need to be here. That had to mean something. I knew I was a number-obsessed, emotionally crippled disaster. I also knew, even after just one month together, that I wanted a life with Grant. And he deserved someone who didn’t have—
The eight returned, smiled like she completely understood the plight of everyone who walked through the door, then led me to Dr. Schultz’s office and instructed me to sit in one of the two chairs across from a slim desk and fill out the paperwork. Dr. Schulz would be right in.
The room was spartan, efficient, so free of clutter that I could only focus on my thoughts. That smell, I’d smelled it before, but I couldn’t place it.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.
I tried to focus on the words on the intake form.
“Pen?” The voice came from behind me, and like the smell, I recognized it instantly. Dread circled from my head to my toes. Of all places, what was she doing here?
I stood, whirled around. “Elaine?” Grant’s Elaine.
No, not Grant’s anymore. Someone else’s Elaine now.
Beautiful, sophisticated, therapist Elaine ... therapist.
Chunks of information fell into place. The familiarity of the last name. The perfume.
This couldn’t be happening.
Why hadn’t I put this together? How could I possibly be standing here in front of the woman Grant had dumped for me?
Blood drained from my face. Dr. E. Schultz. Dr. Elaine Schultz. Why hadn’t her name been spelled out anywhere?
Humiliation stung the back of my throat. I’d come here wanting help with overcoming my problems. Dr. E. Schultz had, up until about a month ago, been one of them.
The utter absurdity of the whole mistake burrowed into my abdomen and up my throat, emerging first as a cough, then projecting across the room as laughter. I stood in Dr. E. Schultz’s office, laughing my ass off because what else was I going to do? Cry? I felt like crying, felt more like crying than laughing, really, but laughter was what my confused body had decided to produce.
“I don’t think this is funny.” Elaine stood still, a scowl on her prim face.
I waved my arms, then blew out a breath, desperate to agree. There was nothing funny about any of this. I picked up my purse and started toward the door, but Elaine blocked my path.
“What did you hope to accomplish by coming here?”
I shook my head. “I picked you at random. I needed to talk to someone.” A harsh breath escaped my mouth. “I can’t believe it’s you.” I didn’t know if any of this made sense to her ears, but I hardly cared.
“You didn’t know who I was when you made the appointment?” Her delicate eyebrows came together as she kept her arms across her doorway. “Genuinely didn’t know?”
I moved my head from side to side. It was hard to believe. Even I wasn’t sure this hadn’t been some kind of subconscious weird act of ... weird act of what?
I shrugged, angry at the universe. This was what happened when I reached out for help. I ended up in the one person’s office who couldn’t possibly help me.
I’ll take “More Things Trying to Ruin My Life” for $1,000, Alex.
Alex wasn’t the host anymore, but it would always be Alex to me.
“I didn’t recognize your last name. And everywhere I looked, there was only your first initial. I wouldn’t be standing here right now if ...” I was getting teary. I tried to breathe. I tried to get angry, anything to burn away the moisture threatening to come out of my eyes.
Dr. Schultz blew a breath through her perfectly formed lips. “I go by my first initial so it’s ambiguous if I’m a man or a woman. It’s more for conferences and such, and it shouldn’t matter, but it does.” She gestured toward the pair of light-pink chairs. “Would you like to sit down?”
My stare was blank, and nothing on my body moved except for the bastard droplet rolling down my face. Did this woman honestly think I would sit back down?
“I should go.”
“Please. Obviously, I can’t act as your therapist. While I’d like to think I could remain objective and put my feelings aside, it would be sticky, a conflict of interest. But I’d like to think your coming here was, perhaps, divine intervention. Maybe we could both have a bit of closure, work out unresolved feelings. And the hour’s already booked.”
The line between her brows as she gestured toward the two chairs again was near-pleading. And to my utter surprise, my feet moved back toward the seat instead of away from it. If I guessed, I’d sat down out of curiosity, to learn more about the woman Grant had left behind for me.
“Thank you,” she whispered, as if my being here was a favor to her. “And once I have a better understanding of why you’re seeking a therapist, I can refer you to the best one I know. That I can do. Deal?” She sat in the chair beside me and stuck out her hand.
“I guess that’s fair.” And we shook.
And then we spent the next thirty-two minutes not as patient and therapist, but as two wounded women who wanted to understand why life was the way it was. By the time I left her office, an appointment for later that same day already made with Hannah Hardiman, a therapist who specialized in grief therapy and traumatic pasts, I think Elaine and I both felt lighter.
She’d spent the past several weeks wondering what she’d done wrong and admitted to thinking Grant was the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with, even though they’d been dating for less than a year. In the end, she’d been just as intimidated by me as I was by her, twin inferiority complexes settling in both our chests. After we talked, and she realized that mine and Grant’s connection was as strong as it was and that both Grant and I had tried to fight what was happening between us, Elaine said she felt like she’d finally be able to move on, which made me feel better. But it also made everything sharper because—it was easier to get hurt.
Elaine made me realize that what Grant and I had was even more special than I’d originally thought.
Later that day, I walked into Dr. Hardiman’s office, prepared to do what needed doing.
“Tell me a little about yourself,” she’d started, her quiet confidence immediately reassuring.
I started out with the small things, the general things—where I was from, my profession, most of my hobbies—and the more I talked, the easier it became.
“Tell me about your family,” Dr. Hardiman said next.
There it was, the f word. Hadn’t I known it would come up this soon? Wasn’t that why I’d come here in the first place?
Fatigue settled over me, reached into my mouth, and pulled the words out.
“My father died thirteen months ago.” Over a year. I hadn’t registered time passing. “He became a cheating alcoholic who drank himself to death. My mother became a control freak, a coldhearted woman who didn’t even care her husband cheated or her daughter was crumbling inside. We don’t have the greatest relationship.” The words marched out of my mouth in a solid line, without emotion, like I was talking about someone else.
Hannah—she insisted I call her by her first name—nodded as if I’d told her that I had the most wonderful mother and father in the world. “‘Became’? Did something happen?”
I thought about the box of Brandon’s things in my storage closet. The room wanted to spin. From somewhere in the distance, I heard my voice say, “Brandon, my brother Brandon.”