49. Loren Hale
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
LOREN HALE
A lot can happen in one month.
Lily miraculously passed her finals and all her classes, which means she’ll attend Princeton next year as a senior. Only one semester behind. Connor’s emergency tutoring probably had a hand in her success.
The summer has turned fiercer and now at the end of June, we’re all silently praying for rain.
The weather is the only thing I can predict anymore. I thought four weeks would have been enough to dissuade the media and return us to our semi-normal lives. The press may be slightly less ravenous, but cars still sit outside the gates of the house, snapping pictures whenever we leave.
Tuesdays and Thursdays are the worst.
We sit in a corner office of a New York City high-rise, and Dr. Oliver Evans gives me one of his patented you’re-not-really-supposed-to-be-here scowls. I didn’t trust Lily to see a new male therapist for her sex addiction, so naturally I tagged along for her first meeting.
Oliver’s theories about sex addiction are a one-eighty from Allison’s, and our initial encounter didn’t go so well.
I almost hit the guy and walked right on out.
But Lily’s adamant on appeasing her parents and making things right with her family.
She wanted to return to these weekly appointments, and the only way I’ll sleep at night is if I accompany her.
So Oliver stares at me like I’m getting on his last psychiatric nerve. He’s forty-something with dark brown hair and rectangular spectacles that make him look more mousy than smart.
“It’s been four weeks,” I remind him. “I thought we’d be friends by now, Oliver.”
He senses my sarcasm and scribbles something in his notebook. This isn’t couples therapy. It’s just supposed to be for Lily, but he often starts writing whenever I start speaking. He thinks it pisses me off, but I just hope he gets a hand cramp.
“Lily, how are you doing abstaining from sex? A month is a milestone for a sex addict. You should be proud.”
She folds her hands in her lap. “It’s been good.”
It was good. For the first couple of weeks, I actually believed we could make a no-sex rule work.
But by the third week, she was skittish as hell.
She wouldn’t let me sleep beside her, and she flinched whenever someone touched her—not just me.
What was once abstaining from sex turned into abstaining from touch.
I sensed her withdrawing from me and everyone around her.
She wouldn’t leave the house, wouldn’t do normal things.
So I cut the cord on that experiment, and it wasn’t because I was horny too.
I knew I was losing my best friend.
I voiced my concerns to Oliver when she first withdrew from my hand.
I was just trying to lace her fingers with mine, and she shrunk into herself like I was a monster under her bed.
He told me it was natural. That she was returning to the norm.
I don’t know what kind of norm this guy lives in, but regular people don’t flinch when they hold hands.
It’s not like I was asking her to rub one out for me.
So I made a deal with Lily. She wants to appease her parents, fine. But we’re not listening to this asshole’s advice.
“It’s normal for a deviant like yourself to miss sex.”
He calls her a deviant a lot. It aggravates me, and I’ll spend the next twenty minutes after this meeting telling her all the reasons why she’s not one .
“I do miss it,” Lily lies. “I miss the way it makes me feel.” She felt it pretty damn well last night.
She came so hard that she ended up in a fit of laughter afterwards.
We tried the abstinence bit. It didn’t work, and we have no more what ifs .
We’re finally finding our groove in intimacy, and the only thing standing in our way is this guy.
“We can’t have you missing it, Lily,” he tells her. “The more you dwell on your deviant fantasies, the more you revert back to your deviant ways. You’re just a whore now, but if you let this cycle continue you could become something worse. A pedophile. A sex offender.”
Lily’s head whips in my direction, and she clutches my hand, silently begging me not to lash out. This isn’t the first time he’s basically called her a future pedophile.
“Give me a minute while I gather the tools.” He stands and rummages around his office closet.
Shit.
This is why I don’t want her to stay here. I must wear a pleading look because she says, “I’m fine. We can’t leave.”
“We can actually,” I refute. “There’s the door. Fuck the trust fund.”
“It’s not about the trust fund.” I know.
She’s trying to fix all the damage she created. She’s even rebuilding a relationship with her father. We still don’t attend those Sunday luncheons, but he calls her after they end to catch up.
Her mother is a different story.
Lily squeezes my hand, and I stare at the way her fingers intertwine with mine. Last week, we wouldn’t have been able to do this. Last week, she would have burst into tears before I touched her.
“Just trust me. It’s like a game,” she says.
I narrow my eyes. “A game in which you get shocked for fun?” I mock gasp. “Are you into the S&M part of BDSM and didn’t tell me? ”
She punches my arm, and I grab onto her wrist, pulling her in for a kiss. She’s going to need it.