Chapter 48
Forty-Eight
Cassie sat cross-legged on the thin rug beside the bunks, the laptop open, angled away from the window so she didn’t turn herself into a neurotic shadow for the session. She hadn’t changed out of her training kit. There was no time. This was squeezed in, a favour from Joanna.
She clicked the Zoom link and up popped Joanna, looking like she always did: neutral blouse, dark-framed glasses, that faint, knowing smile that had first irritated Cassie and now felt comforting to see. Joanna would know what to do. Because Cassie sure as shit didn’t.
‘Hi, Joanna…’ she began and then caught the woman up on events since the last session, in the most factual and brief way possible.
‘You’re at Larchfield?’ Joanna asked after she’d finished. Cassie couldn’t miss the surprise in her tone.
‘Here as a favour to Delilah.’ Cassie said quickly. ‘She needed more court time.’
Joanna gave a slow nod. ‘You couldn’t have found it anywhere else?’
Cassie shook her head vehemently. ‘No.’
‘You needed to go to the place that basically raised you into a world-class tennis player and is now run by your ex-coach and girlfriend?’ Joanna asked. She sounded neutral as always, but it was hard to miss the subtext.
‘What’s your point?’ Cassie said, playing dumb.
Joanna raised an eyebrow.
Cassie rolled her eyes. ‘Ugh, fine. Tell me why I did it?’
‘No. You tell me why you did it,’ Joanna said pleasantly.
‘So I could have it out with her?’ Cassie suggested. ‘Tell her to go fuck herself?’
Joanna sighed. ‘Close.’
Cassie wanted to shake the laptop. ‘Just tell me if you know.’
‘That’s not the way this works. It doesn’t mean anything unless it comes from you,’ Joanna told her, for about the thousandth time.
‘But I don’t know,’ Cassie told her grumpily.
‘OK, let’s go back a bit. With what we talked about last session.’
‘I don’t want to talk about Delilah.’
There was a silence.
‘I don’t!’
‘I didn’t mention Delilah,’ Joanna said.
‘I’m this close to slamming the laptop shut,’ Cassie told her flatly.
Joanna laughed. ‘Go ahead.’
Cassie sighed. ‘God! What is your problem today?!’
‘I tend to save my problems for my therapist,’ Joanna told her.
‘You have a therapist!?’ Cassie exclaimed.
‘That’s a surprise?’
‘I guess I thought you were… done?’
Joanna looked stupefied. ‘Done?’
‘Yeah. Like… finished. Or something.’ Cassie realised how silly that sounded the second she’d finished saying it.
‘No one is ever finished,’ Joanna told her. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that.’
Cassie sighed. ‘Well. Fuck. Then what’s the point?’
‘To be better,’ Joanna shrugged.
‘That’s it? That’s as good as it gets?’
‘You were a professional tennis player. You can’t see the benefit of being a little better than you were yesterday? What that can add up to?’ Joanna asked her.
‘Seeing as my body broke and I can’t play professionally anymore, no. No, I can’t.’
Joanna nodded. ‘I take your point. But that didn’t happen to your mind, did it? That keeps progressing.’
‘Doesn’t feel like it,’ Cassie said, aware that she sounded like a moody teenager right now.
‘I promise you, it does. It is. Because you’re here. You haven’t given up.’
‘Then why am I here?’ Cassie asked once more.
Joanna paused. ‘I told you, I can’t…’
‘…Tell me. I have to figure it out for myself. Fine. You win. I’m going to figure it out.’ She paused. ‘Can you give me a hint?’
‘Why don’t we talk about Delilah?’ the therapist said gently.
Cassie rubbed the back of her neck. Her fingers were still chalky from the courts. ‘I don’t even know her properly. It’s been—what? A few weeks?’
‘But…’
Cassie shook her head. ‘But she gets under my skin. OK? I can’t stop thinking about her.’
Joanna raised an eyebrow. ‘In what way?’
‘In every way,’ Cassie admitted. ‘She’s… there. Unbelievably, terrifyingly there. And she looks at me like she’s… She just really looks, do you know what I mean? And I cried in her arms yesterday. Can you believe that?’
‘You want to let her in,’ Joanna said, and it wasn’t a question.
Cassie laughed. ‘I don’t think I do.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because… because it won’t work.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m done with that.’
‘Why?’
Cassie was dementedly annoyed. ‘Are you six?’
Joanna shrugged lightly. ‘Answer or don’t.’
Cassie tutted. ‘Because of Petra.’
‘Because she hurt you?’
‘Yes.’
‘The woman who runs the place you currently occupy.’
Cassie frowned. ‘And?’
Joanna cocked her head. ‘We’re so close now, Cassie.’
Cassie groaned. ‘If you think I came here to get closure with her so I could heal the wound she left and open myself up to new love with Delilah, you’re dead wrong.’
Joanna smiled and said nothing. Cassie wanted to reach through the screen and slap her around the face. ‘I’m telling you, you’re wrong!’
‘I didn’t say that. You did.’
‘But you were thinking it!’ Cassie exploded.
Joanna was maddeningly calm. ‘Maybe. But you couldn’t know that unless you were, on some level, thinking it too.’ She paused. ‘Delilah and Petra aren’t the same,’ she said slowly.
‘I swear, my hand is itching to slam this laptop shut. I’m so close, you don’t even know,’ Cassie warned her.
‘Wouldn’t much matter if you did,’ Joanna said philosophically. ‘We got where we needed to get.’
‘Uggh!’ Cassie said and slammed the screen down.
She stood up and went to the window. She could hear that distant, familiar sound of tennis balls being hit in rhythm, like a clock ticking. She sighed and got her phone out, sending Joanna a text.
I’m sorry for that.
No problem, Joanna texted back.
No, I’m not a child. I shouldn’t have done that.
It’s not the first time that’s happened in a session, and I’m sure it won’t be the last, Joanna assured her. Let me know if you’d like another session. I’m sure I can find time.
Thanks.
She put her phone away and walked out of the cabin to the main lodge.
She hoped Delilah hadn’t finished eating yet. Cassie thought it might be sort of pleasant to have lunch with her.