Chapter 5 #2
Drawing back with a light frown, I said, “What? Duke please.” I paused and waved him off. “Any way, you have a lovely office, Nikki.”
“Thank you!” She looked around and I watched as her eyes lit up. “I put a lot of thought into it.”
“See?” Duke said with a laugh. “Too much chemistry. Listen,” he paused and sat up a little for dramatics. “My wife isn’t normally like this. She’s more of a listener than a talker. Unless she’s at work, or she knows you.”
“I can assure you; Mahogany and I are not acquaintances. If we were, y’all wouldn’t be here,” she said with a smile and a hint of finality.
She was over the jokes, and accusations of a prior relationship and I appreciated that.
I loved a bitch who could put a nigga in their place without having to do much.
If we were outside of the office, I would have leaned forward, slapped hands with her and hit her with another ‘I know that’s right’.
But… decorum. So, I sat down, crossed one leg over the other and simply fucking smiled.
If anybody in the room got the hint, it was Duke’s ass because he was very, very familiar with my ‘checkmate’ move.
Duke, with his mouth turned down, threw his hands up and said, “Right, right. I know. Ethics.”
“ Exactly . Which is also why you don’t have to worry about this being some sort of… gang up. I’m not here for ‘tea’, personal gain, or anything outside of helping you two tackle the issues that landed you here.”
Duke nodded, took a deep breath, and sat back. “And that’s what we’re here for. I trust you—I’m just a lil nervous.” Pausing, he nervously laughed, turned my way and kissed me on the side of my head. “I can’t lose my baby. So shit, if you say you can help us… help us.”
We locked eyes, and I sighed.
Nicole smiled. “Well… shall we begin?” She asked, before grabbing her iPad and Apple Pencil.
“Yep,” I said through a sigh, as my anxiety started to creep back up.
Started with my heart racing and then my knee began to bounce.
I wasn’t only afraid of therapy being a waste of time.
I was afraid of it working. Didn’t know who we’d be, or how we’d be if it did.
It was complicated. My feelings about the whole thing.
Duke kissed me again and ran his hand over my bouncing knee, in an effort to ease my anxiety. Nicole glanced at Duke’s hand and smiled, probably thinking we would be a cakewalk. However, she was going to be in for a rude awakening. There was nothing easy about Duke and I.
Because we’d been together so long, we had been through a ton.
Just about everything except for side babies and STDs.
We met young— very young. I was fifteen, D sixteen.
Life moved very fast for us. One minute he was asking me to be his girlfriend, the next, we were finding out I was pregnant.
No exaggeration. We had our first child when I was fifteen.
So, when I said life moved fast for us, I didn’t lie.
Eighteen years later, we were grown ass adults, with four children, careers, and problems bigger than the both of us.
Problems I kept sweeping under the rug because they were too…
ugly… to face. The gravity of the damage they’d caused was at least.
With a nervous, tightlipped smile, I asked, “Where would you like us to start?”
“Well,” She tapped around on her iPad, likely pulling our intake form up. “I see infidelity has been?—”
“ Was ,” Duke pointed out with a nod, as if that shit even matter.
She nodded. “I apologize, Was a big issue in your marriage.”
“Relationship too,” I added, since he wanted to add shit.
He shifted, uncomfortable.
“Okay, got it,” Nicole said, nodding. “And you guys have been together how long? Eighteen years. Wow, that’s a long time.”
“Tell me about it,” Duke stated. “We grew up together. You know how that be. I was a knucklehead?—”
“Not yet,” She paused. “I don’t mean to cut you off.
But not yet. We’re not going there just yet.
I’m just going over my notes right now. Besides…
I like to start at the beginning and then work my way up to the not so pretty things.
That way, I can see what the foundation was built on with hopes of possibly getting back there. To the roots.”
The roots were fucked up. The roots were weak. Feeble. Undeveloped. Why the fuck did she want to start at the roots, knowing we got together when we were fucking kids? I didn’t want to start at the roots. The roots were a lie.
“With all due respect,” I intervened. “I appreciate your method. I think it’s phenomenal, honesty. However, that doesn’t work for us. Being that we met when we were children, I would like to start someplace else.”
Chanté nodded. “Gotcha. Where would you?—”
“The first time he cheated,” I blurted out.
I didn’t want to spend too much time here.
Wanted to move on. Wanted the healing to hurry up and beginning.
Wanted to rip the band aid right off. Didn’t need to talk about the fairytale he sold me.
Didn’t need to talk about the good days because shit…
the good days were far and in between. I had loads, and loads, and loads of heartbreak.
My heart was heavy with the shit. So… no…
fuck the pretty shit. I wanted to get right down to the nitty-gritty.
Needed to. I was like that. Fast paced. Impatient.
In a hurry to get shit done. I needed to leave the session lighter—not with that shit steady wearing me down.
But she shut me down. Sat her iPad aside, locked in on me and straight up told me no. She didn’t sugarcoat it. Didn’t make the ‘no’ look pretty. None of that. She was stern. But she did give me reason.
“I understand. You want to get right to it. But that’s not how this works.
This is marital counseling—we have to talk about it all.
You have your perspective, and he has his…
let’s do this the right way. Rushing, skipping over the parts that made you fall in love with him, won’t work here.
Because quite frankly, you’re doing that already. ”
Ouch.
I drew back with raised brows.
“You are. Now, I’m not one to pacify, or to,” she paused. “To um…”
“Bullshit,” Duke answered for her with a light laugh.
She laughed and pointed at him with raised brows as to agree.
“Expect honesty from me. Thorough counseling that’s going to get in there.
All the way in there. Skeletons will be dug up, eventually.
But I would like to hear about how you started, first. Why you started and what this man did to make you happy.
Because despite meeting at a young age, you weren’t young always. And he wasn’t bad always. No offense.”
“None taken,” I reassured.
“But, before we get into that, I would like to know what brought you two in. Your why. I have what I have in my notes but I... you know… would like to hear it directly from the two of you.”
I shifted around uncomfortable, toying with the tassels on one of the couch pillows.
My anxiety was rising again. I didn’t know how I was going to survive marital therapy if I couldn’t get through simple questions.
Talking about my marriage with Chanté was one thing, but actually sitting next to Duke talking about it with a therapist…
I mean, digging, digging, was going to be another.
He wasn’t really aware of just how much he hurt me.
I might’ve given him the cold shoulder here and there or went a little crazy on him.
But that was just me showing a fraction of the pain he’d caused.
I cheated for crying out loud. Gave my body to men I didn’t know.
He pushed me to limits I never saw myself going to.
I couldn’t blame it all on him… I was a grown ass woman with a moral compass after all but pain… it makes you do questionable shit.
“Well,” I started with a light shrug and a nervous giggle. “Cheating, of course. We need help because of cheating.”
“I understand that,” she paused, shifting around in her chair. “But I want to know, if he cheated in both the relationship and marriage, why choose to come to therapy this time?”
“We needed help,” Duke blurted out. “That’s it. To get through moving on from it.”
“I apologize, Duke, but I was speaking to Mahogany. I want to know why from the both of you, of course but,” she paused again. “I was addressing Mahogany just then.”
Oh shit. He wasn’t used to this. Us having a mediator.
Nervously, I swallowed because I knew in the back of my mind, if this—Nicole cutting him off to address me—kept happening, we wouldn’t be in therapy for long.
And well, you know how that goes. That cycle of fear would just keep circling and we’d never be okay and… I needed us to be okay, remember?
I cleared my throat and pushed that timid, feeble, weak version of myself aside. She was creeping. About to make me lose my footing, for real.
“To navigate through the grief,” I told her. “I have a lot of emotional and relationship trauma. And… I need to heal. I—I tense up at every touch, at every kiss… we have a lot of issues, and I believe the root cause is the cheating. I wasn’t like this before.”
Duke wrapped his arm around me, slowly running his hand over my arm.
She nodded. “The body never forgets.”
“What does that mean?”
“You forgive but the pain… the trauma… it’s stuck on you.
We’re only about five minutes into the first session and I’ve learned a lot about you already.
You like to move on. You don’t like to deal with or sit with the uncomfortable.
You move faster than your brain and body are ready to.
The tensing, flinching, or whatever else is a trauma response. ”
Duke cleared his throat. “Trauma response? You act like I beat her or something, Nik’.”
“Emotional abuse is just as bad as physical abuse, Mr. Morris,” she pointed out, before turning her body to face him. “Would you like to share your why?”