Chapter 29 Santos
TWENTY-NINE
santos
“Ihave one…” Fuck. Why was it so difficult to parse out sentences now? “Requirement? I don’t know, that’s not the word, but…”
I hadn’t sweated so much in years, and that included training camp. For fuck’s sake, I was clammy all over.
It was a good thing I had gone for in-person therapy. This would only be worse if I started going paranoid about Ever, or anyone else, listening in.
“A nonnegotiable,” I breathed out, the word suddenly there.
The woman who had been listening to me go on in circles for the last forty minutes just gave the subtlest of nods.
She wasn’t easy to read, I’d been trying.
She wasn’t even writing down much, because she recorded everything instead.
The first ten minutes had been her explaining her process and her approach to therapy and a bunch of other big words.
I had been expecting it, but I didn’t know if it had put me at ease, or if it had only made me grow impatient to just blurt everything and get it out of the way.
“Let’s hear it, then.”
Right.
Deep breaths.
This was fine.
She was a professional, and I had rehearsed this before getting out of the car.
“I’m not changing anything with Ever.” I forced my voice to sound steadier than it felt. “I don’t care if you think I’m using him as a crutch, or if you think our relationship isn’t normal, or…whatever. I need him. He stays.”
I thought maybe she’d give out something. No one could have a perfect poker face all of the time, but aside from a tilt of her head to the side, nothing.
“I would love to have you elaborate on that next time, what you see as a crutch or as normal,” she enunciated slowly.
I fidgeted with a pen on her desk she had said I could grab earlier.
“That said, I’d only voice a concern if I thought a relationship was a threat to your or someone else’s wellbeing.
You said your goal coming here is to make sense of what happened with your superior, and to learn coping mechanisms to both deal with that trauma and adjust to your new life. That’s going to be my focus.”
“Okay.”
I hated the way that word felt—trauma—like a punch to my gut.
It made me want to recoil. I didn’t fight, though.
I just stayed still. She had about a dozen pens in the mug I’d grabbed mine from, all different colors.
I wondered if there was a meaning behind it, and she was psychoanalyzing me now for my choice.
I only grabbed the green one because it reminded me of an oversized hoodie Ever had been wearing the other day.
It hadn’t been one of mine, but it was cozy. Very fluffy.
Unaware of my inner rambling, my apparently new therapist went back to explaining how she organized her appointments and what to expect from the first few weeks.
She wanted to keep digging into a bunch of things and assessing over two appointments next week, and then we’d come up with a plan to work on stuff.
I wasn’t fully listening. It might be a common response. She had a softer smile on her face when she stood up from her chair, as if she knew I was going to need a physical cue to figure out that our time was over.
“I’m looking forward to working with you, Santos.” She shook my hand and smiled more brightly than she’d been doing all throughout the appointment. “If you just hang on to talk to my receptionist, she can set up a next appointment for us.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I cringed.
She didn’t react to it, but…
Fuck.
I was a civilian now. She wasn’t my superior. No one really said sir or ma’am outside of the military.
Unless they were into kinky stuff, but obviously that did not apply here.
Fuck.
“Sorry.”
“There are worse slips.”
Huh. So, she had a sense of humor. I supposed that was a good thing. Wasn’t it?
My head was throbbing by the time I parked the car inside the garage that was attached to the villa. It didn’t usually bother me, but Ever might be rubbing off on me. He was more disdainful about the state of this neighborhood, when he was having a bad day for any other reason.
He was also in the middle of…cleaning.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t even glance up. “I spilled a glass of juice, and the cleaners already think I’m too much of a mess even when I keep telling them not to bother with my room.”
They didn’t, but I got what he was saying.
With the two of us, and the fact that we didn’t have regular jobs or much of a schedule, it might’ve been doable to take on the maintenance of the place, but his parents coddled Ever.
They would never make him lift a finger if they could hire someone to do it for him.
Ever was aware. He grumbled endlessly about his privilege, and how he hated it but at the same time didn’t think he’d even want to survive in today’s society without it.
I mostly nodded along and snuggled him close when he was in the middle of those rants.
It wasn’t as if I didn’t know about privilege. The silver spoon I was born with wasn’t as shiny, but there wasn’t a big difference between my family’s net worth and his. Hell, for all I knew, mine was bigger—sans the blue blood attached to his and the protocols and expectations that came with it.
“Want some help?”
For a second, it looked like he was going to say yes.
Back in middle school, I used to tease him for it.
For how he pretended he was against everything his family represented, but he was the first to step away the second discomfort settled in.
Now, I just smiled like a fool as he recovered and shook his head like the stubborn guy he could be.
We made quite a pair.
“Uh, no. I’ve got it. And I mean, you had your therapy thing. I should be asking you. Ugh.”
“Breathe, babes.”
If I let him ramble, he would do it, and then he’d be out of energy for the remainder of the day.
I thought I’d be too exhausted, and I was, in a way, but that need to protect wasn’t fading along with the rest of my energy. The headache that threatened to become a migraine soon didn’t exacerbate because he looked like he needed a hug, or because I was itching to pull him into one.
Or because I gave in to the urge and cut the distance between us, forcing him to drop the cloth he’d been using to get all of the juice off the glass table.
I really didn’t understand the appeal of tables that wouldn’t be able to withstand any amount of weight and cracked with only looking at them.
“I’m good,” I breathed against his hair. Ever slumped completely once he didn’t have to hold his weight. “I have two more appointments next week, but it’s good.”
It would be, at least.
I hoped.
Thinking about it was not going to help or put me on a better mood for Tuesday. Focusing on Ever might.
I should’ve added something about possibly developing a sex addiction.
Yes, Ever had told me all about how that wasn’t a thing beyond right-wing propaganda, but whatever.
If it worked, it worked, and it wasn’t leaving my thoughts.
Or my therapy’s office? I was still unclear on how much she wanted me to open up.
She had said something about not being the kind of therapist who thought everything went back to childhood and upbringing, so maybe she just wanted to talk about the military, and Stuart.
And why I’d clung to whatever that was like a lifeline, even with all the blurred thoughts and feeling like I wanted to throw up more often than not.
Even when I had thrown up.
Fuck.
I was supposed to be good. To be in control.
“I’m ordering Vietnamese,” Ever shook me off my thoughts. “We haven’t had any since I picked you up from the airport.”
And he was terrible at coming up with excuses, but I loved him anyway.
“Okay.”
The small concession had him grinning wide. It was the two of us against the world, again.
My hands moved to his hips, my lips to his like there was a magnet connecting us.
“Do you want cake, too? The place we hang out at by the bus station has started delivering, too, and they have red velvet that’s actually authentic, and it’s so good.”
“Sure.” He was the one with a sweet tooth, not me, but it wasn’t like I could tell if I’d even have appetite for pho, so the food might as well be something he actually wanted. “Order whatever. Then join me in the shower?”
I’d never been the type who thought showers helped to clear up my head.
It would certainly not be that type of shower if Ever joined, but in no universe would I not want to shower, or do anything, without him if the choice was there.
My therapist could psychoanalyze that all she wanted, I could be ten times more stubborn than Ever.
“If I join you, we might not be out of it by the time the delivery person arrives.”
I huffed.
He wasn’t supposed to be the voice of reason. “Fine.”
I didn’t want to be reasonable—there was a small voice at the back of my head begging to throw a tantrum and pout and complain until I got my way. That voice was quickly squashed.
I was an adult. I was Ever’s bodyguard, for fuck’s sake, even if it was on paper only and there had never been a single threat against him or anyone around him. Just because his parents could go a bit paranoid didn’t mean that they didn’t have trust placed on me. Expectations.
I shook my head. I was a twenty-nine year-old on a funk because someone else’s parents had a vision of me that didn’t quite fit. Was that something I could bring up on Tuesday, or did that fall into the childhood and upbringing stuff she said she wasn’t interested in?
Huh.
Had she said that she wasn’t interested in, or that she didn’t think everything went back to that? Did it mean something different? Was it worse if my case traced back to childhood and parents and all of that?
Fuck.
No, I was not going to think about therapy again until I was back on that waiting room on Tuesday.
I was just going to finish scrubbing off, and eat some food. Maybe I’d grab Ever and convince him to eat in one of the couches in the living room, and he could be on my lap even if it made it very inconvenient to actually eat without making a mess.
Yeah, okay. That sounded like a plan. I could focus on making Ever squirm, and keep his weight on me, and that would be all.
Until Tuesday.
Very adaptive behavior.
The psychiatrist on base used that word a lot. My new therapist hadn’t used it today.
Nuh-uh.
All those thoughts weren’t going to be a thing until a professional was sitting in front of me.
I just had to rush through scrubbing off. Once Ever was on sight again, it would all be fine.