Chapter 47
FORTY-SEVEN
KIRA
“Okay,” I say, so excited I can barely keep still after I have the tea prepared. I pour it into one of the hotel cups and bring it over to Isaak.
He takes the cup and looks at the brew speculatively. He leans in to take a sniff.
“Oh, don’t—” I start, but he’s already making a gagging face.
“Fuck, that smells putrid.”
“Yeah. It tastes fucking awful, too. Sorry. I should’ve warned you again. I suggest holding your nose every time you sip. And we should set our intentions while we wait for the tea to cool down.”
“I want to stop having fucking nightmares,” Isaak says.
Then he pinches his nose in between his fingers, brings the cup to his lips, tips it and his head backward, and chugs it all in one go.
“Isaak!”
His face contorts at the disgusting taste, but he sets it back down, empty except for the dregs of soggy mushrooms.
“Great,” he says, face still twisted from the bad taste. “What now?”
“Let me get you some fresh water. I was going to get that ready while the tea cooled. But you’re so goddamn impatient.”
“I’m not impatient. You’re impatient.”
“Me! I’m not the one who just downed a whole cup of burning, disgusting tea.”
“Well, you just brewed the disgusting stuff. I always suspected you were a witch.”
“Did you just call me a witch?”
“Absolutely. Red hair, disgusting medicinal brews, explosive orgasms. What else could you be?”
I roll my eyes, bringing him a water bottle. “Drink this.”
“Is the therapy for me to just piss out my trauma?”
“Shut up and drink it.”
“I like it when you order me around, Red. Tell me I’ve been a bad, bad boy.”
“Oh my god. I order you to be serious now and tell me your real intentions for our session.”
He cracks the water bottle and tips his head back just like he did with the tea, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he sucks it down.
“You don’t have to drink all of it!”
He stops after finishing about half the bottle. “Had to get that foul taste out of my mouth.” He caps the bottle and looks around. “I don’t feel anything.”
“Well, it doesn’t work right away.”
“How long does it take, then?”
“Anywhere from twenty minutes to two hours.”
His shoulders slump. “You fucking serious? Can we eat some breakfast then? I’m starved.”
“No breakfast. It’s best if you take the tea on an empty stomach.”
“Witch. Leaving a fella hungry with nothing but that disgusting shit in his stomach.”
I wave a hand. “You won’t mind in a little while.”
“Because I’ll be talking to the bunnies and the fairies?”
“Don’t be so small-minded. We’re using this as a healing session.”
“But it’s psychedelics. I’ll still see shit, right?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Not everyone does. But visuals do often accompany this strain.”
“Look at you, Professor.”
“You’re such a goofball.” It’s clear he’s not going to take this seriously or sit around to do some meditation like I did with my group the last time. But I can think of some other things to take his mind off the waiting and help keep him in a good mood.
“Oh, while you’re still in your right mind, do you consent to sex while on the mushrooms?”
His eyes finally brighten and his arms hook around my waist. “Now that’s some therapy I can get behind.”
I chortle and jump on him, trying to tackle him back onto the bed. I might as well be moving a mountain.
But it’s fun to try. Like our primal night, I just keep launching myself at him, using all my weight and strength to move him. I’ve gained a little weight since then. Maybe since I’m not such a frail little wallflower, I’ll be able to move him.
Cute. Apparently, that’s a very cute thought.
He chuckles low as he easily holds me off with his forearm.
I reach below to his stomach and try pinching at what would be love handles on any other man. I’ve discovered during our time together that this is his ticklish spot.
Indeed, he flinches, his somber face cracking, and I try to use it to my advantage to wrangle him down to the bed.
“Oh, now I’m really gonna get you, witch.” He’s got me spun over and pinned to the bed before I even realize what’s happening.
I’m breathing hard from all my attempts to move him, and he’s just grinning, perfectly at ease as he holds himself up with one hand on the mattress above my head, my wrists caught in his other.
“I bet you think you’re soooo slick,” I murmur. Then I shove my feet down on the bed, arching upward.
Isaak thinks I’m doing this to grind against him and grins, loosening his body.
Ha! I twist my hips, then escape out the side and off the bed, bouncing on the tips of my toes and grinning at him.
“Guess you don’t have me after all, big boy.” I glance down at his boxers to see the evidence of my nickname pointing straight up at me. Again? How is he hard again already? I thought guys needed recovery time. We went at it all night long in between drowsing.
He rolls smoothly off the bed, arms out. “Don’t I?”
I try to lunge past him, but he anticipates my movement. And when I try to juke in the other direction, he’s somehow there, too.
Before I know it, he’s got me hooked around the waist, and I’m flying through the air, landing on my back in the center of the bed, giggling my ass off.
He scrambles back on top of me and pins both my wrists by my head, one knee at my groin. “Got ya.”
I shift and try to grapple free of his hold.
With anyone else in this position, I would be panicking. But with Isaak, I feel safe. I flex all my muscles just to feel them. To feel alive. And to check for any weaknesses in his hold.
There are none this time. I strain all my muscles against him, and again, I still feel safe.
This is the gift he’s given me.
To finally feel completely safe with a man. Which is when it hits me. Wow, I didn’t feel safe before. Because of what happened with Drew. If a guy I trusted so much could hurt me that badly…
I just turned it on myself, as if I couldn’t trust myself to understand what the world was really like. It was like everyone else already understood that sex was just brutal, painful shoving, and I’d been a foolish child with my dreams of sweet, pleasurable caresses. I thought I was the one in the wrong.
But it was Drew. Drew was wrong that night.
I always told myself that it was because he was just a kid. I made so many excuses for him. But Isaak was right. I was just a fucking kid, too. For real, though. I was younger than Drew by a year, only seventeen to his eighteen, because I was graduating early. I was seventeen and didn’t know any better. He did, and I don’t even care if he didn’t. Any compassionate human should have known that was wrong to do to another person. I was sobbing .
But Drew’s not compassionate. He doesn’t have a compassionate bone in his body.
“Your face,” Isaak suddenly whispers, falling to the side, one arm still loosely around my stomach.
He lifts a finger to caress my cheek, his eyebrows high in wonder.
I know that look. The ’shrooms are hitting.
“What about my face?” I reach over to grab my phone so I can push play on the Johns Hopkins psychedelic playlist, and some chill French horn music starts playing. It’s a three-hour playlist with music from all over the world.
“There are glowing tattoos all over your face,” he whispers.
“Are they pretty?”
“They’re beautiful.”
“What do they look like?”
“Like glowing neon stars. And geometric shapes. They keep morphing and changing as you move.”
His big finger traces shapes on my face, so gently I can barely feel the touch. Immediately goosebumps rise all over my body.
We’re going in. I’m not the one on the medicine, but I can somehow feel that this is going to be big. Momentous. And I feel so happy that he’s allowing me to do this with him.
He just keeps tracing shapes on my face as we lie there together, side by side.
“Can I give you a massage?” he asks.
“Um. Yeah. Yes.”
You never know how anyone’s session is going to go. I’m just here as what’s called a “sitter.” But this isn’t like the group of fellow Ph.D. students I came with before. I never thought of what something like this could be like with an intimate partner. When I first thought up the idea of doing this with Isaak, I tried to prepare for anything. I always knew this might trigger his PTSD in ways that might be unpredictable.
But really, as a sitter, you just try to be open to whatever the other person is feeling. So, if he wants to massage me? Yes, I’m open.
“Take off your shirt so I can feel your skin,” he says quietly.
I do what he asks and lay down on the bed, my face sideways on the pillow so I can still talk to him and check in.
“Your skin is so beautiful,” he whispers reverently, running his hand gently down the center of my back. “I was joking earlier when I said I’d see fairies, but you look like one with these neon glowing shapes all over your skin.”
His strong hands come to my shoulders just as a woman with a warm, operatic voice dances up and down the octaves on my phone.
“God, you feel like silk,” Isaak says, still in a reverent whisper. “The softest silk I’ve ever touched.”
Well, damn, if I knew this was gonna get me a spa session and sweet words, I would’ve dragged us up here weeks ago.
My body melts into the mattress as Isaak gives me a full back massage, marveling out loud to himself about how soft and silky and gorgeous and glowing I am. His fingers are strong but gentle at the same time.
When I had my experience, I felt like the person I unlocked during the session was my deepest, truest self.
Which I think means Isaak’s deepest, truest self is this gentle, loving being. Rather than seeing to his own pleasure, he’s connecting with me and seeing to mine.
I’ve never met a man like him. I’ve never met any person like him. Not everyone reacts like this to the mushrooms. Some of the guys from my program just started monologuing about every thought that came into their head, as if the medicine made them feel more ingenious than they already did every day (which was a lot).
But Isaak is, being so… Isaak .
“You’re so fucking beautiful.” He’s bent over the bed now, his forehead pressed to the top of my spine. “I’ve never touched anything so beautiful in my whole stupid ugly life.”
My chest squeezes in pain for him. And I remember, as nice as this feels, I’m here for him. I want healing for him more than I’ve ever wanted anything for myself.
The music shifts again to an ayurvedic chant.
It’s time. I’m his guide, so let’s make this count. Let’s take it in deeper.
“What about your life is ugly, my love?”
My eyes open wide. Those last words just popped out on accident.
“All of it. Before I met you.”
Okay, so he didn’t react to the my love part, and I need to get over myself. This is about him.
“I bet not all of it. But it’s okay to talk about the ugly parts here. Nothing has to be scary while you’re here with me in this place. Does it feel scary to talk about?”
He’s lying his forehead fully against my spine now, and he sort of rubs it around. “No, I guess not.” His hands are still on my shoulders.
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Well, it was real ugly and scary when I was just a kid. I can see it in front of me if I close my eyes. I’m back there now.”
“What do you see, honey?” I hope I’m not pushing too far, too fast.
“I’m a little boy in a gym. All the other kids went home and I’m still there, waiting. I’m happy I’m alone ’cause I don’t like the other kids. They make fun of me ’cause my clothes ain’t clean. Not since Abuelita died a couple months ago. But the teacher isn’t happy because she’s been waiting too long. She keeps trying to call Mom and can’t get ahold of her.”
My chest squeezes all the breath out of me, it feels like. I want to ask a thousand questions. I know he grew up in group homes, but he’s talking about his mom . And again, I have to remind myself who this is for. This isn’t a fact-finding mission for me. What might help him ?
“Do you think your mom wanted to be there?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says with a sudden sob. He buries his face against my back. “I see her face, too, right beside mine. She’s so beautiful but so fucked up. And there’s my dad, except it’s not my dad, it’s Elmer’s. Oh, Jesus, they’re all there at once?—”
His words break off as he erupts into more hard, body-wracking sobs as a burst of frantic Spanish spills out of his mouth. “Déjame sentir la alegría y el regocijo; que se gocen los huesos que danaste.”
I try to turn around so I can hug him, but he just keeps me in place, face down on the bed with his face smushed in my back as he cries. His arms wrap around me, though, and it feels good that he seems to be taking some comfort from me even as I feel his body-wracking sobs continue.
“I see it all. Oh god, Red. I see it all.”