Chapter 16 Scarlett
SCARLETT
I could be at home in bed with a nice glass of wine, two dogs, and a John Hughes movie right now.
I can’t believe I shaved my legs and bikini region for this, and I don’t know how much longer I can keep this dumb smile on my face.
Josh or Jake or Lance—whatever this guy’s name is—he’s only a few years older than my shoes, which means he’s even younger than Dylan Brodie.
Not that Dylan Brodie has become the gauge by which I measure all men now.
But this guy isn’t as mature or interesting or fun to look at, I’m pretty sure he has an anxious-avoidant attachment style (the worst!), and I would like him to stop talking to me so I can finish eating the fries I ordered.
Josh/Jake/Lance is in the middle of a very long story about how he became a film location scout.
While he’s busy searching for a picture of an old warehouse on his phone, I take this opportunity to glance over at Lenora to see if she’s receiving any of the telepathic messages I’ve been trying to send her.
The ones that start with Dude. Why did you let these guys sit down with us?
and end with I’m never letting you drag me out on a weekend again!
One of them ended with me telling her I’d give her a purple nurple as soon as I can get my hands on her nurple.
But that’s only because I’ve had two and a half margaritas, so obviously I’m not going to give her a purple nurple unless I finish my third margarita.
But I am definitely not going to give Josh/Jake/Lance or anyone in this bar anything.
Except a big tip for the waitress because she’s nice.
Lenora is purposefully ignoring me and putting her hand on Josh/Jake/Lance’s friend’s knee.
That is not helpful. We only had about half an hour of friend catch-up time before these bozos came over, which wasn’t nearly enough.
So, as Noah would say, my best friend is being a poopie-doopie face and this whole night is a big fat stinky bag of farts.
The only thing I like about tonight is this tree that I’m sitting under. I love trees. I don’t sit under trees enough in my life. The one thing that would make me enjoy this tree more is if I were sitting under it with Dylan right now.
Whoa.
That Caddyshack gopher thought just tunneled right through my tree musings.
Josh or Jake or Lance is still talking about his job, and while I like that his job doesn’t involve acting with beautiful actresses, I am very bored, so I’m going to close my eyes and pretend that I’m really into this Bob Marley song.
I do like this song.
The only thing that would make me enjoy it more is if I were listening to it with Dylan right now.
“Dr. Shepard…”
That sounds an awful lot like Dylan’s voice.
Caddyshack gopher, what have you done to my brain?
I open my eyes and find a slightly blurry version of Dylan Brodie standing over me.
His hand rests on my shoulder. His thumb is barely touching my bare skin, but I want to take all of my clothes off all of a sudden.
What is happening?
“Dr. Shepard. Thank God you’re here. I’m having a mental health emergency, and I need to discuss it with you in private.
Right now.” He turns to Josh or Jake or Lance and says, “Sorry, dude. I need to speak with my therapist.” He holds his hand out, and I don’t fight the instinct to take it, because margaritas.
“Sorry, Josh, I have to—”
The guy on the sofa tells me his name is Eric.
“Right.” I let Dylan pull me up, and now my face is two inches from his neck and I want to lick it. “I need to talk to my patient about his mental state.” I don’t even know if I said that loud enough for Lance to hear.
“It’s more of an emotional state, really,” Dylan says, looking directly into my eyes.
My knees almost—almost—give out. For margarita reasons, not for Dylan looking into my eyes reasons. He is still holding my hand, and I seem to be letting him. He leads me away from the sofa, and I let him do that too.
“Um. Excuse me, sir?” Lenora calls out to Dylan. “Hi. I’m in charge of Scarlett tonight. Where do you think you’re taking her?” Dylan turns around, and as soon as my friend sees his face, she says, “Yup, all good, carry on.”
“I’ll be back in a minute,” I tell her, although I’m not so sure of that myself. “What are you doing here?” I ask him.
“Rescuing you from mediocre guys you don’t want to talk to.”
“But what are you doing at this bar?”
“I was wishing I could be with you, actually. I didn’t picture you as the bar-frequenting type. No judgment.”
“Well, I’m not a bar frequenter. My best friend dragged me here, and I hadn’t seen her in ages, so I let her. I just needed a distraction from…” You. I needed a distraction from my obsessive thoughts about you. Shit. Maybe he didn’t hear me.
He stops in his tracks, and I bump into him. “A distraction from what?”
“What? Shit. No, I was just saying my son’s with his dad and I was supposed to help my parents pack tonight. I would always rather be in bed with Bill Murray and my dogs than in a bar with a bunch of strangers.”
“Really? Because my brother invited me here to distract me from thinking about someone I don’t want to stop thinking about.” He says it casually but meaningfully. I don’t know how he does that. “But I’d rather be in bed with Bill Murray and my cat too.”
“How is Mr. Noodles?”
“That’s a very good question.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and opens up an app.
He shows me the livestream video feed of what looks like a small bedroom.
His kitten is curled up in a little pet bed on the floor, surrounded by little pillows and cat toys.
“I don’t know why they call them dog monitoring cameras. So offensive to cat lovers.”
RIP my ovaries.
“Are you feeling anxious about leaving your pet alone, Dylan?” Shit. I was trying to sound like a concerned professional, but I may as well have said, Would you like me to give you a relaxing hand job, Dylan?
“I think I just like being responsible for the well-being of another living soul. Is that selfish?”
“I don’t think you have a selfish bone in your body, Dylan Brodie.” Shit. I called him by his full name. Now he knows I always call him that in my head. Fuck. I said bone. Now he knows I want to bone him. I need to leave.
I don’t though.
We’re just standing here in the middle of the patio staring into each other’s eyes.
And he’s still holding my hand. And I don’t want him to let go of it.
He’s not rescuing me from a mediocre guy I don’t want to talk to anymore.
He’s rescuing me from my frozen heart. And I’m not ready to defrost yet.
“Do you believe in fate?” he asks, totally unironically.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because. Things happen, and we either attribute meaning to them or we don’t.”
“Well, I’m attributing a lot of meaning to our both being here at the same time.
” He guides me over to a bench near the patio bar.
He takes a seat and gently pulls me down to join him, leaning in as though he has something urgent to tell me.
“I hope that guy told you how beautiful you look tonight.”
“He didn’t, actually.”
“Well, he’s an adult who wears cargo shorts in the middle of autumn, so that doesn’t surprise me.”
“I still can’t believe you’re here.”
“I can’t believe you’re here. I was about to leave.”
“Me too.”
“Let’s leave together, then.”
“I can’t leave with you.” I realize I’ve been slowly leaning in toward him, so I lean back, into a shrub.
“Then let’s stay here and hang out together.”
“I can’t just hang out with you, Dylan?” Shit that wasn’t supposed to be a question.
“That sounded like a question, so my answer is: Yes. You can.”
“I really can’t. But it’s very nice to see you. I hope you’re happy, and I hope you’re having a good night.”
“I am now.”
I try to stand up, but I have to sit down again, for margarita reasons and because Dylan’s hand is on my arm. Gentle but firm. Eager without seeming desperate. So very twenty-seven.
“Don’t go.”
“I can’t just sit here and talk to you on a bench at a bar on a Friday night.”
He appears to be way too amused by those words that just came out of my mouth.
“Why not? You talked to that idiot dude, and you didn’t even want to.
You talked to Mia. She told me you were gracious when she ran into you.
We’re both your clients, and I know you want to talk to me, so why can’t you talk to me here? ”
“Because Mia has never asked me out.”
“Well, she talks about how beautiful you are all the time, apparently.”
“She’s just being sweet.”
He grins, a not-at-all-sweet grin, while stroking the top of my hand with his thumb. “So am I, Scarlett. So am I.”
God dammit.
How is this stroking the top of my hand with his thumb thing causing the glands in my vagina to produce so much lubricating fluid all of a sudden?
Maybe if I concentrate hard enough I can convince the blood vessels in my clitoris and vulva to stop dilating…
Nope. My nipples are basically murder weapons right now.
I’m about two thumb strokes away from an involuntary moan.
This is just embarrassing.
And wrong.
This is wrong.
I need to say words. Out loud. Words that convey my intention to reinforce the therapist-client boundary we established in our sessions.
Words that mean the opposite of please put your mouth on my mouth and all of the other parts of my body, which is what my face seems to be saying, because it’s getting closer and closer to his face again.
But Dylan surprises me by jerking his head back and saying, “Don’t worry, I’ll behave myself, Dr. Shepard. If that’s what you want.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Is that what you want? For me to behave myself?”
“Yes.” I stop staring at his lips and sit up straight.
“Okay.” He lets go of my hand, crosses his arms in front of his chest, and says, very seriously, “I won’t do anything that will make you want to kiss me any more than you already do.”
I open my mouth to protest, but nothing comes out.
“No, don’t worry.” His eyes scan the vast patio before returning to meet mine.
“There’s a lot that I could say and do, but I won’t.
I won’t coerce you into a Ping-Pong match in the hopes that you’ll bend forward so I can see down the top of your dress.
I won’t get you drunk and encourage you to play pool so I have an excuse to show you how good a pool player I am.
Because that would lead you to ask me to show you my special technique of lining up the cue with the ball and positioning myself behind it.
I’d have to stand behind you with my arm around you, my hands over yours.
I’d inhale the scent of your neck and press up against the back of your thighs so you could feel how much I want you…
to sink that ball in the corner pocket. I definitely wouldn’t suggest that we go for a walk along the beach, because that would be way too romantic and you’d most likely be tempted to grab me and kiss me.
Because I look really good when I’m only lit by moonlight and street lamps, and you…
I have a feeling you would be so breathtakingly beautiful in that light that I wouldn’t be able to stop you.
And if we kiss, just once, Dr. Shepard…there will be no turning back, now will there? ”
“You’re a bad boy, Dylan Brodie.” I have no idea whose husky, seductive voice that was.
It wasn’t Scarlett Bryce Shepard’s. It definitely wasn’t Dr. Shepard’s.
That voice belongs to the woman formerly known as Scarlett—before she was married, before she was a mom, before she was a therapist. That voice belongs to the woman who wants this boy to be so bad that he makes her forget how good she thinks she has to be.
“I’m not a boy, Scarlett,” he says. “And I think you know it.”
He’s right.
That’s not a boy’s voice.
Those are not the things a boy would say to a girl.
He doesn’t have the hands of a boy or the stubble of a boy or the broad shoulders of a boy.
He has the self-control of a man and the intentions of a man and the ability to seduce me like a man.
Which is why I need to go home.
Now.
Alone.
I think I say those words out loud, but if I didn’t—too bad.
I start to turn away from him, but his hand is in my hair. He turns me to face him. With one swift movement, he tugs on my hair and it cascades all around me.
All of my insides tumble and twirl and swoosh, gathering just below my belly. It feels like all the glittering white lights that hang around this patio are twinkling and dancing around inside me now. Waiting, impatiently, for Dylan Brodie to release the rest of me.
His fingers comb through my hair, just above my right ear.
It’s happening.
He’s going to pull me in for a kiss.
I wait.
I catch my breath and wait and watch.
I hear a crinkling sound.
He holds a dried-up little leaf in front of my face.
“It was in your hair,” he says in a hushed voice. “From that tree you were sitting under.”
Yeah.
Dylan Brodie is a man.
A man with self-control and the power to make me lose all of mine.
I run my fingers through my hair and stand up.
I’m steady and sober now. Steady and sober enough to stand up on my own. Steady and sober enough to say good night and walk away. “See you on Thursday, Dylan,” I say.
I don’t look back, and he doesn’t seem to be following me.
When I get to Lenora, she’s still sitting there with Jake’s friend, but when she sees my face, she immediately stands up, grabs her purse, hands me mine. “Time to go?” she asks me.
“Time to go.”
She puts her arm around me, and we walk out to the front of the bar and straight into the back seat of a cab that’s waiting there at the curb.
Talk about fate.
Lenora gives the driver my address and then watches me for a moment before saying, “You wanna talk about it?”
“Nope.”
“Okay.” She takes my hand and squeezes it. “That was Dylan Brodie though, right?”
“Yup.”
“Okay.” She’s quiet, for about five blocks up Wilshire Boulevard, and then she says, “You’re gonna hit that though? Right? I mean, come on.”
The Scarlett from before I was a wife or a mom or a therapist knows the answer to that question.
Scarlett Bryce Shepard knows the answer to that question.
Dr. Shepard knows the answer to that question.
We all have the same answer.
But none of us are ready to say it out loud yet.