Chapter 32 Scarlett #2
ME: LOL! So I’ll see you tomorrow? Is that okay?
DYLAN: It’s okay as long as you’re okay.
ME: Yay!
He’s calling me. Dylan Brodie is now calling me on my phone.
If I answer and talk to him when I’m feeling like this, it will turn into a fight.
It will turn into something big and possibly devastating and irreversible.
So I will do the rational thing and unload all my crazy onto my therapist instead of him.
I calmly and rationally put my phone down and walk to the other side of my office, count to twenty, and then walk back to my desk and look at my phone again.
There is a missed call but no voicemail notification.
I wait to see if he is leaving me a long voicemail—he isn’t.
I wait to see if he texts me—he doesn’t.
ME: Hey! I was just in the restroom. Sorry I missed your call!
No response. He’s probably driving now. I think he said he’d be in the Valley all day before dinner.
I call my parents to let them know I’m picking up Noah early and ask them to bring him down to the curb so I don’t have to go into the building and risk bumping into Dylan in case he’s at home.
Once he’s securely strapped into the car, I take off like a getaway driver.
For the rest of the evening, I keep asking Noah questions and forcing myself to smile and focus on his answers while I wait to get a call or email from Dr. Keller and a text from Dylan.
I don’t get a text from Dylan, but I do get a message from Dr. Keller telling me she can see me at eight thirty in the morning. This is somewhat of a relief, but it’s strange that I haven’t heard back from Dylan at all. He’s usually so responsive.
I feel as though I’m doing a decent job of hiding what a neurotic mess I am from my son until I realize it’s not even eight o’clock and he’s already in bed without my having to tell him to go to bed.
That’s how badly he wants to get away from me.
He would rather go to sleep than be around my anxious energy.
I give him a kiss and mess up his hair as I tuck him in. He stares up at me, watching me fuss over straightening his sheets and covers.
“What?”
“Mom. You look like you’re holding in a fart.”
“I’m not.”
“A brain fart, I mean. It sometimes looks like you’re holding stuff in your head, like when an astronaut farts in his space suit.
And then what happens when he goes back to the spaceship and opens up the suit?
The fart that was just floating around in there comes out and it could go on fire.
That’s what could happen with your brain farts if you keep them inside too much.
” He holds his hand up to his temple, fingers together, and then opens them wide. “Boom. Flammable brain fart.”
“First of all, I’m very proud of you for remembering what flammable means. Secondly, that’s not what a brain fart is.”
“A brain fart can be what I want it to be, Mom.”
“Good point. You’re brilliant.”
He scooches over and pats the space beside him on top of the covers, inviting me to sit next to him. He almost never does this. When I sit down, he puts his hand on top of mine.
I want to cry. I don’t, but I want to.
“Mom. Are you sad?”
“Not exactly.”
“Scared?”
“Maybe a little. Sort of.”
“Because Dylan’s going away?”
“It has something to do with that, yes.”
“Is it because of the feelings you put away in your box?”
“Um. What?”
“I heard Grandma say to Grandpa once that you’re the one who hangs on to things you don’t need. Not her.”
“Oh really? That’s interesting.”
“She said you put the feelings you don’t like in invisible boxes but you forget to take them to Goodwill.”
“She said that?”
He nods. “It’s the same as a brain fart though.”
“Yeah, I guess it is, huh? There’s nothing for you to worry about. I’m going to talk to someone in the morning.”
“I’m going to miss Dylan when he’s in the mountains. And Mr. Noodles.”
I push his hair off his forehead, straightening what I just messed up. “Me too.”
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I tense up, but I don’t check it.
“Just look at your phone, Mom. It’s probably him.”
That makes me laugh. I check my phone, and there is a notification from Dylan.
DYLAN: See you for dinner tomorrow.
That’s it. That’s all he says. The screening’s probably about to start. But at least I heard from him.
“See,” Noah says. “You just let out a silent brain fart.”
Dr. Keller silently takes note of the dark circles under my eyes and apologizes for eating two Egg McMuffins while I talk because she didn’t have time to have breakfast before leaving her house.
Instead of stating the obvious—that I tossed and turned all night—I decide to jump in and start off by admitting to her that Dylan Brodie was a patient for two and a quarter sessions before I became intimate with him.
I’m hoping that since her mouth is full, she won’t be able to lecture me about how unethical and illegal that was, but also I really want an Egg McMuffin now.
She chews and swallows, dabs at her mouth with a paper napkin and then says, “Is that why you needed to see me? Are you trying to turn yourself in to me, Scarlett? Because that is not how this works.”
It’s so unexpected that I burst out laughing. “No, I just felt I should tell you that piece so you get the whole picture.”
She nods. “Yes. I understand. Two and a half sessions…”
“Two and a quarter. If that.”
“Well…I mean, I hated my ethics professor.”
“So did I.”
“That was always my least favorite class.”
“Mine too.”
“But…we learn those ethics for a reason. The board and the state have rules in place for a reason.”
“I know. Trust me, I know.”
“And when you hear of certain cases…there is a visceral response. No? You know in your gut and your skin if it feels wrong. And I am not getting that feeling with you. For this. Did you?”
“Honestly? No. I just used it as an excuse before I agreed to go out with him because I was so afraid of falling for him.”
“Legally—and this is not my professional advice, but as a friend and mentor, Scarlett…I believe it’s only an issue if Dylan decides to file a complaint against you.”
“Right.”
“It sounds unlikely that that would ever happen.”
“It’s unlikely, sure. But how likely was it that he’d be referred to me as a client? Or that he’d give a talk at my son’s school and my son would give him a kitten? Or that my parents would move into his condo? The unlikely is par for the course here.”
She holds up her hand to try to get me to slow down. “Let’s unpack this piece by piece. What is it specifically that you’re nervous about right now?”
“Well, it’s not that he was my patient, actually. It’s the fact that he’s an actor who came to see me because he was getting over his most recent ex-girlfriend—who was his most recent co-star. All of Dylan’s ex-girlfriends were his co-stars.”
Dr. Keller nods. She sees where I’m going with this.
“And now he’s about to do a movie and the actress who has been cast opposite him was his very first girlfriend. There will be steamy scenes. Naked ones.”
“And you know this because he told you?”
“I actually found out from my best friend, who saw it in the trades. I think he was waiting to tell me in person. But I canceled our date last night because I wanted to talk to you first.”
“I see. So you have not spoken to him about this yet?”
“No. I want to talk it all through with you first so I can come to a rational decision about what to do.”
“Do you have to do something?”
“I have to decide whether or not we should end things before he starts working on the film.”
“Why?”
“Because it will hurt less if we end things now than if he falls in love with Tabitha. I don’t want Noah to get hurt, and I don’t want him to see how hurt I will be.”
“Does Dylan have a history of cheating?”
“No. Not that I’m aware of. I doubt it. But neither did Adam when I married him.”
She holds her hand up again. “Let’s try to stick with Dylan.”
I sigh. I am trying to stick with Dylan. “Noah has gotten so attached to him.”
“That sounds like a good thing to me.”
“It has been. It is. As long as we stay together forever. But what are the chances of that happening?”
“Well, you and I both know the statistics. But we have also dedicated our lives to helping couples stay together. So if you want to stay together…”
“I do. I don’t want to lose him. But I’m terrified of history repeating itself. For me and for Noah. And it will be so much worse for me because…”
“Because?”
“Because I’m so in love with Dylan.”
“And it sounds to me like he is very much in love with you. In a very real way. So what if you do stay together? What would that look like?”
“He would keep working with beautiful young actresses, and I would keep working on managing my emotional response to it.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Is that all there would be to your relationship? Him working with actresses and you working on your feelings?”
“No. There would also be so much love and laughter and great sex and real connections and understanding and a true friendship between him and my son. My parents adore him too. Even my Basset Hound is getting attached to him.”
“Good. And what would it feel like if you end things now?”
“Terrible. I can’t even bring myself to imagine it. I would miss him so much. Body and soul. But at least it would end before things went public. It would just be a conversation between him and me. For the best. For him and me and Noah. No one gets hurt.”
“What if Dylan gets hurt?”
My instinct is to pause to find my lip balm before continuing, but I have a lot to talk about. So I tell her the thing that I believe to be true. “I think he would get over it. I think he would get over me pretty quickly, like he did with his last girlfriend.”
She tilts her chin down and fixes me with a penetrating gaze—one that she reserves for special occasions. “Do you really believe that?”
Dammit, Dr. Keller. You don’t know me! “No. That’s just what I keep telling myself. I think this is different. He’s said so, and I believe him.”
“So why not believe him if he tells you he won’t fall for her?”
“Well, he hasn’t told me that yet.”
Dr. Keller finishes the last bite of her breakfast, wipes her fingers, and then scratches her head while wrinkling her nose at me again. I am pretty sure she’s visualizing herself stamping Incurable Nutjob on my forehead and sending me on my way. “What do you want, Scarlett?”
And that’s when it happens. In all these years of therapy, this is when I finally cry.
When I allow myself to answer truthfully about what I want.
Dr. Keller moves the box of Kleenex on the coffee table between us closer to me.
I’m sure she’s going to do a fist pump and cartwheels as soon as I walk out of here.
Crying is stupid and I hate it, but I still want her to tell me she’s proud of me, that I’m the best patient she’s ever had and give me a gold star.
When I’m finally able to say what I want out loud, here is what I say: “I want to be able to love Dylan with my whole heart and to always trust that he loves me and Noah with his whole heart too. And that we’ll all love each other like that for the rest of our lives.” I shrug. “That’s it.”
“Well said. Why don’t we set that as a goal and work on that?” I must be making a face because then she asks, “What? Why the resistance?”
“But if this is just an affair. A perfect, lovely affair…then I want to be okay with that. I want to be genuinely happy and grateful that we had our time together. And love him enough to let him go and be with someone else if that’s what’s best for him…
Is that a thing? I mean when I say it out loud it feels like I might as well be saying I want to take a bath in a magical hot spring with a unicorn. ”
She wrinkles her brow at me. “Is that what you want to do? With a unicorn?”
“No, I have no idea where that came from.”
She waves it off. “We can deal with that next time.”
I guess I just negated my breakthrough.
“Let’s work on what you can say to Dylan when you see him, okay? Today, right?”
“Yes. Today.”
By the time I walk out of Dr. Keller’s office, I am confident. Level-headed. Optimistic. Excited, even. I’m going to look hot and tell Dylan I trust him and figure out how to have dirty, filthy Skype sex. Everything will be fine.
I just have to get my armpits to stop crying.