Chapter 17
Even though I wanted to die, ironically, I still had to pay my bills. I was sitting on the couch logging into my phone plan’s website to pay the next month’s charge when said phone rang.
Iris.
I stared at her name for a beat too long.
I’d originally saved it when Carter sent it to me as Shrink.
But then last week, I couldn’t tell you why, I had changed it to Just Iris.
Our session wasn’t for a few more hours and now her name blinked back at me like we were…
what? Friends? That thought made me want to throw my phone through the wall.
I almost didn’t answer. My thumb hovered over the decline button, trembling slightly.
I didn’t know why the phone call had unnerved me, but I wasn’t exactly inundated with play date requests, so seeing my phone ringing from anything other than spam callers and Carter was weirding me out. At the last second I answered.
“Hey,” I said, immediately regretting it. My voice sounded soft. Too eager. Too normal.
“Hey,” she echoed, her voice had a smile in it. Of course it did. “So… I’ve been thinking about that list you made.”
My stomach tightened. “You don’t say.”
“Yep. I think we should try to check it off. Being that you have so little time left and all.”
Was she mocking me? Or did she think not stopping me with her words would somehow make me change my mind?
“Okay?”
“Let’s get sushi for lunch. I’m out anyway. Can you meet me?”
I hesitated. “I don’t do restaurants.”
There was a pause. “Okay,” she said simply. “Then I’ll bring the sushi to you.”
I blinked. “You’re going to come to my apartment?”
“Well, I can’t eat all this sushi on my own,” she replied brightly.
“You already ordered it?”
“Yup. I spent $126 too. It’s a lot of sushi. I practically got one of each option.”
“I’m pretty sure it is emotional blackmail to ask someone if they want to do something, and then before you get a confirmation, they find out you’ve already ordered it, and then you tell them how much you spent.
” I shifted uneasily on the couch, looking around my pathetic apartment and for a second, a flicker of caring passed through me.
But I shoved it away. Almost-dead men didn’t care. I wasn’t gonna start now.
“You told me you need to try something new. And you said you wanted to do it before—well—you know. So, what’s your address, Danny?”
I didn’t respond. She didn’t let the silence deter her.
“You’ll like it. I promise.”
I grabbed a shirt from the pile next to the couch and tugged it on after giving it a quick sniff test.
“Fine.” Why was I so grumpy? I could almost laugh at myself because my attitude was ridiculous. I was pretty sure I heard her clap her hands excitedly when I told her where I lived. I rolled my eyes. She was something else.
At 12:03 p.m. she stood in my doorway holding a brown paper bag in one hand and what looked like a six-pack of sparkling water in the other.
“You’re late,” I said, mockingly, but a grin had crept over my face, belying my moody tone.
“You’re lucky I showed up at all,” she tossed back at me with a wink, and stepped inside like she’d done it a hundred times before.
Her eyes skimmed the apartment, which was admittedly messy but not disgusting; I had quickly cleaned up in the amount of time it took for her to get here. She made no comment.
“You brought enough sushi to feed an entire support group.”
“Maybe I thought you’d get brave and invite your neighbors.”
I didn’t even have neighbors. And if I had, I assumed they would not be people who would take sushi from a stranger in pink sneakers and a galaxy-print hoodie.
She wasn’t wearing her usual attire of a skirt and business-appropriate top.
She was in leggings, and I swallowed audibly when she unzipped her hoodie, and saw that she had paired it with a tight tank top.
She smelled like she had rubbed wildflowers on her wrists before coming here.
It was a scent I’d be hard pressed to forget.
I forced my eyes back to the sushi that she was laying out on my coffee table, popping the clear plastic covers off each one.
She sat cross-legged on a cushion on the floor that she had grabbed from the couch, and I was startled at how out of place she looked.
For one, I had never had anyone in my apartment other than Carter that one time, and he was most certainly not a woman.
And two, she was too vibrant, too full of life for my apartment of dead ends and forgotten dreams. My den of depression looked even worse in comparison to her bright eyes and happy constitution.
“Are you just gonna stand there like a weirdo or you gonna come eat?” She held out a pair of chopsticks.
“I’m pretty sure therapists aren’t allowed to call their patients a weirdo.”
“I’m not a therapist.”
I almost smiled.
“I don’t know how to use those.”
“Then you’re in luck. I brought the easier version.” She pulled a plastic fork out from her never-ending bag. I laughed.
We ate in silence at first. I watched her more than the food.
She was too pretty in a way that didn’t make sense.
She didn’t try like the girls I saw in the glossy magazines.
Her face was bare. I was pretty sure her lip color was natural.
Her hair was swept back. But she was the prettiest thing I had ever seen.
And I couldn’t tell you exactly why, but it annoyed me more than anything.
I picked up a piece of something orange and squishy.
“What is this?”
“Salmon.”
“Raw?”
She gave me a look. “That’s sort of the point of sushi, Danny.”
“Right.” I popped it in my mouth and immediately gagged.
She tried not to laugh, but I could see the effort failing in real time.
“You’re enjoying this way too much.”
“I really am.”
I reached for the sparkling water and took a gulp. “This is what you consider fun?”
“I consider this a life experience. You’re crossing something off your list. That’s a good thing.”
“Debatable.”
“You’re allowed to enjoy things before you die, Danny. It doesn’t say in the handbook that the time you have left has to be miserable.”
I stared at her. “What handbook?”
“The ‘I Want to Die’ handbook.”
“You’re stupid,” I told her around a mouthful of rice.
She picked up a piece from a spicy tuna roll and held it in front of my face. “Try this one.”
“That was wildly inappropriate,” I said, eating the sushi directly off the end of her chopsticks. The chopsticks that she held.
“You need to eat off of chopsticks at least once to really get the whole experience,” she replied nonchalantly, taking a piece for herself. Her mouth was right where my lips had just been. I looked away.
“Of course,” I chewed, something nervous and excited flipped around inside of me, souring my stomach. “Is this like immersion therapy?”
She nodded seriously as if my sarcasm had gone right over her head. “It can be.”
I smirked. “Iris… I thought you said you aren’t a therapist.”
That made her laugh. Really laugh and I felt it—like a rush of wind cracking open something that had been sealed inside of me for years.
I’d made her laugh. God help me, I liked it.
I wanted to do it again. I shouldn’t want anything from her.
Not her laughter or her presence. But there was that flicker of something inside of me again.
Something ugly and hopeful at the same time.
The kind of thing that could wreck a person if they weren’t careful.
But I was never known for being careful.
We kept eating, trying more combinations, until my stomach hurt.
As she introduced me to horrible things like wasabi and eel, she told me about other experiences that she was adding to her list, like skydiving, riding a horse, even eating funnel cake at a county fair.
I hated that I wanted her to keep talking, I wanted to know everything else on that fucking list.
Then, somewhere between the introduction to miso and her telling me about a book she’d been reading, her arm accidentally brushed against mine. It was nothing. Just a quick tap as she moved to stop a small container of soy sauce from toppling over onto my coffee table.
“That was close,” she said brightly, looking up at me.
My body responded instantly. A jolt of heat shot through me so fast I nearly dropped my fork.
I hadn’t… felt that in years. And never like that.
In my primitive years, my brain had been all kinds of fucked up.
I didn’t even want to think about what had activated things…
. down there. But then as I grew older and had left the abuse, I had sought out help at a local clinic for my intrusive thoughts.
They put me on Zoloft, and I stayed on it for years.
And stayed soft the entire time too. I hadn’t cared.
After going off it, I was too fixated first on survival and then on not surviving to think about anything else.
Especially not sex. That sort of connection wasn’t something I’d ever given thought to; I was too busy avoiding the nightmares of it in my sleep.
But now here I was sitting next to a beautiful woman, my life coach, with more sushi than I knew what to do with, in my shit hole apartment, with a boner.
I suddenly felt like I couldn’t take a full breath, and I tried to cough the panic out of my throat as I stood up abruptly. Forgetting that I should be hiding said erection, not standing up with it. I wasn’t exactly well trained on what to do with inappropriately timed hard-ons.
She looked up. “Danny?”
“I need you to leave.”
Her brow furrowed. “Did I do something wrong?”
I shook my head. “Just—go.”
She rose slowly, carefully, as if she could see me beginning to unravel. She knew what crazy looked like after all. She saw it all day. “Okay. Um… I’ll see you at the next session?”
I didn’t answer. She hesitated in the doorway. “It was nice, you know? Crossing something off your list with you.”
I gave a half-assed grunt as if it could possibly say: yes, it was.
Thank you for spending all that money on sushi and introducing me to sashimi.
I’m sorry I’m so bad at the people thing, and the littlest normal body reaction has me half insane.
But I didn’t say any of that. I just shut the door behind her before I could do or say something I’d regret.
Then I leaned against the wood, breathing hard, wondering what the hell had just happened.
I felt like a creepy teenager who had just discovered boobs.
My body had betrayed me and all she had been was nice.
I hated myself for not knowing how to do normal.
I had tried it and had ruined it, and she had just been acting… nice.