Chapter 11
Not the Jealous Type
“How have you been since we last spoke, Nicole?” I ask.
I’ve been seeing Nicole Menendez for the past year and a half, and we recently went from weekly to biweekly visits.
The point of patients coming to see me is that they improve, they get better, and eventually—if I do my job right, and we’re lucky—they stop coming to see me.
Usually that takes years though, and typically the first time that visits become less frequent, everyone panics and regresses.
“My anxiety is getting worse,” Nicole says. She’s sitting on the couch opposite me, picking the red polish off her nails.
“Why do you suppose that is?”
“I don’t know. I can’t stop checking whether the stove is off and the toaster is unplugged. I’ve replaced the smoke detector batteries three times this week. I almost went and bought all new smoke detectors even though I did that a few months ago.”
I nod sympathetically. Nicole started coming to see me after she developed PTSD following a house fire.
She was lucky, and she made it out physically unscathed.
Unfortunately, her dog didn’t. The cause of the fire was suspected to be faulty wiring, but Nicole hasn’t been able to get past the guilt or the fear that it could happen again.
Her experience, while completely different from Katie’s, still has a lot of overlap.
It’s what so much of trauma boils down to, really.
Guilt—rational or not—about whatever happened combined with the fear that it could happen again.
And there’s no easy way around it, unfortunately.
I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it better for both of them, but I can’t.
“I know it’s not rational,” she continues. “But that doesn’t help.”
“Why do you think you’re feeling more anxiety this week?”
“I think it’s because I didn’t meet with you last week, which is also irrational.”
“It sounds like you’ve been saying those words to yourself a lot,” I state as neutrally as I can. Not judging yourself is one of the hardest things for most people to do. Now and then, you’ll meet a unicorn who doesn’t engage in negative self-talk, but they’re rare.
Nicole and I spend the bulk of the next hour discussing her internal monologue and coming up with alternate coping mechanisms, but we schedule an appointment for next week, with instructions to call and cancel if she feels up to it.
I want to get her down to every other week, but it needs to be on her terms, not mine.
When I walk Nicole out of my office, she stops and talks to Teresa—my receptionist, billing expert, and right-hand woman—long enough to be added to my calendar for next week, and then she’s out the door. It’s just after five-thirty.
“Ready?” Teresa asks. We usually leave the office together. There’s not a lot of reason for one of us to be here without the other.
“No. You can call it a day, though,” I tell her. “I’m going to stick around here a bit longer. I need to do some prep for tomorrow.”
Teresa’s eyes narrow, and her head tilts in question. I don’t typically stay late to prepare for the following day, and she knows it. But I don’t want to tell her I’ve invited Mark to stop by for a ‘tour’ of my office.
“Okay,” she finally says, and when I offer no other explanation, she grabs her bag and jacket and heads for the door. “See you tomorrow.”
“Yup. Have a good night.”
The door closes behind her with a soft thud, and I turn to the mirror hanging behind the reception desk, studying my reflection.
I go back to my desk to find some lip stain and reapply it.
Then I finger-comb my hair and tell myself I look fine.
I think I’m going to keep the black hair.
Even if dyeing it regularly will be a pain, I like it enough to make it worth it.
I know I’m using my appearance to distract myself from the fact that I’m more nervous than I should be, but we all need our coping mechanisms. Mark texted me earlier this morning to confirm we were still on for tonight.
He should be here within the next twenty minutes, but we haven’t talked or texted beyond that and the message I sent last night warning him that the cameras were on him.
I have no idea what his mood is going to be like.
It’s not as if he knows I’m responsible for Joey Carmichael’s sudden death, but still.
I guess it’s good to figure it out now, though.
However he’s feeling, it’s only going to intensify as I make my way through the others.
I imagine having your entire second line and your top defensive pair drop dead during your first season as head coach is going to be pretty stressful.
They shouldn’t blame Mark for it, but they probably will.
There’s a good chance he’ll lose his job because of me.
I scroll through social media and do a quick search to see what there’ve been for official press releases.
So far, there’s only the one that was released by the team’s media spokesperson giving the usual spiel: The team is terribly saddened by the loss of such a rising star.
He will be deeply missed… blah, blah, blah.
Nothing from Mark specifically, which is all I was really looking for.
The game was paused and then halted after Joey Carmichael was pronounced dead. Right now, everyone is still reporting that his cause of death is unknown, but an undiagnosed heart condition is suspected.
I check my watch. There’s still about ten minutes before Mark should arrive, so I call Vaughn. He answers after the second ring.
“Hey Alyssa, what’s up?” he says over music playing in the background.
“Hey Vaughn. Can you do some digging for me? I found an EpiPen in Matt Davidson’s locker, and I’d like to know what he’s allergic to.”
“Sure. Should be pretty easy. When do you need to know?”
“By next week, if possible. Can I get one more favor?”
“What?” Vaughn asks.
“Can you find out where he hangs out? Bar, restaurant, gym, whatever?”
“Yeah. No problem.”
“Thanks, Vaughn,” I say before ending the call.
A few minutes later, there’s a knock on the office door.
I set my phone to Do Not Disturb, smooth my hair down, take a deep breath, and open the door.
Mark is standing on the other side. His red-brown hair is tousled, like he’s been running his hands through it, and the amber flecks in his hazel eyes look like they’re glowing.
“Hi,” I greet, stepping toward him and lifting my hand to run my fingertips over the stubble on his jaw.
“Hi,” he replies, his hands moving to encircle my waist as he brings his mouth to mine.
I have the good sense to tug him into the office as his tongue strokes hungrily across mine.
We stutter-step backward, our bodies locked around one another until he’s finally far enough into the room for me to push the door shut.
I shove him back against it, flipping the lock into place and pressing my hips into his as he drops his hands to my ass.
As I fist my hands into his hair, part of me is thinking we should stop and actually talk to one another, but it’s Wednesday evening.
The last time we slept together was before I left his house on Saturday morning, and I don’t want to wait.
I want him now. And clearly, he doesn’t want to wait either.
Yeah. We can talk later, I decide as I drop my hands, sliding them under his shirt and tugging it over his head. His skin is warm under my palms as I move my hands across his chest.
He pulls his mouth from mine long enough to growl, “I could fuck you right here, against this door.”
“Do it,” I gasp, dropping my hands to his fly as he spins us, reversing our positions so that my back is pressing into the door and his body is pinning me in place.
I work his pants over his hips, my hands caressing his glutes, as I push them down, following them to the floor, kneeling before him, my mouth inches away from his very erect dick.
I could wrap my lips around it, but I don’t.
“Tell me what you want,” I demand as he runs his hands through my hair.
“No,” he says, rubbing the head of his cock over my lips. “I told you last time. It’s your turn. You tell me what you want.”
I consider protesting. Mostly because every little thing I tell him about myself—down to what I want to do to him and want him to do to me—allows him to know me that much better, and I’m not sure I want him to know me at all. But ultimately, I start talking.
“I want to blow you for just long enough that you begin to think you’d rather come in my mouth than finish inside me,” I answer, looking up at his face, far above mine.
His eyes have a feverish look, and I’m certain that whatever words I utter, he’s going to do his best to make good on them.
“Then I want you to fuck me against this door until it’s rattling in the frame, and it’s all I can do to keep from screaming your name.
I want your mouth locked on mine, and my legs wrapped around you as you come inside me.
After that, I want to order a pizza and lie on the floor and eat dinner with you.
Only this time, I decide what’s on the pizza. And while we eat, we can talk.”
“About?” he asks, sounding wary.
“Things. Then when we’re done, I can show you my couch, and we can decide the best way for you to screw me on it.”
“Okay,” he agrees, and I wrap my hand around his shaft and suck him into my mouth.
“What did you order on the pizza?” Mark asks.
“You’ll see when it gets here,” I tell him, trailing my fingers over his thigh.
He’s sitting on the floor with his legs outstretched and his back against my office wall, and I’m sitting between his legs, reclined against his chest. The carpet is scratchy beneath my ass, and I wish I had a blanket, but I’ve never needed one here before.
“Fine. What did you want to talk about?” he inquires, resting his chin atop my head, his left hand stroking across the skin along my hip.
“You.”