Fortunately, he looks more amused at my uncertain declaration than disappointed. “You think so, eh?”
“No, I know it. I love you.” I feel a physical lightening at having said it.
He feigns relief. “Whew. You had me going for a moment there.” Suddenly serious, he shifts so that he’s on his side. He wraps his arm around me. “You don’t have to say it, though. That’s not why I said it.”
“I know! I mean it!” I insist.
“I know,” he echoes. “I’ve known for a long time.”
I roll onto my back, gazing up at him, wishing I had one tenth of his confidence, wishing I knew what was going on in my own head as much as he seems to know. “You have?”
Now he looms over me. “Yes. I have.”
“Since when?” I want to know if he’s right. And if he really can read my mind, as I’ve suspected all along.
He delays answering by kissing me slowly, almost making me forget my question. Almost. But he’s not avoiding answering. As soon as the kiss is over, he says, “There wasn’t a specific, single moment, if that’s what you’re asking. But it was close to the same time I knew I loved you.”
“And when was that?” I keep digging, my voice nearly a whisper.
“The day of the baseball game.”
The jaw on the little Libby in my brain drops. “You knew that long ago?!” I can’t help crying.
“Shhh,” he requests, brushing his lips against my collarbone. “Yes. I did.”
“Before we ever…” I trail off, more because I’m suddenly distracted by what he’s doing to me than because I’m embarrassed to say it.
He nods, his forehead brushing against me. “Oh, yes. Much before. Otherwise…”
When he doesn’t seem in any hurry to finish, I prompt, “Otherwise?”
Lifting his head, he looks me in the eyes. “Otherwise, it never would have happened.” He pauses, then verifies with me, “Right?”
After wondering if I’ll ever find my voice again, I respond, “Right.”
He grins. “See? I knew it.”
Then he makes love to me as if to prove it.
19
“So that’s where we are,” I tell Dr. Marsh, after getting him up-to-date on what’s been going on.
Dr. Marsh taps his lips with his pen and consults his notes. “Okay. Let me get this straight, then: you haven’t told him about your parents, which means you still haven’t explained your career choice, but he’s met Hank, and he knows you have some issues with your past, just not what those exact issues are. You’ve been intimate, you’ve exchanged ‘I love you’s,’ and you’re basically happy. And you’ve promised him you’ll give him the full story at some point, but you haven’t committed to when that’ll be?”
I nod. “Yep. I think that’s it.”
“So… he probably has no idea you come to see me, right?”
“Definitely not!”
Sighing, he sets down his pen. “Why not?”
“I see you because my parents were killed in a horrific accident that I managed to survive. I can’t tell him about you without telling him the other part, which I’m not ready to tell him yet.” I pluck each part of the sequence from the air and place it into its own little imaginary compartment in front of me. “Get it?”
“Lots of people see mental health professionals, and very few of them because of an incident as traumatic as the one you experienced.” He leans forward and puts his elbows on his knees. “Do you see how much you’re backing yourself into a corner with all these lies of omission? Where does he think you are right now?”
I brush my hair out of my eyes. “We don’t keep tabs on each other.”
“Do you know where he is right now?”
“At work, of course,” I answer flippantly.
“Where did you tell him you would be at this time?” he persists.
After licking my lips, I answer, “The doctor. It’s not a lie.”
“For what?”
“Routine check-up. Still not a lie.”
“What’re you gonna tell him next time you have an appointment to see me?”
I shrug. “I’ll come up with something. Or maybe I’ll have told him everything by then, and I won’t have to…”
He raises his eyebrows, waiting for me to finish my sentence. When I don’t, he does for me. “Lie?”
Defensively, I respond, “Be as vague.”
“Ah.” He straightens and folds his hands over his belly. “You’re being vague, not lying?”
“Exactly.”
“Okay. Let’s turn it around so you can see what a double-edged sword ambiguity can be.” He points to himself. “What am I, in my most basic form?”
A douche, I want to answer, just to lighten the mood. Instead, I answer, “A man.”
“Yes. And what do you do when you have an appointment with me? You come to…”
“See you?”
He points at his nose. “Yes!” He thinks for a second. “Okay, and when you come to see me, a man, do you do it openly or in secret?”
“Secret,” I whisper.
Biting his lips, he looks away from me while he gives me a minute to process that.
I see a man secretly, behind Jude’s back.
Dr. Marsh is my guy on the side.
When I leave Dr. Marsh’s office that day, I sit out in my car for a long time, staring at a vacant lot next to his office building. The cracked pavement has sprouted weeds, some three or four feet tall. Even though we’ve already had a couple of nights in which the temperature has dipped below freezing, they’re hanging on. Winter’s on its way, though. I’d know it even if I never went outside or looked at a calendar. I can feel it in the dread that slowly builds all year long and reaches its undeniable crescendo every twelve months.
But in addition to the usual sinister note always
