It seemed natural and innocent.
I guess we were just fooling ourselves, thinking we could overcome whatever obstacles were in front of us.
Never thought oral sex would be our downfall.
My laughter dies the same way my hopes did. I sigh.
“I was telling the story of King to a friend of mine like you told me to, and he made a joke about Humvees, and we laughed about it and other things for a while.” I shrug it off, my stomach sinking to my heels.
“And is that friend, a man?”
“Yes.” I guess now would be the right moment to tell her he’s the catalyst of the breakdown I had, the beautiful straw, which broke my back. “We are kind of dating…” Well, I’m not so sure we are, but that’s what I’m going for. If I was engaged to a dead man for the last few years, I could be dating a ghost, right?
“And how do you feel about it?” I’ve tried hard since my freak out, not to overthink and to live in the moment. I’ve ignored the fact that my last thought was for Oliver the previous nights and not King. I’ve tried not to freak out about dating someone else and accept that I enjoy it. I don’t think about the consequences of our actions. But last night, when I found my apartment empty, I cried.
Couldn’t I have fallen for an emotionally stable non-grieving man?
I was such a wreck that I called my mother to talk about it. Of course, she diminished every one of my feelings and told me to get a grip. That I should know better than to let anyone steal my heart, that I couldn’t confuse lust and emotions.
It was a blast.
If I had alcohol in the house, I would have drank it all.
I was also pissed because Oliver didn’t give me any answers to all the questions he raised about my life and existence when he decided to vanish.
He might come back like he did last week, but something tells me, this time, it was too much too soon, and I won’t hear from him for a while. I’ll need to find answers by myself.
I shift on my seat, uncomfortably.
“I feel okay about it,” I lie. I’m not sure I want her to know how vulnerable I feel being dumped without a word.
“If you say so,” she answers, writing something on her pad. “Did you tell him about King’s death?”
“I did.”
“What was his reaction?”
“He also lost someone he was engaged to, so he understands.”
She winces slightly but doesn’t say a word and scribbles something else on her pad. The competitor in me wants to know what she wrote so I can understand how to be better. I try to read over her hand, but she turns the pad around, hiding her inner thoughts about my situation.
“So, I assume he’s helping you through your grief?” Yes, of course, that’s why after giving me his dick to suck yesterday, he ran out. I nod so not to lie to her again. Dr. Saman rests her pen on the pad and smiles.
“Tessa. I’m here to help. So I’m going to be bluntly honest with you. You lying to me doesn’t bring much, but if it’s because you’re afraid I’ll judge you, I won’t. I don’t know who that man is, and I don’t care, but all I’m asking is that you don’t lie to yourself. Anything you tell me is confidential and private.”
I wait for her to ask a question, finish her speech, or say anything, but she just stares at me and stays quiet. My eyes roam the room to ease my discomfort until I find a picture of a woman smiling into the camera. Grinning so much, it seems she’s in love with whoever took the picture. The sun kisses her face, and her hair flies in the wind.
She soothes me.
It feels like she’s telling me everything’s going to be okay, that I shouldn’t worry and trust Dr. Saman.
Somehow, I feel connected to her.
Whoever she is.
Dr. Saman clears her throat, and I avert my eyes from the picture.
“Today, I want you to focus on bad things with King. It’s easy in death to make the one who has left us a hero. It’s easy to make them perfect and continue to cherish everything. I don’t want you to hate him and live in resentment, but I want him to be knocked off of his pedestal. Tell me something he was awful at. Not something cute. Not something that will make you think of him and smile. But something you’re glad you don’t have to deal with now that he’s dead.”.
Thinking of King, I try to remember what used to annoy me the most. Getting angry at him for not putting the toilet seat down or leaving his socks everywhere seems trivial now that he’s dead. But these things always drove me crazy, but if we speak about hurtful things, well, there is one that always came to the top of my mind.
“He never told his mother we were engaged. We were supposed to be married soon enough after he’d return from his mission, and he never said a word to her.” Remembering the numerous fights we had about the subject, my heart constricted. That woman had a way to make him feel guilty for not staying with her until she dies. She never accepted me, not because of who I was, but because I was stealing her son. I embraced him for the life he wanted to live and let him live his dream. He kept wanting to protect her, to ease her into us living together, then into us being engaged and being married. But I had set a date, and I was going through the motions, giving him a deadline to announce it to mommy dearest. If so, we would have never gotten married. That was the thing I couldn’t stand — his indecision when it came to
