Adam’s face softened, then he scraped the last bits of oatmeal from his bowl.
Conversation began to flow shyly, and by the end of breakfast, we were almost back to our usual rapport.
Almost.
There was still something there, though, lurking on the corner of Adam’s smile when he hugged me goodbye.
I’d hurt him. Probably last night when I snapped and said he should find another job…
Once he closed the door, I began mentally kicking myself.
There was a vent spewing warm air from the base of the cabinets. I sank against the wood and leaned against it, letting the heat soothe my lumbar muscles.
For the first time in a long time, I cried. I sat there with my head between my hands and sobbed.
Once all of the tears were gone, I couldn’t help but feel that I’d ruined everything. Because of the way I chose to handle this simple disagreement, there were visible cracks in my relationship.
Getting a handle on my emotions — and how I reacted to them — was the only way to fix this. So I stood up, walked over to the table, and began calling each therapist that Adam had so kindly written down on the note for me.
The first doctor’s office had a receptionist that made me feel like my call was a huge imposition to her, so I hung up halfway through the conversation. The second name on the list wasn’t accepting new patients — even though their website said they were. The third and fourth attempts were equally fruitless.
It wasn’t until the fifth attempt— the one that Adam had marked with a small star next to it — that I had any luck.
Fifteen minutes later, I had an appointment booked with Dr. Brinkman. Once that was taken care of, I looked at Adam’s note one last time and noticed something that I’d overlooked.
That little star was an asterisk. And at the bottom of the note, under a part where the paper curled up, was Adam’s tiny scrawl:
*Specializes in BDSM patients.
Adam
“What’s up with you, Big Guy?” my partner Claire asked from the driver’s seat.
“Nothing. Just tired,” I deflected, staring out the window of the squad car.
She glanced at me sideways. “Something’s off about you today…”
“How observant of you. I’m tired,” I said grumpily.
“Whatever, keep your cards close to your chest,” she said, her Jersey accent skewing her words. “If you’re not gonna talk, I’m gonna talk. I can’t handle all this quiet.”
“Lucky me,” I grumbled.
A smile pulled at the corner of her mouth, and she looked pleased with herself. “My boyfriend calls me a chatterbox all the time. Chat chat chat. Blah blah blah. But you know what, I just can’t stop!” she chirped.
I rested my forehead against the cold window of the car as she babbled on about her brother or something, zoning out and thinking about Luke. The way he snapped at me last night… that was something I’d never seen in him before. For him to react like that, he must have been so stressed out. Had I screwed everything up by trying to resolve things? Did I annoy him?
Did I push him further away?
These questions bounced around in my mind like pinballs as the car whisked down the gray, slushy city roads.
All I could do was hope that he made the appointment with one of those therapists and that they could help.
Though if that was what Luke really wanted — for me to find another job, I’d quit if it meant I could keep him. He was my fiancee, and I would put him and his happiness before everything else.
But what if he can never be happy, A nasty voice hissed in my head. What if he was like Peter?
I made a conscious effort to zone back into Claire’s chattering, raking my scattering thoughts into a neat pile of leaves.
No matter how many times I told myself that there was nothing I could do to save my ex, that him taking his own life wasn’t my fault, I still felt the guilt follow me around as if it was tethered to my ankle.
“Yo, you listening?” Claire asked when we pulled up to a stoplight. “Man, it’s like talking to a brick wall over here!”
Luke had used that term with me before when he got irritated with me. It still stung.
“I’m a man of few words,” I explained.
“And many thoughts. So why don’t you do us both a favor and share them?”
“I’m not in the mood,” I said, staring out the window. “We have a job to do.”
“Oh, Big Guy’s down in the dumps, eh? How about I buy you a donut to cheer you up?”
“A donut isn’t going to fix it,” I muttered.
But despite my protests, Claire pulled the car into the icy parking lot of the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts.
Begrudgingly, I got out.
“Oh, I see,” she said, shutting the car door with a whap. “You’re bound and determined to have a terrible time. Well, I’ll make you a bet, Big Guy. If I don’t have you smiling by the end of the day, I’ll take all of your traffic duty.”
I perked up. “Really?”
I hated traffic duty. It was all of the worst parts of being a cop and being stuck in traffic rolled into one. On the days I had to do it, time stretched into an eternity.
“Yeah, I don’t mind traffic duty,” she admitted. “It’s like hunting. You ever been hunting?”
I opened the door to her, and the bell jingled to announce our entrance.
“Nah, don’t have the patience for it,” I said, scanning the area automatically. When you were a cop, there was never a time when you weren’t vigilant. You couldn’t turn off the stress even when you went home. There was always another dark corner some bad guy could be lurking in.
My eye drifted over to the booth at the back of the restaurant, where four skinhead-looking dudes were eyeing us warily over their coffees.
The tingling on the back of my neck started to prickle, and I nudged Claire.
She took the
