“Yes, but you’ve never listened to me before.” That makes me smile. He gets me. “I’m sorry, but I am confused. I thought you’d be mad at me.
“For what?” I cross my legs and bounce my foot in the air. The tables have turned and now I’m the one asking the questions. I like this turn of events.
“For breaking up with you.”
“You didn’t break up with me.” I tilt my head, replaying our last conversation. “Did you think telling me you kissed your ex-wife was a break up?” My voice raises and I wouldn’t be surprised if the receptionist burst in here to see if we were okay.
“Yes, actually.” His voice is calm which only pisses me off more.
“What the fuck, Liam? You can’t break up with me like a man, so you have to use a copout method? Pathetic.” I get up and pace the room, the fumes pouring out of my ears with every step I take.
“We both knew we’d end up here eventually anyway.” He folds his hands into his lap, on top of the notepad he uses to write his notes about me.
“No, we didn’t. I didn’t think you’d be a little bitch about everything.” Every word I say, every insult I throw his way, does nothing to instigate him.
“You’re angry,” he tells me.
“No shit.”
“It’s your default coping mechanism. It’s no surprise.” His words are even, leading to an unforeseen destination. I wish he’d get to the damn point.
“Oh, don’t try and doctor me now.”
“Why? This is the perfect opportunity to get into your head, to feel what you’re feeling and verbalize it.”
“You want me to verbalize it? Okay, how about this? This dude I was fucking for a hot minute doesn’t know how to break up with girls even though he’s supposed to be a fantastic therapist. Yes, the person I was fucking was my therapist. Isn’t it interesting? Yup, the very person I’m supposed to be learning from doesn’t know shit.”
“Well, the point of this isn’t exactly to learn something from me.”
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
He holds his hands up in surrender. “Why don’t you sit back down? I have some thoughts to go over with you.” His tone manages to be somehow both uplifting and morose all at once. He’s an enigma, confusing me with mind games.
“What does that mean?” I stay rooted in my spot, unwilling to cave to him.
But he knows me better than that. He waves out his hand, motioning to my abandoned seat. He won’t talk until I comply. Bastard.
I cross the room and plop down on the chair. He observes me for some time before writing something down on his notebook. He makes a motion as if he’s circling whatever he just wrote and I’d give my left leg to see what he wrote down.
“How many therapists have you had before me?” Well, that came out of nowhere.
“Ten.” My face heats as if the fact embarrasses me. Normally I don’t care about my past, but telling him is different.
“Have any of them ever put you on any medication?”
“No…why?” My pulse jumps at the prospect of him figuring out why I’m wired this way.
“I don’t want to jump into a premature diagnosis too fast, so I need to know more about you, your past, and history with anger and violence as well as drug and alcohol use.”
Fuck. Where the hell do I start? “I kinda already thought that’s what we were doing here?”
“It is, but we have a tendency go get sidetracked.” I smirk at his words. “Tell me anything. Whatever you think up first.”
I recall some bigger incidents where my temper led to physical altercations and he writes it all down. We haven’t been seeing each other for long, but I know him pretty well already. Normally, in these sessions, he keeps his mask in place but not today. There’s a twitch at the corner of his mouth he’s fighting to restrain. My stories don’t usually bring people joy, so this reaction is extra wild.
“Are you going to address the incident that brought you here to begin with?” I roll my eyes.
He already knows I got into a fight and broke the girl’s nose. He’s aware I was so far under the influence that night, I was basically one bump away from needing to be Narcan’d.
“You already know why I’m here.”
“You told me the details. I need the big picture.”
“What does that even mean?”
“You didn’t attack this girl for no reason, right?” I shake my head. He does nothing but stare at me until I crack.
“Fine. It started because of my ex. It’s part of the reason I ‘broke up’ with him, after all. Too much drama.” I use air quotes around “broke up” because we weren’t dating, I just cut of access to my pussy. “Once I got arrested it became very clear to me that he was not a guy worth fighting over and getting locked up for.” He nods and jots something down. “This girl was all over him all night. She was touching and grabbing him, pushing me, making snide comments, and faces at me. If she was nice and wanted to join in, fine, I’m all for it, but—sorry, not the point. Anyway, I didn’t really care about her advancements with him. But she got physical with me first, okay? Like pushing and shoving me. She accidentally spilled a drink in my hair, I mean, come on, bitch. Just own up to your shit, right? I couldn’t let her treat me like that. So I took care of her.”
“With violence.” His tone conveys disappointment.
“Don’t look at me like that. It’s not like I was beating up on a baby lamb. She
