So we were different. Big deal. Lots of couples were famously different: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver. James Carville and Mary Matalin. Homer and Marge. Maybe we wouldn’t make it to a silver anniversary celebration, but surely we could go on a second date.
When I pulled up to his building at the end of the night, I took my right hand off the steering wheel and let it fall to my side.
“There’s a Polish movie playing Monday night that’s getting rave reviews. Want to go?” I nodded, eager as a Yorkie. He gave me a not-entirely-chaste squeeze on my arm as he got out of the car.
A second date! I pumped my fist in the air. As I turned my car around to head home, I banked the curb with a jolt that snapped my neck and knocked my water bottle out of the drink holder, but I barely felt it. My joy hugged the border of hysteria.
“Tell me more about this Jeremy,” Clare said the next night over dinner. She dropped her head into her open palm when I told her I gave him a tour of Landyn’s nursery. “Tater! You don’t show a man a nursery on your first date!”
But I felt no shame. “Don’t worry. He sees Rosen. I don’t have to play games with him. I can be myself.” She cocked her head, skeptical.
“This sounds really promising, Tater. This is your reward for joining that second group!”
That night, I drew a line down the center of a piece of paper. No more haphazard romantic follies for me. I was in therapy now. I started with the “pro” column. He was undeniably intelligent. Who reads Thucydides for pleasure? He was sober, so he wouldn’t piss on me in the middle of the night. He had a cat, so he knew how to take care of something. The glasses, the smile, the rapt listening. I wrote it all down. Then I wrote the biggest pro of all: Sees Dr. Rosen.
Dating a man who saw a therapist—any therapist—was ideal. Therapy made you more sensitive and self-aware. It gave you tools to navigate a relationship. Seeing a man who saw my therapist was a way to build a bulletproof relationship. After all, I trusted Dr. Rosen. Mostly. I knew his work. I was his work. Jeremy and I would have acres of common ground. We would never run out of things to say. Bonus: we’d have free couples counseling—we’d just see the therapist at different times and with other people.
On our second date, we sat on lumpy seats in the crowded Music Box Theatre reading the subtitles of a Polish film about two sad people walking through a city park. Jeremy elbowed me when I crossed my legs. “The great group no-no,” he whispered, and we both laughed. He put his hand on top of mine and left it there until the end of the movie. Its warmth and heft felt like solid pleasure.
On the walk back to his place, we huddled together as the wind whipped all around us. We told each other our hardest prescriptions. I trotted out my cocktease prescription—not a story I ever pictured telling on a second date. He told me he hadn’t done his hardest one yet. When I asked what it was, he looked away.
After a few steps, he said, “Rosen says I should ask my ex-girlfriend to forgive the loan she made me.” He grimaced and looked down at his feet.
His living room featured a brown couch and matching coffee table. He’d positioned his desk and computer by the window in his kitchen, and his bathroom, while not exactly reeking of bleach and free of stray hairs, struck me as reasonably clean. I was impressed by his silver kettle and an array of teas.
A plump tabby with orange-and-white coloring purred at his feet. “This is Mr. Bourgeois.”
“That’s his name?”
He nodded and smiled.
“Looking at your bookshelf, I shouldn’t be surprised.” Machiavelli, Sartre, Plato, Socrates, Heidegger, Kant. The lightest read was Saint Augustine.
I slipped off my shoes and told him I hated my new group.
“Why?” he asked, sitting next to me on the couch. His knee touched mine.
“It’s so raw and intense in there. Everyone screaming and eating, then crying and hugging. And Marnie isn’t thrilled I’m there—”
“Why do you think Rosen put you in there?”
“Well.”
“What?”
“He thinks it will help me open up to a relationship.” I upended my teacup to hide how embarrassing it sounded.
He took my hand. “I hated my second group too. Every second of it.”
“Why’d you stay?”
“I wanted to see what those feelings meant, where they came from.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Now here I am.” My heart lurched to the edge of my rib cage.
He leaned toward me.
“Is it okay if I kiss you?” he asked.
I felt a welling in my chest, the novel sensation of safety inching toward desire. I nodded, and our lips met. I tasted chamomile tea, and when he put his hand on my neck, I leaned into him and the chance he offered. I hadn’t really tasted a man’s lips in almost two years—with Andrew I was too busy dissociating to feel anything, and in the parking lot with Xavier all I could taste was my own neediness. Now, with Jeremy pressing his lips and tongue against mine, his goatee tickling my upper lip, I felt my libido flicker a few times and then ignite. The pressure between my legs was a mix of pleasure and pain, desire and ache, satisfaction and hunger. I was coming to life.
This is what I’d been waiting for.
18
“No secrets,” Dr. Rosen advised when I showed up in group with the epic news that I’d been on two dates with Jeremy. “Anything that happens between you and Jeremy—emotionally, romantically, sexually—bring it to both of your groups.”
“Also financially,” Carlos said, aware as he was
