Squaring her shoulders, she met his eyes. “See you Friday.”
A subtle inhale flared his nostrils. He studied her for a long moment, nodded his head, and left.
She curled her fists in the bedding, her muscles straining to run after him.
The slam of the front door knocked the wind from her lungs. Way to go, Amber. Might as well add a few dozen cats to the paranoid, anti-social routine and call it what it was.
She hung the dress in the closet, where it would stay until Friday, and put on yoga pants and a t-shirt. She vacuumed, ran four miles on the treadmill, and showered. A few hours later, she finished the filigree carving on a leathercraft order, ate a pancake, and showered again.
As the nightly news ended, she stood before the bathroom mirror and pinched the flab hugging her hips.
If you exercised more, maybe I wouldn’t be thinking about your sister all the time.
She shouldn’t have eaten that pancake. If she weren’t ten years older than Tawny, maybe she would’ve held his attention. Her stomach clenched painfully, and she bent at the waist, gripping her knees.
Was he in bed with Tawny now? Kissing her sister the way he’d once kissed her? Of course, he was. They were married now.
She turned away from the mirror, squatted before the toilet, and gagged with the reflex of a practiced vomiter. Her eyes watered, and her throat contracted and burned. The partially-digested pancake splattered the bowl.
She didn’t look in the mirror as she brushed her teeth. Didn’t glance at her midsection as she dressed and sat on the couch. She had zero resistance to self-deprecating thoughts, and the white envelope on the coffee table didn’t help.
The notice of default was proof of her worthlessness. She had ninety days to reinstate the mortgage or she’d lose the house, her safe place.
Her head hurt, and her chest felt hollow.
She would have to increase the sales on her leather goods, but it wouldn’t be enough. She’d already cut all her expenses. All but one.
She popped her knuckles and dialed Dr. Michaels.
CHAPTER 2
“Good evening, Amber.” Dr. Emery Michaels’ warm greeting was always unassuming, despite the fact that her calls were sporadic and often panic-stricken. “How are you doing?”
Which problem should she tackle first? She blew out a breath. “He wanted the lights on.”
A pause. “The young man who delivers your supplies?”
Zach wasn’t that young. Probably older than her thirty-four years. “Yeah.”
“Is this the man you want the lights on with?”
His tone wasn’t judgmental, but her hackles flared. “He’s the man I want to fuck, Dr. Michaels. Lights or no lights, you said my libido was a good thing.”
“Yes, as long as sex doesn’t become an addiction.”
“I can live without it.” The thump in her chest disagreed.
“Has your relationship expanded beyond sex? Have you talked with him about your healing path?”
Secrecy and shame were interwoven with her condition, and she excelled at being a psychiatric textbook. “No and no.”
“Have you given more thought to attending a self-help group?”
Sweat trickled down her spine, and the muscles in her neck went taut. “I can’t—”
“Agoraphobics Outbound meets bi-monthly at Austin State Hospital. It’s a ten minute cab ride from your house.”
She chewed the inside of her cheek and imagined all those people staring at her, examining, criticizing. How would she escape? What if she got lost, stuck in a crowded place, or fainted?
Not only that, her mother was a patient in that hospital. Her breathing quickened. She couldn’t bear to be in the same building with a woman who wanted nothing to do with her.
“Amber, you need the solidarity of a support group.”
Something she would never receive from her family. She gripped her knuckles. Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack. Strangers would be worse. They wouldn’t know her, yet they’d weigh her worth as she lost her shit.
“Amber.” His soothing timbre steadied her pulse. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“They’ll see how undesirable I am.”
A sigh whispered over the line. “You are a lovely woman, but you will never hear that until you believe it yourself.”
“He didn’t think so.” She winced, hating herself for mentioning him.
“Yet he didn’t want to give you up.”
She’d once viewed marriage as a sacred covenant, arrogant in her belief that only three A’s justified divorce. Adultery. Addiction. Abuse. He had committed none of them—never acted on his desire for her sister while they were married, never hit her, never so much as got drunk—yet she’d divorced him. She’d given up, taken the easy way out. “I failed him.”
“Eliminating the toxicity in your life is not a failure. It’s curative and courageous and never, ever easy.”
She blinked against the achy burn in her eyes. Brent hadn’t always been toxic. Sixteen years ago, he looked at her like she was so much more than a sparkling accessory on his arm. She deeply missed the man she’d fallen in love with. “Leaving him was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“That’s right. So the Outbound meeting would be a piece of cake in comparison.”
She straightened the envelope on the table, leaving a four-inch, right-angle gap from the table’s corner. “I won’t be calling you anymore.”
“These sessions are necessary in your recovery.”
“I know what I need to do to get better.” Face her fears. Remember to belly breathe. Ask for help.
“What have you eaten today?”
The purged pancake floating in the toilet. Had she remembered to flush it? Gripping the phone, she ran to the bathroom and relaxed when she saw the clean bowl. “I can’t afford to pay you.”
“I see.” Wariness breathed through his voice, but he didn’t offer to counsel her for free.
She wasn’t worth his charity. Not that she would’ve accepted it anyway.
His movements rustled through the phone. “The self-help group is free. That’s your next goal. I’ll forward links to online support groups and see if I can find a therapist who might be more affordable.”
She’d
