She raised an eyebrow in concern.
I lifted a hand and waved her off. “Oh, no. Nothing like that. I’m not suicidal if you’re wondering. I just feel bogged down right now.”
“How about close friends?” she asked.
“One. A buddy of mine. Here in Seattle. Plus a coupla friends from work that I rarely see because I’ve worked remotely the past three years,” I stated. “My best friend Cooper died ten years ago.”
Psychologist Beverly Clinton placed her pen and notepad on a side table and stared at me intently. She studied me while I returned her stare and wondered what I’d said. “That is an unusual amount of death, Mike,” she declared, stating the obvious.
I nodded.
She was right. At three hundred bucks an hour she should be. “Cooper? A male friend, correct?” she inquired.
I nodded again.
“Tell me about him.”
I stared at my hands still clashing in my lap and wondered what one said about their best friend who’d been dead for ten years without sounding pathetic. I mean, it had been a decade and we were just teenagers back then. “I still miss him. I miss him very much,” I whispered. “I need him right now to tell you the truth.”
“You need him? Why do you say that, Mike?” she asked, leaning forward and touching my leg gently. I noticed she had tears forming in her eyes. Therapists aren’t supposed to cry while their patients are struggling to keep it together, right?
“He would’ve helped me get through Mom’s illness like he helped me when my father died. He’d know what to say and he’d make me feel safe.”
My answer prompted more questions. Typical for therapy, I imagined. “Cooper would make you feel safe?” she asked. She had green eyes just like my mothers. In fact, I just noticed my therapist looked a lot like Mom.
“Yes. He had this way of sorta knowing what I needed. I was the bigger one physically but he made me feel safe. I never told him that,” I stated casually. “I should have told him.”
“You don’t think Cooper knew this?” she asked.
“I’m sure he didn’t. He always depended on me, so I guess he wouldn’t have known howmuch I needed him.”
“You needed him? Tell me what you mean by that, Mike.”
“He was just that person. My person,” I mumbled, staring into space as I reminisced about him. I refocused on her and smiled weakly. “He just got me, I guess.”
“There are no other people you can turn to?” she asked.
“No one like him,” I admitted. “We understood each other. You know what I mean?”
She nodded and sat back in her chair.
“We completed each other’s sentences, counted on one another; stuff like that.”
“You loved him?”
Warm tears filled my eyes so I looked out the window of her small office and into a courtyard of small shrubs with an old concrete bird feeder that had seen better days. A robin landed on the worn edge, probably searching for fresh water.
“I still do,” I admitted in a soft voice. “I always have.”
“As a friend?” she questioned. I slowly nodded up and down as tears etched down my face. And then she surprised me by scooting forward again, but this time reaching for my hand. No wonder Brandt liked her. She was caring and real. I hadn’t expected that. “And perhaps as more than a friend?”
The robin gave us one more disgruntled look then flew off. My tears spoke the words I couldn’t voice. I turned back to her and nodded two more times before I bent over and began to weep.
Ms. Clinton allowed me to cry and then compose myself. When I sat back, she had Kleenex waiting for me and gently smiled at me. “Why are you here, Mike?”
I inhaled deeply and decided that I needed to unburden myself once and for all. “I had the chance to tell him but I didn’t,” I began. “He told me he loved me in the . . . you know . . . the forever sorta way. He left me a note after he told me and I never got the chance to tell him that I felt exactly the same way about him.”
“What did the note say?” she asked.
