Page 106 of Touch of Class

“I want it to be true, but it’s not. And not because cuddle therapy isn’t a valid form of intervention. It is, and it deserves better. It deserves the kind of person you are, but I’m not the same as you, Gillian. I think a part of me wants to be, which is why I spent so much time around you, posturing and arguing and trying to convince you I was, in order to try to convince myself.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Good,” Daphne said, then shook her head and sat up, pulling the covers with her. “I made a mistake.”

“Okay.” Gillian sat up, too. She could faintly make out Daphne’s features in the dim light of a streetlamp outside the window, but tension radiated from the forward pitch of her shoulders. “I’m listening.”

“I let a client get too close.” Daphne wrapped her arms around her knees. “She wasn’t a client at the time, but she had been. That’s how we met. She’d been through a breakup where a partner had said some horrible things about her body, her weight, how she was aging.”

“Sounds like a real charmer. Can’t imagine why their relationship didn’t work.”

“Yeah.” Daphne didn’t laugh. “We met for several months of sessions, then when she felt secure enough to start dating again, we went our separate ways.”

“Okay,” Gillian said evenly.

“Six months later, she bumped into me again. It seemed random, though I know now it probably wasn’t.” Daphne shivered. “We were in the same coffeehouse. We ordered the same drinks. It took forever for them to come out, and we sat talking. Then when our orders arrived, we sort of kept talking. It felt natural. We had a lot in common, or she made it feel that way. And it wasn’t just the one time. We started bumping into each other a lot.”

“Uh-oh.” Gillian’s stomach clenched. “She cultivated a sense of casual familiarity.”

“Boy, you got there fast.” Daphne sighed. “I did not. About a month later when she mentioned she and a group of friends were going to a show I’d mentioned really wanting to see, I didn’t see the harm in joining. We’d be in a group, in public, just like all these other times we’d bumped into each other.”

“Except it was different,” Gillian supplied.

“So different. She held doors and pulled out chairs, and the ‘group’ turned out to be just two friends who were a couple and treated us like a couple. Then at the end of the night, she kissed me, and this is where I’d love to say I pumped the brakes, but I didn’t. Fuck, Gillian. I didn’t, not right away. I’d had a good time, and it was a decent kiss, and it had been so long I sort of stumbled and said, ‘good night’ and let myself enjoy it for a bit. I even tried to convince myself I hadn’t broken any rules, because my field doesn’t have the same kind of rules you have. But then she called me the next morning to say she was outside my house with donuts.”

“Your house?” Gillian asked, aghast, then caught herself. “Sorry. She found your home?”

“My office was at my home.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know what else to say.

“I know. It seems self-evident that in a job requiring hard and firm boundaries, perhaps bringing clients into your home isn’t a great start, but I wasn’t working full time. I was still building a business, only a few appointments a week, so we set up a space in my apartment in Syracuse. It felt separate enough right up until the moment it didn’t. And when I told her I was uncomfortable, she … I don’t know the clinical term, but she lost her ever-loving shit.”

“Daphne,” Gillian said softly, “are you okay?”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what.”

“Don’t use your therapist voice on me. I made my bed quite literally, and I paid the price. She wouldn’t leave. Izzy heard her and came out. Then I lost my shit, because there was my daughter, and this woman was saying she was my girlfriend, and I led her on. She said I owed her an explanation, and I tried to give her one, but she was beyond reason, and it didn’t stop there. She kept coming by. We’d come home to find her in the driveway. She’d say she just wanted to talk, but then she’d snap again. Soon Izzy got scared of all white cars, because that’s what she drove. Hugh installed security cameras. She called my cell phone constantly at all hours of the night. Eventually, I had to go through the grueling process of getting a restraining order.”

Gillian’s muscles were in knots, but she fought to keep her voice even. “That’s horrendous.”

“I felt guilty because I’d never suspected anything of this magnitude from her. I’d held her in my arms and soothed her and affirmed her, and I’d never seen a single red flag. No vibe check until hindsight, and I know you’re probably having a field day with that because isn’t that the reason we have boundaries in the first place? So we don’t need to rely on gut impulse or intuition? But my field doesn’t have the same kind of guidelines or strict regulation yours does, which absolutely feeds your suspicion that we’re all a bunch of out-of-control hippies who—”

“Hey,” Gillian whispered.

“Don’t you dare be nice to me when you just got confirmation of everything you always wanted to believe about my job and my professionalism and probably my intelligence.”

“You didn’t confirm anything,” Gillian defended. “I don’t feel superior or gratified in any way.”

“What are you feeling then?”

She paused, running a quick scan through her body to make sure she got this right, and met Daphne’s vulnerability measure for measure. “I feel sorry for making you fear my judgment rather than expecting my compassion. I feel fear at the idea of someone threatening you or your family. Mostly, I feel rage at the person who did this to you.”

“I did this to me.”

“No.” She scooted forward and placed a hand gently on Daphne’s knee. “We are not responsible for someone else’s actions.”