Page 65 of Touch of Class

The door shut and, for a second, she thought maybe he’d decided to leave her to her own processing, but a moment later he stepped out again, this time holding a bowl of popcorn.

He shuffled to the car in his slippers and climbed inside, pulling the door shut before grinning at her. “I was settling in for a movie, but whatever drama is happening out here seems more engaging. Now, spill.”

“I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know why I’m sitting here. I just can’t seem to make myself do anything else. My brain and my body are both individually overloaded. Neither one of them has the capacity to work with the other.”

“Given what you do for a living, that seems like a rather inconvenient condition to develop. However did you make it through your sessions in such a semi-vegetative state?”

“It happened after work.”

“A sudden onset on the way home?” His grin spread. “Or was there a precipitating event? Perhaps one involving someone else in the office who shares your propensity for working late?”

She turned to face him, not at all enjoying his smug expression. “How’d you know?”

“This has been simmering since the first day you burst through the door all riled up about your mattress re-meet-cute.”

“My what?”

“She’s been under your skin from the starting gate, even before then. She was under your skin since the seventh grade.”

Daphne couldn’t deny the charge.

“And after your little Friendsgiving group therapy session, something had to give. That kind of built-up tension doesn’t diffuse itself. You can’t have a breakthrough and return to business as usual in a week. How’d it happen? What even happened?”

“She kissed me.”

He tossed a small handful of popcorn into his mouth and made a rolling motion with his hand for her to continue.

“I told her she could.”

He rolled his eyes. “I need details. You’re an artist and an empath. Paint me a picture. Make me feel it!”

She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to feel any of the many things the kiss had sparked so unexpectedly. She honestly hadn’t expected to feel anything at all. Or maybe she’d expected to feel something akin to the general positive regard she felt for her clients. Even though she didn’t go around kissing them, the concept was similar enough. “Gillian came in, clearly befuddled and still struggling to make sense of things. I wasn’t used to that. At first, I was kind of gently joking around, trying to get back on familiar footing, but she was so very Gillian-esque, trying to make everything into an intellectual exercise.”

“Very consistent for her. She’s a processor. What’d you do?”

“I kind of laughed at her.”

“Again?” Hugh looked aghast. “After everything?”

She winced. “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, and when I saw the hurt on her face, it cracked through my irreverence. Hugh, I don’t even know what came over me, but something about realizing I’d hurt her, hurt me.”

“That’s progress. You’re generally a very empathetic person, but you’d put up so many guards with her, you stifled that part of you, which is sad, because it’s a great part of you. One of the best.”

“I know, and I honestly never wanted to hurt her. Annoy her maybe, needle, or keep her from hurting me, but I wasn’t ready to see her vulnerable,” she explained. “And maybe I didn’t recognize it as vulnerability at first because she was talking about the kiss, the one we missed, and reauthoring with almost clinical detachment. She basically likened kissing me to some science project or trauma-recovery experiment.”

“How very romantic of her.” Hugh laughed. “I see why you weren’t swept off your feet.”

“No. I was not. I basically agreed, not out of pity, but because she’s so damn formidable when she’s using all her therapy words and wearing those pencil skirts.”

Hugh nodded.

“But I didn’t think it would mean anything. I thought she’d kiss me and we’d call it complete, like little more than wrapping up a snuggle session for someone who really needed one.”

“So she wasn’t the only person falling back on her professional experience for a sense of security?”

Daphne hadn’t thought of it that way. Had she and Gillian both done the same sort of overcontextualizing? “It didn’t work. Or maybe it worked for her, which would be fucking maddening if on top of everything, she also got confirmation that she’s better at her job than I am, because that doesn’t seem fair. She was the one who proposed this whole research method gone awry—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he called, over her increasingly unhinged tirade. “Back it up, Darling. You skipped seven steps ahead. You were in work mode, research, no big deal, blah blah blah. Then what happened?”