Page 68 of Touch of Class

“Fascinating area of study.” Gillian motioned to the nearby chairs. “Please make yourself comfortable.”

“Several lifetimes worth of work,” Lynn agreed, taking a seat. “I’m sure you’d see a lot of practical applications from the psychology side if you were into that area of the field.”

“I’m deeply interested but haven’t had the chance to study as much as I’d like to. My mentor—” Gillian thought of the last time she’d spoken with Maura and no longer knew if the term still fit “—or the woman who was my mentor during my master’s program, has done a lot of work on epigenetics.”

Lynn’s hazel eyes sparkled. “Amazing field. The bleeding edge there is expanding so fast, I don’t know where her work will end and mine will begin before long. Perhaps you could put us in touch, or maybe we could chat sometime about your own experiences?”

“I’d love to.” Gillian caught herself, ever aware of possible conflicts of interest these days. “Which one of my coworkers did you say you were here to see?”

“Daphne.”

Gillian blanched. She shouldn’t have. She knew better and had had plenty of practice, but she supposed this situation didn’t technically mandate a blank slate. Lynn had admitted she wasn’t a client in her practice at all, but rather had found her way into Gillian’s waiting room for reasons that didn’t fully compute, given everything else she’d said.

“Go ahead.” Lynn nudged playfully. “You can say it.”

Gillian shook her head. “I’m sorry?”

“Ask me.”

“Ask you what?”

“Why someone with an Ivy League education and a doctorate in a hard science would ever stoop deep enough into woo-woo hippie nonsense to pay a stranger to cuddle me for an hour.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t—I mean, that’s not my … I respect confidentiality, and—”

Lynn laughed, a deep, resonant belly laugh, not entirely different than that of the woman she’d come to see. “Listen, you cannot possibly say anything I didn’t say early on, or question anything I didn’t try to disprove, or turn up your nose at any of this any more than I did. No one has ever found the idea of cuddle therapy more horrifying and distasteful than I did two years ago.”

Gillian relaxed slightly. “What happened two years ago?”

“It actually all started about two years before that when my wife of twenty-eight years died suddenly of a heart attack.”

“I’m so sorry.” Gillian’s heart twisted in her chest.

“It was devastating.” Lynn continued evenly enough, but her hands balled into fists atop her legs. “I spent the first six months completely lost in a sea of grief, anger, drinking too much, all the clichés but some good friends pulled me out of the hole. I started therapy, joined a pickleball league, and began to build a life on my own, one that she’d be proud of me for.”

Gillian nodded. “Admirable.”

“I got to a point where I was mostly okay. Work I love, hobbies, solid friends, a bit of good wine from time to time. My hypertension was still too high for my doctor’s comfort levels, and I had bouts with anxiety, but, honestly, who doesn’t? My days were full and meaningful, but after a couple of years, the nights were still hard. I longed to be held, and for a while I bore that with crushing shame.”

“It’s not unusual for survivors to struggle with the prospect of starting to date again,” Gillian offered.

“See, that’s the thing,” Lynn said. “I have zero desire to date. The thought of someone else taking up my evenings or wrecking my routines or invading my personal space is a complete nonstarter for me. I worked hard to get back to this point of comfort. I don’t want to give up my freedom or solace. Plus, my libido is all but dormant since menopause blew in like a hurricane. I’m not writing off romance forever, but right now it holds no appeal. Touch, on the other hand, tenderness, soothing, those needs became an ache in me.”

Gillian successfully stemmed the urge to bring her hand to the ache stirring in her own chest.

“Finally, the shame and the ache battling in me got to be too much, and one night I snapped into scientist mode. It’s what I know how to do, and there’s no shame in science. No ache, either. There’s simply no room for any of it in my trusty research methodologies.”

“A woman after my own heart.” Gillian smiled, remembering where her own research had recently taken her.

“I started with a lit review,” Lynn explained.

“Obviously.”

“The results were shocking. I ran into study after study on the benefits of touch interventions going back generations.”

“Harlow’s monkeys?” Gillian asked.

Lynn laughed. “I didn’t have to go back quite that far, but it became clear there was more out there than I could ever seriously evaluate, so I revised my parameters to include studies done in the last five years including all age ranges with results pertaining to physical and mental health. I ended up with hundreds of peer-reviewed publications spanning roughly 10,000 participants.”