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Ali turns her gaze to Jeff. “What do you have to say about that, Jeff?”
Jeff isn’t thinking about his answer. Ali knows this and Jeff knows it. He already knows deep in his core. Ali read the answers on the homework assignments she assigned the couple. His responses are very different than his wife’s.
He wrote two homework assignments ago that during their sessions he isn’t thinking about meeting in the middle. He’s thinking that he wishes he could go back in time and find someone like Ali. He is thinking that her hair looks nice today and that new dress she’s wearing, it suits her. He’s thinking about what it would be like to slip her out of it and whether she likes it fast and rough, or if he should take his time. His money is on it being the former. If he had just waited, he could have met someone more like her, and then he wouldn’t be in this position. She may be soft on the outside, but he can see Ali for what she really is. Forwhoshe really is. She has a dark side, like him, a side that rebels against the norm, perhaps simply for the sake of doing so.
Ali didn’t take the homework assignment personally. Not even when on his last assignment he got explicit. He wrote that a woman like Ali would let him pull her hair, she wouldn’t lose her mind over a mark or two left behind. She wouldn’t care whether he was wearing a dress or a three-piece suit. She wouldn’t bat an eye at what he’s into. His fetishes could probably change by the week and she still wouldn’t care. They’d have a good laugh, she’d accept what is, they’d have a bit of fun and move on. Ali would give him what he wants, and he would take care of her. He could be happy with a woman like that.
It isn’t true, of course. Ali is aware he just wants to get out of therapy. Jeff wants out of his marriage. He feels trapped in both, and he’ll do anything to sabotage either.
Ali clears her throat. “Jeff?”
“I can’t be someone I’m not.”
“Well, that’s a lie,” Lisa says. “You’re trying to be a woman and you’re clearly not one.”
Ali crosses and uncrosses her legs. She notices Jeff’s stare. “You can understand, Jeff, that Lisa feels deceived.”
He exhales long and slow and folds and unfolds his hands. Jeff told Ali that he thinks she does this on purpose, that she tries to get him to open up by using her sex appeal. He said it’s one reason he doesn’t mind paying her hourly rate. Also, he told her, it works. “Yeah, I understand that.”
“And Lisa, you can understand how Jeff could feel unaccepted.”
“No, not really. If he hadn’t lied about who he really was—”
“But whatever the reason,” Ali says. “He did lie. And so here we are. And now we have to figure out how to move forward.”
Lisa stared at the floor. Jeff stared at Ali. In a few moments, Ali would know if she could proceed or not in bringing things to a close. She could feel Lisa’s resistance, but she could also see that her face had softened, and that she looked visibly younger. Finally, the woman brightened and sat up a little straighter. “I’m not sure I can.”
Ali glanced at Jeff and then met Lisa’s eye. Jeff is not going to change. Lisa has to move toward acceptance. One way or the other, whether Lisa stays or she goes. Ali sighs. “You don’t have a choice.”
Chapter Thirteen
Ali
Austin
Ali sat at her desk, staring at her planner. Ali’s favorite type of session is one in which her clients come to a resolution. Even if it doesn’t feel that way on the surface, every session brings things closer to a head, to an ending, but more importantly to a new beginning.
She checks her schedule once again just in case her assistant has booked the two slots Ali keeps open on her calendar for emergencies. Thankfully, nothing has popped up, so four clients, two conference calls, and a podcast appearance are all that stands between Ali and her evening.
She has five minutes between appointments, just enough time to use the restroom and check her phone. She taps on one app and then another, making sure to hit all four. Beacon is her favorite. She always checks that one first, although sometimes the others surprise her and turn up something unexpected. There are hundreds of unread messages between the apps. Ten new ones in her Beacon inbox alone, just in the last hour. She knows she’ll never catch up, so she looks for something that catches her eye instead. Something promising.
She thinks of Andrew from the flight and wonders what that would be like. Unfortunately, wrong city. At least for the moment, Andrew is geographically undesirable.
Ali has offices in three locations. Seattle, Boston, and Austin. This week she’s in Texas, but she splits her time between the three cities. She also flies to meet clients where they are, often holding sessions in hotels, or rented spaces, but never in her client’s homes. It’s too personal and in her opinion, not conducive to therapy. To have any sort of real or meaningful breakthrough, you have to get a person out of their immediate situation and radically change their state.
The Beacon app pings, pulling her attention away from imagining Andrew and those curious eyes of his. When Ali taps the notification, she pauses. She recognizes the profile pic. It’s the man from last night. Her first date of the evening. The one who recognized her. Ali liked him. Which was unfortunate because there was only one problem. He was too genuine. The kind who would only get hurt in the end.
She had better luck with her second date, although she had a third lined up if things took a turn for the worse. It turned out to be unnecessary. She went home with date number two. Lucas. Mid-twenties, trust fund baby with a tortured soul. She has a penchant for the type. She thought, at least initially, that this one might have the potential to be a regular, but as usual, she was disappointed in the end.
Hardly anyone turns out to be a regular. They either don’t text back or they off themselves, something she supposes goes along with the tortured soul thing. It’s fine about Lucas, whichever way it goes. The sex had been mediocre at best. An appetizer when what you really want is the main course. The fact that he cried almost made up for it, except that he came so fast, she nearly ended up in tears too.
Ali is not a crier.
She is thinking about Lucas, wondering what he might be like with a little coaching, if he’ll ever realize what it means to be a good lover, or if he’ll simply play shell games with one-night stands, when her assistant buzzes her to let her know her next clients have arrived.
There are techniques she could teach Lucas, but she knows it’s pointless. You can’t help everyone.
She starts to click her phone off, when the app pings again, notifying her of another message from Mark. She hesitates for a second before deleting it. Ali doesn’t have time for genuine. She sees enough of that in her work. It pays well, because rarely do relationships turn out that way.
