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“You are,” Kim assured me. “Don’t let this one incident change your mind on that.”
“But why would he do that?” I asked. “Why would he just push me out that way, and who was he talking to? I don’t want to speculate, but it makes me feel like he’s hiding something from me and like I’ve done something wrong to just show up like that when he told me before that’s what he wants me to do.”
“Everyone needs their privacy sometimes,” she said. “And when it comes to military veterans, you never know what they need. He could be on the phone with someone who works with vets. Or it could be a friend of his. Or it could be something that’s not even close to either of those things.”
“Not knowing is so annoying,” I groaned.
“But it’s also okay to not know everything about the person you’re seeing,” she said. “If it’s important, he’ll tell you. If it’s not, then he won’t. You don’t tell him every little thing about you, do you?”
I felt my cheeks flush.
“Mostly,” I said. “I can’t think of anything I haven’t told him. I should put it that way, I guess.”
Kim gave me an understanding smile. “Well, maybe you want to pump the brakes a bit on that. It’s good to have a little mystery in a relationship, let me tell you. After nearly forty years of marriage, there are still things about me Andrew doesn’t know, and he won’t, either.”
“Really?” I gasped. “Wow. I guess I haven’t thought about things like that before. But still. It didn’t strike me as something that he just wants to be a mystery so much as he didn’t want me to be involved in it. I respect his privacy, and I understand there are things about him I don’t know, but it was the way that he jumped up as he did, then walked me out of the room like I had just invaded his space, that hurt my feelings.”
“I know, honey,” Kim said as she finished the rest of her iced tea. “But trust me when I say you might make a much bigger thing out of this in your mind than it is. If you’re not careful, your imagination will have you believe all sorts of things that aren’t true, and you don’t want that.”
“Still,” I said. I let the word hang in the air. I knew she was right, but I didn’t want to admit that he had the right to close me out the way he did. I knew I was being sensitive about it, but there was still the side of me that felt he ought to have been nicer about it or at the very least have told me what he was doing.
Or, more importantly, who he was talking to.
“Don’t worry too much about it. From what you said, the two of you are going to Key West this weekend, so I’d say that whatever he’s doing, it’s not that big of a deal. He’ll talk to you when the time is right, I’m sure,” Kim said as she gave me a hug.
“Thanks, Kim,” I told her. “I appreciate you.”
She gave me one last warm smile before she headed out the door, and I sighed. I hated feeling this way. I wished there was something I could do to change it. But I couldn’t, not without any idea of what he was doing or why he reacted the way he did.
It felt like he was keeping something from me, something about him I couldn’t know, a secret he didn’t trust me to keep. That was what I hated. And that launched a whirlwind of insecurity.
I thought I had done something wrong, and that was why he wasn’t able to tell me what he was doing. To make matters worse, I couldn’t even ask him about it since he closed me out of the room so fast. All I could do was wait for him to come to me.
Whenever he had the chance.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Gavin
“I want you to know you can reach out to me any time of the day or night. I don’t care what time it is or if it’s a holiday or what. I might not always be on the computer, but I check my messages every day, and I’ll get back to you within a day, even if it’s the weekend,” Andrei said.
“Thanks,” I told him. “I’m hoping to get over this soon and not have to bother you anymore, but you never know.”
“It’s not a bother; it’s what I’m here for,” he laughed. “I’m a therapist, after all, and if you are ever in need, call me.”
“I appreciate it, and it might be weird to say to someone with your job, but I don’t do therapy. I never have,” I told him.
“I know. You said that when you filled out the paperwork to start seeing me,” Andrei laughed. “I read your file front to back twice before meeting with you, for good reason. If someone feels that they don’t need therapy at all, then odds are they need it most.”
“Gee, thanks,” I told him. “But I have to disagree with you on that one.”
“Why are you so averse to the thought of needing mental health help?” he asked me.
I paused. It wasn’t a question I wanted to answer. And that in itself was what made me not want to do this.
“Therapy—therapists—make me talk about things I don’t want to talk about. I would just as soon forget most of the shit that gets dragged up when I’m in the chair, and I hate that. If there was a way for you to erase my memory, I would be all for this shit. But it seems to me every time I get involved with a therapist for very long, I get worse,” I admitted.
“You know, there’s a reason why they say things are going to get worse before they get better,” Andrei told me. “They didn’t make that up for the sake of it. The reason you feel like things get worse is because of the feelings you haven’t dealt with. You’ve shoved them down for so long, it’s hard to accept them when they do come up.”
