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I feel awful. How would he feel about me if he knew I’d slept with his best friend?
But I say the words back anyway. “Love you too.”
He clears his throat. “I’ll, um, see you this week.”
“We will?” He must mean Thursday night dinner. “Sure, on Thursday.”
“Right, right,” he says, then looks at his watch. “I have to go.”
We end the Zoom, and I don’t want to think about why he acted weird just now. I have my own reasons to act weird. Best we don’t talk about those either.
* * *
Story of my life—I’m almost always afraid I’ll say something I shouldn’t say in public. But I never do.
That’s how my particular brand of OCD works. The fear is enough to fuck me up. But the great thing about seeing a shrink for that fear is…I can say whatever I want.
With that freedom to share spurring me on, I walk into Shira Bergman’s office for an early Monday meeting, and the second the door closes, I announce: “I slept with my father’s best friend on Friday night.”
She blinks at me, bug-eyed.
I sit down, grinning, a little devilishly delighted that I succeeded in stunning her. “I shocked you,” I say, stating the obvious.
“You did. Do you want to talk about it?”
“I do,” I say, crossing my legs and meeting her eyes. Her dark, curly hair frames her wise face, and she waits, patiently.
But she doesn’t have to. I’m raring to go. I’ve got tea to spill. I’m not asking her for reassurance. I don’t need her to tell me I’m okay. Iwantto tell her what’s going on in my secret life.
I don’t hold back the details. I tell her about the costumes, the sex, the orgasms, the panty gift, and the fact that I can’t ever see him again, and when I’m done, she pins me with a thoughtful stare, one that says her brain is working through my Monday morning bombshell.
“Do you think this is related to what happened when you went to family therapy?”
What? My head spins. How did we go from talking about me finally having sex and enjoying it to her thinking this has to do withthe time we went to family therapy?
“What do you mean?”
“You said it didn’t go well when you went with everyone.”
That’s true. Mom, Dad, Liz, and I went to grief therapy together a few times to deal with all the hurt and the blame. At first, the sessions were helpful—cathartic even. But where itwent horribly wrongwas at Willa’s grave the day after one of those sessions. I’ve never told Shira the things my father said to me when he broke down at my sister’s tombstone. I’ve never told anyone. Ican’ttell anyone. The words hurt too much. All I’ve said to Shira is we didn’t deal well with our grief. Lately, she’s been urging me more to talk through the loss, and sometimes I do talk about my sister, but I don’t want to today.
“You think I’m trying to get back at him?” I ask, fixating on that.
“That’s not what I said. Is that what you heard me say?”
Pretty much.“I didn’t know who Finn was that first night I met him. I didn’t say yes to seeing him again because of my dad. Iwantedto see him,” I say, annoyed. My pulse spikes.
“Jules, that’s not what I meant,” she says, keeping calm as I spiral.
“What did you mean?” I ask, crossing my arms.
“I just wonder if you chose someone for your first time knowing that youcouldn’thave a relationship with him. Knowing that you wouldn’t—your words—see him again.” She leans forward. “I wonder if that has anything to do with your past. Maybe we can talk about what happened when you went to therapy with your family.”
Nope.
Not going to. Don’t want to revisit that terrible time. And she knows it.
“I’d rather not,” I say, cooling a bit. “I have some meetings this week. My boss said he wanted to talk aboutThe Rendezvous, and I’m hoping he’ll assign me that show. I’d rather review our strategies for that. I really don’t want to think sex thoughts during a business meeting.”
