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PROLOGUE
Gemma Britton didn’t see many new patients anymore.
With the books and the morning show interviews and all her speaking engagements, it was hard enough to fit in time for her existing patients, much less accept new ones who might only be seeing her because of her celebrity status.
She hadn’t expected it to turn out this way. But an invitation five years ago to appear on a local morning newscast to discuss the on-set behavioral issues of a well-known actor had led to other offers from stations, all of which wanted a telegenic psychiatrist who could explain complicated psychological problems in straightforward language for a mass audience.
The local TV hits turned into national ones. Suddenly, she was on the speaking circuit. She put out a book,Working Through It with Dr. Gemma, which ended up being a bestseller. That led to a follow-up, which was successful as well. It was all very exciting.
But it became harder and harder to fit in time for the regular patients she’d seen for years. In fact, some recent criticism of her on social media had expressed that exact issue. As a result, she’d created a new policy: every month she would commit at least forty hours to seeing patients, which admittedly amounted to only about two a day, but it kept her in the mix.
She also made sure that one of those hours each month was for a new patient. If possible, she would keep them on her roster. If she didn’t think they were a match, she would recommend another doctor to the new patient. And that first session was always pro bono.
That’s why she was currently in a session with Tyler Hardigan. His initial phone consultation had been intriguing. At twenty-eight, he had trouble establishing romantic relationships. In fact, he said he was a virgin, and not by choice. When he arrived at the office, she could hazard a preliminary, non-professional guess as to why.
Tyler had long, shaggy brown hair that fell into his eyes, tinted glass, and wore a Hawaiian shirt and brown, corduroy trousers that looked about fifty years old. It was as if he wastryingto appear uncool. In fact, she wasn’t even sure if the hair was real or a wig. It almost looked like he was wearing a disguise of some kind.
He wouldn’t be the first one. Some folks were so embarrassed about getting therapy that they felt they had to hide their true selves in order to reveal big truths. But in Tyler’s case, his true looks were so hidden that she couldn’t get any kind of read on him. Hell, he could be a neighbor of hers and she’d never recognize him in this get-up.
Her phone buzzed and she looked down. It was a text from her assistant, Cara, asking if it was okay for her to leave for the day. This was Gemma’s last session on a Friday afternoon, and there was no reason for Cara to delay her weekend unnecessarily. She texted back a quick thumbs up before looking over at Tyler.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “Just letting my assistant leave for the day. I should have put my phone on silent. Let’s get back to it. You were talking about how you feel that you can’t form meaningful connections with potential romantic partners. Tell me a little more about that.”
“I just…” Tyler started to say before stopping and beginning again, “It’s just that I get so nervous that I can’t think of the right thing to say and then I end up saying the absolute wrong thing. I think it freaks them out.”
Okay,” Gemma replied, “can you give me an example of when you said the ‘wrong’ thing?”
Tyler thought for a second, then after a moment of hesitation, seemed to come up with something.
“There was this one girl at a clothing store in the mall,” he began,” she was helping me find a shirt and she was really nice, so I asked if she wanted to see a movie with me.”
“All right,” Gemma replied, “maybe a little bit forward but not out of bounds. How did she react?”
Tyler shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
“I showed her the trailer for the movie on my phone, and she got upset and said she was getting her manager. Then she ran off. I got worried, so I left.”
Gemma was almost afraid to ask the next question, but that was part of her job.
“What was the movie?”
“It’s called Coed Orgy III,” he told her matter-of-factly. “Doyouwant to see the trailer?”
Gemma kept her expression impassive as she answered.
"That won't be necessary," she told him. "But let me ask you, Tyler, do you see why showing a stranger a pornographic movie the first time you meet her might be considered a little too intimate?”
“It wasn’t the movie,” he protested. “It was just the trailer.”
Now, it was Gemma's turn to shift uncomfortably in her own chair.
"Okay, well, I think there’s definitely something we can work on here, which is understanding personal boundaries.”
“That sounds great,” he said enthusiastically. “So let’s fix it.”
“We’re going to make a real effort,” she assured him, “but it’s important to understand that there’s no quick fix for some of these things. It demands real determination and commitment to try make change.”
“But I want to get better now, Dr. Britton,” he said. “I want to go back to that girl and get her to go out with me this time.”
