Chapter 11

Lori pulledinto the parking lot of the strip mall and killed the engine. She took a moment to gather her thoughts and remind herself that going to therapy was okay. Rosie had convinced her to start going not long after the lawyer started divorce proceedings, and that had taken time and patience on her part. Up to that point in her life, Lori had been pretty self-sufficient and when she needed advice, she always went to her mom.

But the effect of seeing the woman she’d thought was the love of her life enjoying someone else with such vigor required professional help. And that’s where Rae Trent came in. Marriage counselor extraordinaire. Except there was no marriage to counsel because the lawyer had been blunt about how miserable she was and that she had no interest in trying to salvage their relationship.

Still, Lori needed to work on her relationship with herself, and a visit here every two weeks had been helping with that. But this hadn’t been on her Monday morning schedule until she’d called Rae on Saturday evening. Lori drifted back to the long afternoon she’d spent with Gabe, and a lunch that had turned into her dumping her baggage at Gabe’s feet. The fact that Gabe had asked her to didn’t matter. What mattered was how emotionally wrung out she’d been during and especially after her confession.

Clearly, she still had a lot of work to do.

She took one of those deep, cleansing breaths Rae had taught her and blew it out slowly. Apparently, some people could draw air into their lungs for over two minutes, but even on her best attempt, Lori hadn’t made it beyond forty-five seconds. Maybe if she could get to the two-minute mark, she’d finally be able to release all of the toxic waste inside her along with the out breath.

She could hope.

Lori grabbed her purse and to-go mug, pre-loaded with her strongest home brew, and headed into Rae’s office. The receptionist directed her to go straight in, so she knocked and entered when Rae called out.

“Hi, Lori,” she said, in her evergreen breezy tone.

“Good morning, Rae.” She hadn’t registered that she had her bag clutched to her chest until Rae raised both her eyebrows and directed her gaze at Lori’s torso. “Oh.” She dropped her arms and hung the purse on the arm of the chair she never sat in before she lowered herself gently into the plush armchair she always preferred and placed her mug on a coaster on the table beside her.

Rae gestured to the coffee. “Leaded or unleaded?”

“Leaded. Heavy, heavy lead,” Lori said and smiled.

“It’s one of those days?”

Lori nodded. “Thank you for squeezing me in today on such short notice.”

Rae waved her hand. “Let’s not waste our precious time on unnecessary pleasantries, Lori. I told you I’d always make time if you were having difficulty between sessions.” She picked up her writing pad and smiled. “What’s brought you to me today?”

“Is there supposed to be a timeline on this?” Lori asked, not quite ready to get into the meat of her issue.

Rae’s mouth twitched slightly, and she narrowed her eyes. “You think you’re moving too fast or too slow?”

Lori pressed herself into the back of the chair. “I thought I was moving along just fine.”

“Until?”

“How long do you spend with your average client? A year? Two? Do you think I’ll have to see you for the rest of my life?” She blinked away the unexpected presence of tears and tried to distract herself with happy thoughts. Elephants in Koh Samui. White sand and turquoise sea water. Papaya salad… But Rae hadn’t answered her question. “What do you think?”

“I have patients who’ve been with me for years and others for a few months. And I think you’ll come to see me as long as you want to, Lori. You’re an intelligent woman; you know your own mind and what you need.”

Lori shook her head. “That used to be me. Now I’m an emotional time bomb who could go off any given second. I’d been doing really well, hadn’t I? I thought I was doing fine.” She rolled her eyes, realizing she’d repeated herself, and she knew what would follow.

“Until?” Rae asked again.

They’d been doing this dance for a year, and yet Lori was ever hopeful that Rae would move differently, that she might simply give Lori the answers instead of having her root around the dark of her own insides with a match that kept burning down to her fingers. How she longed for a frigging Maglite. “Until about a week ago. And even then, I’d been managing to keep a lid on it in front of everyone. If you ask Rosie or Beth or Fran, I bet they’d say I was fine. Or as fine as I’ve been since the lawyer left me.”

“I’m not interested in their opinions, Lori. You know that.”

Yes, she knew that. Rae was only interested in getting Lori to spill her thoughts and feelings, her terrors and fears. Which was only right, of course, since Lori was paying for the privilege. But God, sometimes…

“What happened a week ago, Lori?”

“I was vaguely tempted to swing into the adjacent nail salon instead of keeping our appointment today.” She stretched out her hands and inspected her non-existent manicure. God, she’d been letting so many things go that she used to take pride in.

“And what do you think about that temptation now?” Rae asked, pen poised over her legal pad.

Lori considered that for a moment. Seconds ago, she’d thought it was avoidance, but it wasn’t. “It seems like it might be a kind of progress in itself.”

“How so?”

“I can’t really remember the last time I had my nails done.” She held her hands closer for Rae’s inspection. “I don’t even paint them myself. I suspect that’d be a disaster though, so it’s probably for the best that I don’t try.”

“So in what way is it progress?” Rae asked.

“I might be starting to think about taking better care of my appearance, more so than just the basics, I think.” Lori picked up her coffee and took a far longer sip than she should have, and she coughed. She glanced at her watch; her time was ticking away, and she had to get back for Gabe to pick up that fricking car. She looked up at Rae, who waited patiently, as she always did, never filling the silences that were all Lori’s. That space was reserved, awaiting only her words and feelings. “A week ago, I went back to that building for the first time since, well, since the last time. The time. When my world imploded.”

“And why did you choose to do that?”

Lori huffed. “I didn’t choose to do it. I was with someone who wanted to see what was inside.”

“And you chose to let them?”

Yes, she knew what Rae was getting at; she always had a choice. She could choose how to act, how to react, what to say, what not to say. “She asked nicely,” Lori said, instantly aware of the petulance in her voice. You’re thirty years old, she told herself.

“Were you worried what they might think if you said no?”

She paused before snapping out a rote response and gave Rae’s question the time it deserved. “I didn’t think about that. I wanted her to be happy, and it seemed like going into the workshop would do that.”

“Is there a reason her feelings mattered more to you than your own, Lori?”

“I wasn’t thinking about my feelings, really. I didn’t want to go in, so I didn’t. But Gabe did, and I thought I’d be okay if I let her.”

“But it wasn’t okay?”

“She got very excited about the stupid car. And that started a whole chain of events I hadn’t anticipated.” She clasped her hands together then rested them on her lap, trying to keep them relaxed. Then she relayed the story about the restoration project, the possible repurposing of the workshop to a veterinary clinic, and the damn contract Bruce had drawn up in an impossibly speedy time.

“You seem most upset about the contract,” Rae said.

And waited.

“It’s not the contract, per se. It’s what it represents.” A flash of the confusion and disappointment on Gabe’s face came into her mind. Lori had ached to take it away, but she couldn’t. And she’d hid behind the requirements of her family’s non-profit. All of which were true, of course, but there was so much more behind her motivation to wrangle Gabe into a legally binding document.

“What does it represent, Lori?”

She bit her lip. Trust was earned, her mom had always said. But equally, wasn’t a modicum of it automatically afforded in order to build on for any kind of relationship? The lawyer had taken a wrecking ball to Lori’s trust foundations.

“Lori, I can see you processing internally. Saying those things out loud can often breathe life into them. And once they’re really alive, you can choose whether to nurture them or begin to systematically deconstruct them.”

Or kill them off completely. That would be Lori’s preference. “Apparently, the contract represents my inability to trust anyone new in my life. Even if our board hadn’t required it, I would’ve insisted on one anyway. I kind of told her that too.”

“How did she react?”

“She was incredibly understanding, actually.” She stifled a small giggle, remembering Gabe’s rather vociferous objection to that word. Lori would never have expected a soldier to care that much about language. But Gabe was no ordinary soldier, and Lori was fast realizing that.

“Gabe is an ex-soldier you’re allowing to visit her old bomb dog who’s one of your rescues, is that right?”

Lori nodded. “Yes, my friend Toni arranged for Max—the dog—to be sent to the Sanctuary because he was no longer able to do his job following a bombing. I said yes to Gabe visiting, but then it turned out she was settling in Chicago, and she asked if she could visit him weekly.”

“And how did you feel about that?”

Lori focused on her to-go mug again and took another overly long drink. The caffeine hit the back of her throat and sent a jolt through her entire system. Maybe she’d put in one scoop too many. “How did I feel about that?” she asked as though it wasn’t the same phrase she’d heard from Rae a hundred times over the past year. Therapy only worked if she was honest… “She’s a character from one of those war-duty-blow-up video games. Six feet tall. Carved from marble. Beautiful eyes that you could stare into for days.” Lori sighed deeply. She hadn’t had that kind of visceral reaction to a woman for a long, long time.

“And that was…what?”

“Terrifying,” Lori said. “For a nanosecond, the thought of a one-night stand crossed my mind. The attraction was mutual, and better yet, she was just supposed to be passing through, so there wouldn’t be any awkwardness in the afterglow.” She shook her head. “Thankfully, that thought didn’t manifest into action, because I think I would’ve had to move back to New York.”

“Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I couldn’t have faced her again. One-night stands are fantasies for me. I wouldn’t have been able to take the shame of seeing her every week.”

“Shame?”

“Embarrassment then, if shame is too strong a word for you.”

“This isn’t about what I think about words though, is it?”

Lori rested her head in her hand and tried to summon the strength and patience to continue. This was why people didn’t want to go to therapy; it was too much hard work. What’s hard is also worthwhile. She didn’t need a peppy fridge magnet quote; she could always rely on her mom’s voice in her head. “I’m not a one-night stand person. I don’t judge anyone who is, but I’d find it mortifying to bare everything to someone and then have to keep seeing that person at the coffee shop or the bank. Sex is more than just sex to me, and that’s not going to change just because my heart has been stomped on.”

“So has the attraction faded now that Gabe is part of your everyday life?”

Lori snorted. “The opposite. I’m even having dreams about her. And before you ask: yes, they’re sexual.”

“And how are you handling all those feelings?”

“I’m not handling them. That’s part of the problem.” Lori closed her eyes and pushed her head against the back of the chair. Rae knew everything; she knew all about the far-reaching effects of the lawyer’s infidelity and the emotional abuse that followed.

“Do you know how you would like to handle them?”

“How I want to handle them is nothing like how I should handle them, and how I should handle them bears no resemblance to how I’m currently able to handle them.” But, God, how I’d like to handle Gabe.

“Okay. Well, let’s talk through what’s going on and, just for now, put aside how you think you should be handling it.”

Lori nodded. “I’ll try.”

Rae gave an encouraging smile. “That’s all we can ever do.”

Break it down into bite-size pieces. That strategy usually worked for her. “If I’m honest, I think that I’ve been avoiding dealing with the workshop and the car without really being conscious of it.”

“They are elements that you’ve never mentioned before,” Rae said.

Lori was about to protest but stopped herself. She remembered telling Rae about finding the lawyer in flagrante delicto—a phrase a little too on the nose—but not where. “The location didn’t seem important at the time. I was more concerned with what she was doing, not where she was doing it.”

“Understandably.”

“I’ve been focused on my emotions surrounding the betrayal and the aftermath, on everything she said to me and accused me of. I’ve wanted to get back to my old self, the me that she destroyed, and away from the person I’d become as a result of that relationship and its failure.”

Lori’s mom had been the one to illuminate that issue in a particularly frank conversation post-divorce. I’m afraid I’m losing you. Her mom’s words had been the final push to acquiesce to therapy.

“And that’s been going well, hasn’t it? You’ve been working on rebuilding your self-confidence and your social life. You told me that the night with Rosie went better than expected, even if it was cut short with food poisoning.”

Lori laughed but shouldn’t have. It took poor Rosie a week to get back to some semblance of normality. “It has, you’re right. And Rosie is respecting my wishes and has stopped trying to set me up with someone else. Meeting Gabe was a good thing, even though my physical response to her was a little overwhelming. I’ve never had that kind of…overtly sexual reaction to a person. It was feral and animalistic, like a bonobo ape.” Even now, she had to squeeze her thighs together when she thought of those dreams. “I’ve always been more of a panda when it comes to sex.”

Rae noted something on her pad for the first time. “I like that you give me something to research almost every time we meet. You’re better than the Discovery Channel.”

“You’ll appreciate them; they’re a matriarchal society.”

Rae smiled and glanced at her books on the extensive floor-to-ceiling shelves covering the largest wall of her office. Lori knew very little about Rae, as she’d come to discover was key to a successful therapist-client relationship, and most of what she knew came from paying careful attention to what was on those shelves. While therapy books were the most prominent, second place went to feminist texts aplenty.

“Anyway,” Lori said, aware of the ever-ticking clock and her session time dwindling, “Gabe’s presence triggered the next step in me putting the lawyer in my rearview. I just didn’t know there was another step, so I guess I stumbled and fell flat on my face.”

“And the next step is?”

“Dealing with the workshop and unpacking the emotions connected to it.”

Rae nodded and looked impressed. Or that’s how Lori interpreted her expression. Rae had said from the very beginning that Lori had all the answers she needed and that she could work everything out for herself. Only now was she beginning to believe that. And boy, it felt pretty damn good. “So my feelings around Gabe are complicated. She made it clear that she’d be interested in dating me, and I shut her down immediately. We’ve agreed to be friends, which is especially good now that we’re kind of working together in addition to her visiting Max…”

“Now that you’ve said all that out loud, how do you think you’re handling all those feelings?”

Lori smiled and allowed herself a certain smugness. “Not so bad, I guess. I’ve communicated my feelings, my past, and my reservations to Gabe, and she’s accepted all of it without… Huh,” she muttered when the penny dropped. “Without judgment. And I can’t remember the last time I didn’t feel judged about the failure of my marriage and my reaction to it. Apart from you, of course.”

“That’s great, Lori. Usually you like to identify a new goal to work toward at the end of each session, but this wasn’t a scheduled one, so what are your thoughts on that?”

Lori nibbled the inside of her lip while she considered Rae’s question. Gabe was the source of her conflict, but she could also be part of the solution, especially for Lori to overcome the workshop obstacle she hadn’t even realized was on her path to healing. “My goal is repurposing the building for something positive.”

“A physical, achievable goal. Wonderful. And you have a plan that’s already in motion with both the car renovation and the veterinary clinic,” Rae said. “Do you want to set an emotional goal?”

Lori sighed deeply. This was the big one, the emotion at the root of her inability to move beyond the lawyer and the key for her to consider embarking on a new relationship. “Trust. I have to be able to trust again.”

“And do you have a plan that will help you work toward that goal?”

“I think so. And it revolves around Gabe,” Lori said. “I’ve agreed to be her friend, but I have to make the time and space for that to evolve. In spending more time with her, I can begin to share myself again. The real me behind the walls and the hurt. And hopefully, Gabe will be someone who can hold that vulnerability, which will mean that I can keep sharing. Eventually, that turns into trust.” And after that, who knew? Maybe it could turn into something deeper. Maybe she could share her heart again.