We entered the nondescript brick building in the Pearl District in downtown Portland a few minutes before one p.m. As Laurel searched the directory on the wall for the suite number of Bonita Hawthorne, LPC — Licensed Professional Counselor — I looked her over from head to toe. It had been five days since she moved to Portland and she already looked thinner.

I hated the idea that this separation was causing her even more stress. I hated even more that the separation was her idea, so she was essentially bringing the added stress upon herself. But what I hated the most was that I had to be here, pretending I believed a complete stranger could understand the intricacies of our relationship well enough to fix us.

No one would ever understand what it was like to be us. It was impossible to imagine. How could anyone imagine being as inextricably bound to a person as Laurel and I were to each other?

We weren’t just lovers. We weren’t just husband and wife. We weren’t just best friends. We weren’t just occasional enemies. We were survivors, bound to each other by the kind of excruciating torture no human should ever have to endure.

If we could get through that, we would get through this. We had to get through this. I didn’t think I could handle losing Laurel.

“It’s suite 209,” she said, turning toward the elevator behind us, looking uncomfortable as I continued to stare at her body.

“Have you been eating or did they run out of Oreos in Portland?” I asked as I pressed the call button.

She shot me an irascible glare as she crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s not like I’m not trying.”

The steel elevator doors slid open and I followed her inside. “You need to see a doctor, Laurel.”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” I said, fully aware this would set her off, but at least it would also get her attention.

“Thanks. I really needed to hear that right now.”

I rolled my eyes. “We’re on our way to see a fucking therapist and you want me to pretend like everything’s okay? You look like you’re one strong gust from being blown away.”

Her eyes shot daggers at me. “Don’t do that.”

She didn’t like me using her mother’s catchphrases. Just how neither of us liked it when the other tried to force a conversation about Junior. I supposed if we were going to approach the difficult topics, we were in the right place. At least, I hoped so. After my last experience with a head shrink, I didn’t have much faith in the process.

The receptionist behind the desk in suite 209 was young and, apparently, ripe for a good lay, based on the way she was eye-fucking the shit out of me while we sat in the waiting room.

It took a special kind of sadist to flirt with a married man in front of his grieving wife.

Laurel may have been too distracted to notice the receptionist’s coquettish glances in my direction, but that didn’t make it any less sleazy. If that girl were a man, I wouldn’t think twice about clocking her.

I grabbed Laurel’s hand and laced my fingers through hers. “I love you, pixie,” I murmured, smiling at the confusion in her eyes as I kissed the back of her hand.

She narrowed her eyes at me for a moment before her gorgeous lips curled into a smile. “Why? Why do you do this to me? You piss me off, then you do this?” she sighed as she shook her head and leaned back in her chair. “So you’re sticking with pixie now? No more ‘starlight’ or ‘sunshine’ or ‘snookums’ or ‘babydoll’?”

I smiled. “I like the reaction pixie gets. So, yeah, I’m sticking with it.”

The phone on the receptionist’s desk rang. “Yes? Okay.” She hung up and smiled at us. “I’ll take you guys back.”

I held tightly to Laurel’s hand as the receptionist led us to the second office on the right. A chubby woman with caramel-brown skin and square-rimmed glasses balanced on the tip of her pert nose sat behind a desk, typing something on a laptop.

“Please have a seat,” she said, motioning to the two tweed sofas that faced each other.

As the receptionist ducked out of the office, Laurel let go of my hand as we took a seat on one of the sofas.

“I’m just finishing up these notes,” Bonita Hawthorne said, squinting at the screen. “There!” she proclaimed, closing the laptop and grabbing a pen and pad of yellow legal paper off the desk. “Are you Mr. and Mrs. Stratton?”

“Yes,” I replied, standing up as she waddled around the desk.

“Oh, look at you. So polite. Please have a seat.” She sat on the sofa across from us, setting her pad of paper and pen down on the cushion next to her. “Well, as you both probably know, I am Bonita Hawthorne, but please feel free to call me Bonnie. Now, let me start off by first telling you, not only what you can expect in this first session, but what you should not expect.”

Inside, I groaned. On the outside, I grinned like a fucking idiot as she explained how she was not a relationship referee. It was not her job to help determine who was right and who was wrong. She also iterated that our first session was mostly a means to collect basic information about Laurel and me, and the state of our marriage.

Number of years we’d been together: Eight.

Our current living situation: Separated. Bonnie stopped me when I tried to interject to explain how this was Laurel’s choice, not mine.

Did we have any physical or mental health issues? Laurel fidgeted with her sleeve, looking very uncomfortable as she disclosed her doctor’s diagnosis of general anxiety disorder. She also mentioned that she wondered if both of us might be suffering from PTSD.

Had we tried couples counseling before, and if so how did that go? That was a big, fat no.

As Bonnie recorded this information on her legal pad, I could feel her watching our body language closely, trying to figure out how we related to one another. I wanted to grab Laurel’s hand, to send Bonnie a message I hoped she’d interpret positively, but Laurel seemed to be leaning farther away from me as the session wore on. After a few more questions about our employment and hobbies, she declared we would begin by starting with the issue that seemed the most pressing: our living situation.

“I don’t understand how we’re supposed to work out our problems if we only see each other in a fucking therapist’s office,” I said, making not the slightest bit of effort to censor myself.

Laurel rolled her eyes. “You can’t understand it because you can’t understand why the world doesn’t revolve around you.”

I had to smile. It was a sick burn, even if it was a complete fabrication. “Baby, I know the world doesn’t revolve around me. If it did, I wouldn’t be sitting in this fucking office right now.”

“Why does it kill you that I need to hold you accountable to your promises?”

Bonnie held up a finger to interrupt.

About fucking time.

“I think it’s perfectly acceptable that you feel you need some time to yourself right now,” she began by addressing Laurel. “It’s important to reflect not just on how you feel about your marriage, but also on how you feel about yourself and where your life path is taking you.” She paused, drawing in a noisy breath through her nose. “Of course, togetherness is one of the main tenets of a loving marriage. While a break to clear our heads is sometimes good, even necessary, it’s important not to forget that distance can also be more damaging than healing, to some marriages. Not all marriages, but certainly most marriages, benefit from increased closeness.”

I smiled as Laurel avoided looking at me.

She glared at Bonnie. “But, if the reason you feel you can’t come back is because you’re afraid your partner will stop attending counseling, is it not preferable to maintain a bit of distance?” Laurel asked. “He’s broken so many promises to me over the past two years, I can’t even count. He told me he would get rid of the disgusting case pictures in his office last year, and they’re still there. He told me we could start trying for another baby before our fifth anniversary, then he took back that promise. Isn’t there some sort of limit on how many times someone can break a promise before the other person has to say enough is enough?”

Bonnie’s eyes were closed as she held up her chubby finger again and smiled. “You make a good point about trust. Rebuilding trust—”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted Bonnie as I turned to face Laurel. “I’m not the only one here who’s broken promises. You promised to stay with me for better or worse, then you up and left me with nothing but a fucking one-page letter of explanation. That’s gotta be the worst case of a broken promise in this whole debacle.”

“Now, now, we don’t need to compare broken promises,” Bonnie interceded. “This is not a contest.”

“It sure feels like a contest,” Laurel said, looking me straight in the eye. “Let’s play Who’s the Worst Spouse? The wife who left, or the husband who’s only here today because she left!”

“Okay, okay, I think we’re getting a little off track here,” Bonnie interjected once more. “I… can see I’m going to need to assign some homework. As I said, I am not here to be a referee. I am here to teach you both a new method of communication. What do you normally do to reconcile your differences when you’ve had a big disagreement?”

I pursed my lips to temper my grin. “We have sex. We like to fuck it out,” I replied, relishing how Laurel crossed her arms over her chest, obviously uncomfortable with this admission.

Bonnie blinked her wide eyes to recover. “Well, everyone has their own way of coping. I’m going to suggest something a little different.”

I practically tuned out as she explained how, instead of fucking our brains out when we were angry, we needed to try out a few new conflict resolution exercises. She explained each exercise to us as if we were six-year-olds, then handed us each a worksheet with the exercises spelled out in plain English. At the bottom of the sheet were a few lines where we were supposed to write about which technique we’d tried and what the outcome was.

My only consolation was that I could probably rely on Laurel to forget about the worksheets once we left Bonnie’s office.

“Now, before you leave,” she said, pointing her chubby finger at the ceiling again. “We need to address one of the biggest issues we come across in marriages all across the world: appreciation.” The way she punctuated the word while holding up that finger, made me feel as if I were being chastised. “I want you both to make an effort to thank each other on a regular basis. Not just for the little things, like taking out the garbage and putting the toilet seat down — though I don’t suppose you two are running into either of those situations while you’re apart. Nevertheless, I want you two to thank each other at least once a day for something big. Thank you for choosing me. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for being a considerate person. Thank you for taking care of me. You get the point? Do you see what I’m getting at?” She waited until I nodded. “So can you do that, Jack… and Laurel? Not for me, but can you do that for your marriage?”

Laurel and I turned to each other and we both smiled. Neither of us had to say a single word. We were both thinking the same thing: This lady felt more like a preschool teacher than a therapist, but at least she was mildly entertaining.

“I can do that,” I said, taking Laurel’s tiny hand in mine.

She smiled. “I can do it, too.”

After scheduling our next appointment, we left the brick building in fairly good spirits. I wouldn’t admit it aloud, but maybe talking about our problems with a complete stranger wasn’t a stupid idea after all. There was a certain lightness that came from unburdening yourself of the horrible things you tried to never think, much less say.

I walked Laurel to her SUV, which was parked next to a meter on 12th. As she reached for the door handle on the Tesla, I got a bit of déjà vu, as if I’d done this before. And I had.

“Feels like when I used to walk you to your car in college. Remember that beat up Jeep Cherokee you used to drive?”

She leaned against the driver’s side door. “It wasn’t that bad. It was very spacious.”

“We threw down a lot in there,” I said, reaching up to tuck a wisp of blonde hair behind her ear.

She closed her eyes as she leaned into my touch. “I saw that receptionist flirting with you,” she said, opening her eyes to meet my gaze. “You can have anyone and anything you want… Why are you still fighting for me?”

I took her face in my hands as I fixed her with a fierce glare. “Because you’re not anyone or anything… You’re everything.” I kissed her forehead and the tip of her nose. “You’re my beautiful, golden pixie. No one will ever love you the way I love you.”

She closed her eyes as she grabbed onto my forearms. “I don’t know how to do this,” she whispered.

I leaned forward, my heart racing as I got a whiff of the familiar sweetness of her vanilla lip balm. Before I could talk myself out of it, I whispered in her ear, “Wanna throw down?”

Her eyelids flew open, her chest heaving as she gazed at me with those beautiful brown eyes and nodded eagerly.

Despite the fact that we could have easily headed to her mom’s house and threw down there, it was much easier to do it in my truck. Afterwards, I followed her to her mom’s and walked her up the steps to the front door, the way I used to in college, after a public throw down.

“Your hair looks like shit,” I said, reaching up to run my fingers through her messy hair.

She pursed her lips. “Pfft! Yours doesn’t look much better.”

I clasped her face in my hands, brushing my thumbs over her sharp cheekbones. I wanted to tell her to come home with me, but I knew better than to beat that dead horse.

“What?” she asked as I continued to stare into her eyes without speaking.

I shook my head and kissed her forehead. “Nothing. I just love the fuck out of you.”

She wet her lips and closed her eyes as she smiled. I was a goner. How did I resist sleeping with this beautiful creature almost every night for the past six months?

I kissed her slowly, our mouths tangled in a sweet dance of back and forth that I wished could last forever. She stood on the porch wearing a soft, sexy smile and watched as I walked back to my truck, which was parked in the driveway behind her SUV.

As I climbed into the truck, I caught a glimpse of movement at the house next door. When I looked, I locked eyes with a guy who looked about our age, with tattoos covering almost every inch of his bare arms. He turned away quickly as he continued to trim his hedges.

The protective husband in me wanted to go introduce myself to him, make sure he knew Laurel was off limits. But I knew Laurel would get pissed if I made her neighbors uncomfortable. Plus, I didn’t want to piss the guy off and give him a reason to be a dick to Laurel.

Instead, I pulled out of the driveway and looked him straight in the eye as I drove past his house. I didn’t like the way he looked right back at me, never breaking his focus. I’d have to keep an eye on him.