Chapter Thirty-Four
QUINN
“So I don’t know what to do, you know? My wife won’t talk to me about it. I think she’s embarrassed, but I can’t help what my dad says. He’s always been like that, and I told her before that he was going to be a little… weird.” Mark, one of my regulars, scratched at his head. “She won’t talk to me about it.”
I clicked my pen and sat back in my chair. I’d been taking notes every now and again because it was hard for me to listen. I’d spent countless hours in training, learning how to compartmentalize my own problems so that when I went to work, it wouldn’t be an issue to hear someone else without worrying about myself. What good was a therapist if they were too consumed by their own issues to help their patients? I knew of therapists that could barely hold their own lives together but still gave stellar advice to their patients. Preaching and practicing were entirely separate when it came to this line of work.
But I was still in the learning process. I’d never had something majorly awful happen and then had to come to work. This was the first time I’d ever been truly shaken before heading into an appointment. Mark didn’t deserve to have a therapist that only half-listened and struggled to even empathize with him. I prided myself on my work, on my talents, and here I was unable to even focus on my patient, let alone offer anything more than cliché advice.
And it was all because of a man, and that was the worst part. If it were a death in the family, perhaps that would be permissible. But no, I’d had a relationship problem, and here I was acting like a child in my own mind.
I didn’t know what to do about it. If I’d had the chance to solve things with him, perhaps this wouldn’t feel so awful. But as it was, I hadn’t had that chance. I’d been left to draw my own conclusions, and while I’d done my best to be fair to him, I couldn’t mentally walk myself back from the choice I’d made to leave him.
He didn’t even know I’d left. I knew he was calling me; my phone went off a few times during the day, and I couldn’t bring myself to answer. If I answered, I would have to restart the whole process again. As awful and selfish as it was, it was easiest to assume I was right and keep barreling forward. After work, maybe I would go out for drinks with Babs. Or stay in and have drinks with Babs.
More likely, I would throw myself into my work and never look up again. Looking up had proven to be dangerous. I said goodbye to Mark when it was time for him to leave and packed up my own things to go. Instead of going home, though, I went to Babs’s house. She sent me a text asking if I wanted to come over and talk, and I didn’t know if she’d caught wind of my troubles—everything had gone down only the day before—but I needed to tell someone about this.
I couldn’t be my own therapist. Jesus, maybe I needed my own therapist. I pulled up to Babs’s house and parked precariously towards the end of the driveway. She had a huge assortment of plants piled up on the driveway, and I imagined she was probably watering them all at once with the hose as she was want to do. It didn’t work, and it was inefficient, but she liked to take pictures of all her houseplants on the driveway.
I knocked on the front door, and she flung it open, smiling.
“Quinn! Hey,” she said. “Hey, it’s good to see you. I’ve been busy.”
“Yeah, I saw the plants in the driveway,” I said.
“I’m trying to get some cleaning done. It’s a real mess in here.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I swear, every time I stay sober for more than a few days, I go on a cleaning spree. It’s probably for the best, though. My parents are coming to visit at the end of the week, and it smells like pot in here.”
It did, but not so prominently as usual. “It’s not so bad,” I offered.
“Thanks. I went out and bought a few scented candles, and I have the windows up. It’s ridiculous that it still smells at all. I haven’t smoked in a few days. Pot usually clears out pretty quick, but, I guess it’s in the furniture or some shit. I don’t know.” Babs shrugged and closed the door behind me.
I nodded, trying to engage in this conversation. “Smoke can do that.”
“Yeah. You okay? You look a little out of it.” Babs sat down on the couch and wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, this couch might just have to go. Can you wash sofa cushions? Sorry, sorry, I asked you a question.”
“You can wash sofa cushions,” I said. I might as well offer some kind of advice as collateral for the emotional hand-holding I needed. “And, um, some stuff with Sawyer happened.” This felt like grave-dressing, and I didn’t like any part of that.
Babs set her chin in her hand. “Oh? What happened? You haven’t mentioned him in a while.”
“Yeah, I was out for a conference, and then before that we were busy,” I said. I was trying to avoid what had happened and failing miserably. “I… I got back, and Stacy called me. She said she’d met up with Sawyer and she had these, um, these pictures. Of him and her and him with cocaine and it was just…”
“Wait, what?” Babs balked. “What do you mean him with cocaine?”
“Him on the bed and cocaine on the table.”
“Do you have the photos?”
“No, I went by his house and dropped them off.” I shifted in my seat and sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know if she set it up or if he actually did cocaine or if there’s some middle truth there, but I don’t want to deal with this anymore. I just want a regular boyfriend who isn’t involved with cocaine.”
“I understand,” Babs said, but there was something in her face that reflected she was holding back.
“What?” I asked.
Babs shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
“Babs, come on.”
“You’ll get mad!”
“Come on!”
Babs sighed and pulled her head up off her hand. “Fine. But it’s not my fault if you get mad.” She shook her head. “So this is Stacy we’re talking about, right? Stacy who has always been shady and mean and backstabbing? Who has no reason to change? And Sawyer’s never given you any reason to doubt him until now. As far as I can tell, he’s done everything and then some to get himself back on track.”
“Yeah.”
“Not finished.” Babs tilted her head to the side. “So basically what I’m hearing is that you got this information from Stacy—who is basically like, an unreliable narrator but in real life—and you’re condemning Sawyer for it without even asking for his side of the story.”
I balked at her bluntness. “Well, I mean, I can imagine his side of the story is that she set it up.”
“You don’t know that.” Babs frowned at me. “You don’t know what happened. You’re just going off intel you got from a pathological liar.”
“But even if that’s true, I just… I don’t want to deal with it,” I argued, though I could sense that my logic was crumbling in front of me.
“That might be true,” Babs said. “But not for the reasons you think. I think that you’re scared that you and Sawyer are doing so well and you’re so scared of that commitment that you’re frankly relieved for an out.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Is it? Because you have no reason not to get Sawyer’s side of the story. You have no reason not to talk to him about it. It’s not like you walked in while they were fucking or watched him snort a line. He could very reasonably be completely innocent.” Babs’s eyebrow was still up.
I frowned and felt like pulling the card she always pulled on me. ‘Stop psychoanalyzing me!’
“But if you go over there and talk to him and everything works out, then what? You’re back on the up and up. Things will be going well. And then what? You’ve not been in a relationship this strong and steady before in a really long time. I think you’re letting your fear of commitment get in the way and you’re using this incident as an excuse,” Babs said.
I folded my arms. “Are you done?”
“Yup.” Babs cleared her throat and sniffed the sofa cushion again, making a face.
I shook my head. I knew, on some level, that she was completely correct. It was wrong of me not to at least talk to Sawyer. “I already decided I was leaving him.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“No.”
“Then great news! You can still talk to him.” Babs smiled a bit grimly at me. “And look, Quinn, I’m not saying nothing happened or that you have no reason to be worried. But I think he’s a good guy, and I think you deserve to be happy, and frankly, it would be shitty to decide to walk away when he didn’t do anything wrong. Give him another chance and leave him when he really does fuck up.”
I rolled my eyes. “Got it. Thanks, Babs.”
I went home after that and tried not to think too hard about what Babs had told me. I imagined that this was how many of my clients felt after intense sessions. I didn’t appreciate being seen through so easily, and especially not when I hadn’t considered most of those things myself. It bothered me that she could know me so much better than I knew myself. But then, an outsider’s perspective was important. That was the whole point of therapy.
I took a long, hot shower and made sure to blow-dry my hair before getting into bed. When I did, I took my phone and plugged it into the charger. For a few seconds, I played with the on button, clicking it on and off and considering whether I was going to call Sawyer. I knew that I should. The fact that Babs’s speech had gotten under my skin meant that she was probably right, but I didn’t know that I was ready to admit it yet.
I would see how I felt later. I set my phone down on the table and curled up in the covers, willing sleep to come easily.