Chapter 3 – Camilla
“It’s good to see you, Tyler. I’m running a few minutes early today. Can you imagine?”
He sat down on the side of the couch and sighed deeply. He was having a long day, and I knew that my day was about to get longer. I still had the dread of seeing Zane and what was going to happen there. It was better for me to fall face-first into another person’s problems. Then I wouldn’t have to think of how impossible my own were. That was how it was feeling, and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen next.
“Not really. I don’t think that I’ve run ahead of schedule in years, possibly before college.”
“Well, today is one of those days, so you have a little more time if you need it. You seem stressed. Do you want to talk about it?”
“I want to get something to eat. I missed breakfast and it’s almost lunchtime. What do you say, Doc? Do you want to get some lunch with me? We can call it a working lunch and one of us can use the tax break. I’m buying.”
It wasn’t the first time that he had invited me out. I’d said no before, but today I was feeling a little cooped up myself. I knew that it was against some rules somewhere, but I didn’t much care. It was just a lunch, and like Tyler said, it was a working lunch.
“Okay, but the session goes on.”
He agreed, making a joke about how I was all work and no play. If only he knew how wrong he was about that. I was sure that I’d been having a bit too much fun as of late. It wasn’t my fault. Zane had come out of nowhere, and now he was a bigger part of my life than I would have imagined possible.
I walked out to the parking garage with Tyler and waited for him to open the door of his sleek black car. It fit the man, or the man I’d gotten to know over the course of the last couple of months. I was afraid he had helped me more than I’d helped him. Tyler seemed to deal with it all better than I did, and I wanted more than anything to get over it like he had. It wasn’t a ruse, either. The man just pushed it out of his mind. I was still trying to perfect the technique.
“You don’t look like you’re much into talking today.”
Admonishing myself for getting distracted again, I sighed and shrugged my shoulders a little bit. “Just been a long day.”
“It isn’t even noon yet.”
Smiling, I looked out the window. “I know.”
“Ouch, that bad?”
“Not really, more my own drama to deal with.”
“So if everyone goes to the Doc for advice and a listening ear, where does she go?”
It was a legitimate question, and the truth was that there wasn’t anyone that I could talk to. Not really. I had friends and colleagues, but with what I was doing as of late, there was no one that I could tell. They wouldn’t approve. I wanted badly to have someone like me to talk to. It wouldn’t be wise – I could never talk to a professional about my issues – but it was a wish nonetheless.
“The Doc doesn’t have to talk about anything. I don’t have that interesting of a life.”
He grinned and made my heart melt a little with his boyish charm. “Why do I find that hard to believe? What’s on your mind, Doc? I won’t even charge you.”
Shaking my head, I told him that I couldn’t afford him. He reminded me that it was pro bono.
“I’m supposed to be helping you.”
“You have. You keep the family off my back and at bay.”
That wasn’t much of a compliment, but I tried not to take it personally. “Is that all?”
“Of course not.”
I giggled. It felt good to not be cooped up in the office with another patient wanting to tell me about their bad day. It was my job, but it was not something that I was looking forward to when I was feeling so dark inside myself.
“Fine, I’ll tell you if you tell me what had that frown on your face and you running out of the office so quickly today.”
The smile was gone, and mine was as well. Tyler did have something on his mind. Whether he wanted to admit it or not was another story. I wasn’t expecting him to burst out with it, though I had a feeling that he wanted to the whole time. Maybe he felt the same way about it all, and I liked the idea that he was happy to talk to me about it.
“My wife is cheating. I can’t be sure, but I’m almost positive that she is.”
My face changed because I hadn’t seen that coming. While it was true that he had not been the most faithful to his wife, I knew that he cared about her in some way. It wasn’t so clear most of the time, but moments like this, I had to wonder what he truly felt. If he didn’t care, it didn’t make sense that he was so upset by it.
“How do you feel about it?”
Tyler smiled in a way that didn’t show happiness, but some kind of bitterness that I hadn’t seen before.
“I guess I don’t feel anything about Maya seeing another man. I know that I should, but I don’t.”
We stayed quiet for a time, both of us thinking about what was on our minds.
“So what has you with the long face?”
I wasn’t going to tell him, not really tell him, but then his wife’s name made it all come together. I think I told him my issue to even out the score somehow. I knew who his wife was cheating on him with, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I could, though, give him a bit of my drama to make him feel a little bit better, or at least oblivious to his own grief.
“Well, I started sleeping with one of my patients and I think that he’s starting to stalk me.”
His head jerked towards me as the car stopped in front of the restaurant. I moved to get out and he stopped me. “Wait, you can’t say something like that and then get out.”
“Yes, I can, Tyler. I’m starving and we’re here. Seems like as good of a time as any.”
“We have to talk about this. I want details.”
He made me giggle again, something I didn’t do very often. “Nope, just in the car, and our session is over. This is your hour, remember.”
“I think what you’ve got going on is more interesting than Maya cheating on me.”
I kind of felt bad about knowing and not telling him, but in a way I couldn’t. I knew that he was cheating on her. He paraded the other woman around in public, so it couldn’t be a secret. Maybe Tyler was getting a taste of his own medicine. And maybe I was going to get a taste of my own through Zane. I wasn’t ready to see it that way, but that was what was happening. Maybe Zane was my reminder that I didn’t have clean hands either.