“Amara, it’s lovely to see you again. It’s been a while, how are you doing?”

I looked across the coffee table at Janice, the therapist I’d seen on and off for more than a few years. I tried not to smirk or throw any hostility her way, but when the sarcasm wants to come out and play, there was nothing stopping it.

“If I was doing ‘well’ I wouldn’t be here, now, would I?”

I cringed at the sharpness of my tone, instantly upset at myself for taking out my messed-up head on the woman who I knew could help straighten everything out.

“No, you probably wouldn’t be. Let’s chat. What brings you here this time?”

As always, her voice was calm and soothing. Although, part of me didn’t want soothing. I wanted someone to be as irate, and angry, and confused, and devastated as I was. I wanted her to be up and pacing the floor. I wanted her to throw something across the room and feel a perverse sense of pleasure and satisfaction as it shattered into a million pieces.

“I fell hard, and my entire existence is bruised.”

I wasn’t sure where those words came from, because I hadn’t intended to speak them. I hadn’t meant to start with the deep, I’d intended to start with the dark.

“Okay, tell me what that means.”

Always with her damned questions. I could be a shrink. I know I could, all I would have to do is ask some poor fuck up of a human being inane questions like ‘and how did that make you feel’ and I’d get paid.

“It means, I lost my shit. Okay, let me back up. I haven’t seen you since I started dating that rat bastard douche canoe, Jared. Well, we were an ‘us’ for about two years, and all was well until I found out that he’d been enrolling in some extracurricular activities outside of the relationship. Namely, pounding his pathetic excuse for a dick into a nasty-ass hoe-bag who probably carried the world’s supply of STD germs in her cavernous cooch.”

A this point I was trying to get a bit of a reaction out of her, in the most juvenile of ways. I was more than a little disappointed when I barely got a lift of an eyebrow over the word ‘cooch’, and that was it.

“Well, I’m sure that was a trigger.”

I snorted.

“Yeah, you could call it that. I spent the next year screwing anything not nailed down to the ground. I was chasing some stupid high, and got to the point where I couldn’t feel anything. I was bent over shit and taking it hard and fast and felt… nothing. I scared my friend, Kay, to the point where she staged an intervention and kicked me to the curb, saying she figured if I kept it up she would be called down to the morgue to identify my battered body. So, I stopped spreading for strangers.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Not only because it’s unsafe in today’s world, but also because it was clearly caused by mental and emotional distress and was not actually addressing the underlying issues. But can we go back to how this started. You fell hard, for one of the men you used?”

I felt my entire body deflate.

“There was no way that was ever going to happen. They were chosen for the fact that they could not damage my heart. I fell for someone I never saw coming. He weaseled his way into my soul, and somehow managed to become like air to me.”

“So, you traded one dependency for another?”

I frowned at her. I hadn’t thought of my quick attachment to Dane as a dependency and wasn’t overly impressed that was how she saw it.

“I don’t see it that way.”

I answered slowly, because I wanted to make sure she didn’t see my response as being overly defensive.

“Go on, then.”

I sat back a little, conjuring up Dane’s easy smile into my mind, and finding myself relaxing into that image.

Fuck, maybe I had become somewhat dependent on him.

“Dane. How do I even begin to describe him? I wasn’t looking for any type of relationship. As a matter of fact, I was pretty certain I was avoiding relationships and men. And then Dane happened, and all he wanted from me was to be a friend. Like, I’d just had ridiculous amounts of anonymous activities with guys, men I couldn’t remember a week later, and this guy whose smile caused my brain to act paralyzed just wanted me to hang out and be his friend. He noticed the stupidest, most random things about me. He paid attention when I talked, and showed me with actions rather than words that he actually cared about me.”

“What sort of things?”

“Well, like, one night we were watching a movie at his place… actually, it was our first non-date that was a fucking disaster. Anyway, I was eating the red Swedish fish out of his candy bowl. Only the red ones, because red Swedish fish are life. No big deal, right? Except, weeks later we were watching Star Wars or Star Trek or something like that, and he kept handing me the red fish. Like, he ate the nasty orange and green ones and gave me all the red ones.”

I looked at her expectantly, wanting her to understand the importance of this.

She just looked back at me, silently encouraging me to explain the reason that the Swedish Fish were so important.

“Ugh.”

I threw my hands up in frustration as I slammed myself backwards in the chair. I pictured the moment in my mind, the memories still fresh and the wounds still as raw as if they had happened just moments ago.

“Every night since I met you, I have laid naked in this bed, my hand fisted around my cock, wondering what you would taste like. I finally had decided that you would taste like Swedish Fish, for the number of those fucking things you consume. I was wrong. You are sweet, that’s for fucking sure, but you taste like heaven, a million times better than anything in this world that I’ve ever sampled before. And now that I’ve had a taste, I will never be able to get enough.”

Dane’s voice drifted through my head, causing my pulse to race and my skin to flush. I couldn’t look my therapist in the eyes as I squeezed my thighs together, shifting a little bit to both alleviate and encourage the ache that was growing between them.

Janice sat quietly, observing everything but saying nothing. It had always been unnerving the way she did that, and had I not done really well with her before, I’d probably throat punch her for being so creepy quiet. But, this time an eyebrow lifted slightly, and the corner of her lip raised up in the smallest smirk.

“What is the significance of these Swedish Fish, Amara? Clearly, there is a lot of meaning to you, judging by your vocal and physical reactions.”

“Like I said before, it meant that he paid attention to me. To me. Like no one had ever done before. Small, stupid details about me mattered to him, but instead of making it into a huge production that he’d done something nice for me, in an effort to get brownie points or a blow job, he just did it.”

I saw her shake her head slightly, looking moderately amused at my brash language.

“Uh, sorry about the word blowjob.”

She held up her hand at me.

“I assure you, that is not the first time, nor will it be the last time, I have heard that terminology.”

Have you ever met someone you just wanted to goad into saying ‘fuck’? I felt that way about Janice. Like, I had a feeling that girlfriend could hang in the right situation. Possibly even drink me under a table. But she was so freaking professional inside this room, it was impossible.

“So, he paid attention to the small details, and that made you fall in love with him?”

“When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound so good. Naw, it wasn’t just the fish. It was just how he was. I think he really had a good idea about being friends first.”

My voice trailed off as I started to get a little introspective again. He really had thought out the whole friendship thing well. I wondered if we could still be friends, like, in the long run.

“I want to make sure I’m understanding you correctly. You enjoyed his friendship, his company, and the small ways he showed you that he cared. You appreciated that he took the time to not only listen to you and what you said; but also hear you and notice the nuances of your actions. Am I correct so far?”

I mulled over what she’d said.

“Yeah, that sounds about right, all of it.”

“Why is it, then, that you are here with me, spending the majority of our time today discussing everything that was great about him, when you two are apparently not together, and that separation somehow led you back to me?”

Ouch. Way to hit the nail on the fucking head.

“He lied to me.”

“And?”

“No, he lied to me. Withheld important information that he knew would matter to me. He withheld it on purpose and continued on as if nothing was wrong. How the hell am I supposed to trust someone who lied to me?”

I wanted her to give me all the answers. I wanted her to turn the key and say the magic words that made everything all better.

“Amara, people will lie to you. People will hurt you. People will do things, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not, that will make you feel as if the world has just been torn in two. Your parents, they lied to you at some point in your life, and yet you still love and trust them. Your best friend, Kaylie, she probably has lied to you at some point and despite that, you still would trust her with your life. Yet a man, one that you have described as all but walking on water, he lies, and you run. Not everyone is a predator, and we need to get you to a place where you don’t require saint-like behavior from members of the opposite sex in order to be in a relationship.”

I started to speak but stopped myself, because the sting of the truth that she spoke knocked the air out of my lungs.

She looked above my head at the clock on the wall behind me and gave me a slightly sad half smile.

“I’m afraid that our time is up for today, I’d like to see you again, at least once a week. Just consider it like a tune-up, okay? Marcie out front will help get that on the schedule. I am glad to see you back, Amara, I have faith that we will work through this together.”

I felt oddly comforted by this, because I just wanted to fix my brokenness so that I could move on.