Chapter Thirteen
“There seems to be a great deal of stress in your life,” Vida says.
I glance away from the large clock that sits behind her desk to my left. “Stress?”
“Well you mentioned your mother has Alzheimer’s. Your sister is a Judge and a full-time single parent, and that you try to help. Your niece is only five, which is a challenging age as most of her needs are still met by the adults around her. Plus, your job seems very high risk. How do you manage all the stress?”
My inclination is to laugh, but I stuff that one deep into my chest because laughing seems like the exact wrong thing to do with Vida staring at me; her gaze intent and her question earnest.
I Wonderfuck…or I did, but I can’t tell her that, can I? I can’t tell her that I created an alter ego and that the woman that I’m in love with completely screwed me over by writing a salacious story about my alter ego while interviewing all the women I’ve wonderfucked. Oh, and by the way, I’ve also wonderfucked her mother.
Nope, no can do. Can’t tell her any of that…
“I work out,” I say.
Vida raises an eyebrow and makes a note on her pad of yellow paper. “You mentioned being engaged?”
Fuck. Did I? I don’t remember saying anything about Susie. I need to keep better track of what I tell Vida because she’s sharp and she takes notes and I’ve been trying to follow this rule of not telling her everything.
“I…she…” I swallow. I really don’t want to talk about Susie. I still don’t want to talk about Susie. “She died,” I finally say.
Vida’s face remains impassive, but sadness and empathy flicker in her eyes.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
I don’t respond because how do you respond when someone apologizes for your loss? Nothing, nothing can be said to those words other than, “Thank you.”
“That must’ve been incredibly difficult for you.”
I don’t answer because I don’t want to talk about Susie. I don’t want to think about her death or the aftermath, and the days and nights I lost, and how my life was empty until I figured out a way to save myself.
“How did you cope with that loss?”
I take a deep breath. Lying is exhausting. Maybe that’s why I created Wonderfuck because Wonderfuck wasn’t a lie, isn’t a lie. Wonderfuck simply became my path to survival.
“I drank a lot and did some drugs. Lost myself in a bottle until my sister came and got me out.”
“For how long?”
“About six months.”
“Her death was unexpected?”
My heart is on a fishhook and Vida holds the other end of line, tugging and pulling and yanking with each word, every question, reeling me in through the fucking excruciating pain.
Fuck it.
“If jumping off a balcony is unexpected, then yeah, unexpected.”
Vida’s face isn’t nearly as impassive. The skin around her mouth tightens, and her empty hand fists as though she’s forcing herself not to press her fingers to her lips and say, ‘Oh my god, no. That explains so much.’
Does my fiancée taking a header off my balcony while I stood there and watched explain me and my life and my choices? Because I don’t know. Seems to me like I was pretty fucked up before Susie decided to die, and I’ve been even more fucked up since her death.
“We grew up together. We were engaged. Our families were great friends and this was the perfect match. The perfect marriage. There would be big family holidays and grandkids and fabulous family ski trips and trips to the beach. Really, the whole thing looked grand. But here’s the kicker. Susie was a sex addict. Hundreds and hundreds of men. Women too. I didn’t know.”
I pause and roll my eyes to the ceiling. “How the fuck didn’t I know?”
My gaze lands on Vida again who is transfixed, her face frozen as though it takes all of her therapeutic prowess to simply listen to my tale.
“But I didn’t, and she finally told me, and I told her I still loved her and that she could go to rehab. Work her program. That I’d love her through it, and I did. And she was working her program and in recovery.”
I clasp my hands together. The muscle in my jaw tightens. “Six weeks before our wedding I took a business trip to Japan. I got back and Susie had relapsed. She was beyond upset. Wanted to call off the wedding, but I wouldn’t let her. I told her no. I told her that I wanted her in my life no matter what, and I did. And that me wanting her to be my wife would never change. That I would always want her no matter who she was or what she did or…who she”—I swallow and take a deep breath—“fucked. I simply wanted her. I wouldn’t let her go and I meant every word. She didn’t want to agree with me but finally, after hours, she said okay. So I come home from work one evening and….”
I’m back. I’m in the exact moment. I’m standing just inside my doorway. Susie stands on a table on my balcony. The night sky around her backlit by the high-rise lights. She looks like an angel, ethereal and gorgeous. She faces me and her blonde hair swirls around her face, caught by the wind. Her beautiful face. No fear. A smile. She takes one step back and…and…she’s gone…
My stomach clenches and I stand. I bolt for the door and I’m out of Vida’s office and down the hall. Bent over and unable to breathe. My guts twisting and pulling and knotting like my entire body will turn inside out.
***
“I’m sorry.”
I stand just inside the door to Vida’s office. A cold sweat clings to my skin. That night. Susie. The memories overwhelm me. Vida’s eyes harbor empathy. I’ve shaken loose her professional ability to remain distant.
I sit on the couch even though I don’t want to. I want this whole damn session to be finished. Telling her about my life, my past, my present, is tiresome and obviously nearly too much for me.
“How long ago?” Her voice nearly shakes and she clears her throat. “When did this happen?”
“Six years ago.” My voice is hoarse and high pitched. I clear my throat and lean back against the couch. We’ve got another twenty minutes. Fuck if I can make it. It would seem from Vida’s demeanor that I don’t get to go home just because I nearly puked my guts up discussing my dead fiancée.
“So this relationship with—”
“Tara.”
“Was this the first relationship you’d entered since your fiancée?”
“The first emotional relationship.” I reach for a glass of water and take a sip.
“So you’ve had other relationships?”
“Sexual ones.”
“About how many?”
Too much reality for one day. Fuck it. I’m in. What the actual fuck. Let’s see how much Vida can take.
“Since Susie’s death?”
Vida nods.
“Different women?”
She nods again.
“I don’t know maybe two or three—”
She nods, jots a note.
“Hundred.”
Vida stops writing. She swallows. She glances up from her paper at me. “And before Susie?”
“None. I mean Just her.”
“From?”
“From the time I was fifteen until the time she died.”
She lifts an eyebrow. From her look, I know I’m an unusual case. I fall outside the norms of human sexual behavior.
No shit.
I haven’t even told her the best part yet. I haven’t even told her about Wonderfuck and I’m uncertain I ever will.
“So sex is how you handle stress.”
“It was.”
“And now?”
“And now I can’t get hard unless I’m with Tara.”
“Can’t—”
“—get hard. My cock, my dick. It won’t work.”
“Unless you’re with Tara.”
I nod.
“And this started?”
“Around the same time she wrote her article about Wonderfuck.”
Vida’s eyes widen. Oh yeah, she’s read the story. She knows. Every woman in Los Angeles knows. The way my phone’s been blowing up, they all want a piece of what that story offered. She taps her pen against her pad of paper and her tongue brushes her bottom lip. “Are you saying that you’re—”
“I’m saying that the woman I’m involved with, the first woman I’ve been emotionally involved with since the death of my fiancée, wrote the story about Wonderfuck. I’m also saying that I’ve slept with several hundred women since the death of my fiancée, and until that story, I could sleep with any woman I wanted. And now, I can no longer fuck. I can’t masturbate. This”—I hold my hands in front of my crotch—“no longer functions unless I’m with Tara.”
“The woman who wrote the article.”
I nod.
“She knows about your lifestyle and she knows about Susie?”
I nod.
“Does she know?”
“About my malfunctioning cock?”
Vida nods.
“Yeah, she knows.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, what Tara doesn’t know is that I slept with her mother.”