At least one thing she knew for sure. Leo would never chase after her. A man like him far too proud to beg any woman. He would let her go, just like he had the last time she left him when they were kids.
Mia slid into the driver seat of her car. Over the steering wheel, she saw the unthinkable.
Leo exploded out of his clinic door, jacketless into the rain, his black shirt spreading in blooms of water as the sloppy raindrops crashed upon him. He strode toward her. His startling blue eyes squinting, firm with determination. God, even his squint was still mesmerizing.
Oh, my God…
She fired up the engine and threw her car into drive, intending to run over him if she had to. He stood in front of her car, challenging her to go ahead and try it. Even though he’d only been outside for ten seconds, his black hair was already drenched and tousled from the rain. She wanted to run him over but she couldn’t muster up the nerve.
She rolled down her window instead. Forced a smile. “Leo. So great to see you again. I will come back another time,” she lied. “I just remembered I left the stove on at home.”
“Mia, stop this bullshit and come inside.” He squinted even deliciously harder as rain kissed his eyelashes. “We need to talk about things.”
“Like I said.” She rolled up the window and shrugged an apology. “Stove at home.” Then she mouthed the word ‘sorry’ and drove forward gently against his knees, forcing him to step aside. When he did, she wound around him and gunned it out of his parking lot.
She felt her body melt into relief as she merged onto the highway, her windshield wipers slamming frantically side to side, sloshing away waves of rainwater. She couldn’t wait to get back home and lock herself away from this miserable day.
Leo had never chased her like that, not when she left him years ago. Not that she had wanted him to chase her and find out the terrible secret she kept from him. Back then, she had been relieved. Then confused, and then she found herself trapped in the arms of a man she would marry and never feel as loved as she had been with Leo. But Leo had been the past and she was smart enough to know that the past sometimes looked more glossy and fun in hindsight.
Just as she felt the trickles of anxiety drain from her body, something odd caught her eye in the rearview mirror.
A dusty black van followed her a little too closely for this type of rainy weather. At first, she thought nothing of it and was only grateful that it wasn’t Leo. She knew Leo drove a blood-red Mustang; she’d seen it parked out in front of his clinic. Forever a kid, he was, chasing a dream of speed and glory.
This vehicle that followed her, on the other hand, was anything but the gleaming machine of curvy perfection that Leo preferred. The black van just oozed creepiness. A thousand peeling bumper stickers dotted the van like blistering measles, and a long strip of matte silver duct tape smiled across the bumper like a gag on a kidnapping victim’s lips. Globs of black smoke floated up from behind the van. The stench of rancid gasoline scorched her lungs.
Mia swept her eyes back to the road and tried to ignore the sick feeling that wiggled like jellyfish in her belly. She was being ridiculous and obviously imagining threats where they did not exist again. This habit of hers would be something she would mention to her therapist when she found one.
And her future therapist would be anyone but Dr. Leo Lawson.
Her car lurched and shuddered. Her eyes snapped back to the rearview mirror.
Did that van just hit me?
She saw it fall back a bit and then lunged forward at her, bumping her one more time. She gasped.
The driver was faceless, wearing a black hoodie and what looked like pantyhose on his or her face.
What the…?
Mia shoved her foot on the gas pedal and blasted forward, swerving into the next lane. She cut off an old man in a brown Oldsmobile who shook a fist at her and behind his window exploded into an avalanche words, most likely profane.
“My bad.” She waved an apology at him, which only triggered him to shake both fists for extra emphasis and use a sentence, from what she could lip-read, that incorporated the use of not one, but seven, f-words.
She thought about calling the police, but she knew Penelope Barter would just add this to her file of strange and suspicious events, so that idea was pointless.
“Call Glenda,” Mia commanded her hands-free cell phone. The last thing she wanted was this psycho following her home and putting her twenty-five-year-old roommate in danger as well.
The black van swerved lanes and was behind her again.
The call went straight to voicemail.
Dammit.
Her roommate, Glenda, was probably busy filming her latest goth makeup tutorial and was oblivious to the drama that was unfolding.
Mia couldn’t go home now. She was crazy protective of that girl. Even though Mia wasn’t Glenda’s mother, she guarded her religiously like she was. Mia only had two children in her life, and both had been taken from her in one way or another. It was therapeutic to mother someone else, even if the girl somewhat resisted her good intentions.
Mia looked out the window and the creepy van was gone. She twisted around in her seat to make sure.
It was gone.
Totally gone.
She touched her hands to her lips and scanned the entire scene. Peaceful green farmland embraced the big empty highway and rolled away into luscious green hills into the horizon. It was just her and another car on the road.
Was the van even there in the first place?
The crabby old man cruised the lane beside her, still shaking both fists dramatically. It was like he had no idea why she had been driving so urgently. She waved another apology to him, which was met with a frigid glare and even more swear words.
Had she imagined the entire thing?
She was sure she saw that van in vivid detail. It had hit her, for crying out loud. Not hard enough to leave damage, but enough to feel. A man with pantyhose on his face was driving it. Every detail had been crisp and precise.
I need to find somebody to help me.
After circling the city for a few more laps and finally accepting at the idea that the black van was gone, whether from reality or from her imagination, she decided to trust herself to take the road that led back home.
*******
Friday, September 15: 9:48 a.m.
Leo twirled his coffee cup on top of the plastic red and white checkered tablecloth and mindlessly looked out the window at his clinic across the street. His nine o’clock appointment canceled last minute, so he thought he’d catch a break and regroup after the morning events. He looked up at his clinic’s banner and still grinned every time he caught sight of it. Charles was wrong, and clearly an acutely boring person because that sign was the bomb dot com.
Leo’s receptionist, Sarah, finally pulled up in her orange smart car thirty minutes after her shift started and parked it diagonally in the lot. She clambered from her car, bolted to the clinic, and fumbled with the keys for a long time before she finally managed to enter. Moments later, she scampered back out of the clinic toward her car to fetch her purse from the front seat and then sprinted back inside. Another few seconds, and she was back out the door again, this time to grab her purple lunch bag from the trunk. This back and forth went on for a few more rounds until the clinic’s door didn’t burst open again and it was clear she had gathered everything she needed for the day, one lap around the premises at a time. Pretty much the usual routine she went through every morning.
Leo shrugged and took another swig of his coffee while he kept an eye out down the street for his ten o’clock appointment: Nate Rapple.
He’d been seeing Nate in his old clinic in Langley for many years and he had followed him to this new clinic he’d opened a few months ago. He was impressed with his client’s progress in overcoming his compulsion to control every situation. Nate had occupied his nervous tendencies with new hobbies like spice collecting. The guy had a spice rack, complete with more than o
ne hundred bottles of spices that he carried around and introduced to every new stranger he’d met. After five years of cognitive behavioral therapy, Leo had finally convinced him that while it was okay to still carry around the rack, it was less okay to shove it in people’s faces and force on them the description of each one. Progress like that with a client made Leo proud. Damn proud.
But what Leo wasn’t proud of was the way in which he conducted himself that morning with Mia Floyd. He groaned at the thought of it. They’d had a tough love together as teenagers and he thought he’d gotten over it by now. But the minute he’d laid eyes on her, old feelings triggered inside him. He hated feeling on edge and weird and needy like this. Why did he chase her to her car? What kind of pathetic fool does that?
“You want more coffee, babe?” Barbara, the waitress, delivered him an entirely too slow wink. She had to be about eighty-six years old with a bright white beehive hairstyle and Marilyn Monroe makeup. She was built like an ox and a relentless flirt if he ever saw one. “A man like you needs to keep his stamina up. Am I right?” She jiggled her coffee pot to tempt him.
“You’re a cheeky little thing, aren’t you?” He slid his cup foward to take whatever she was pouring.
“Can’t blame a girl for using hotness to get extra tips in these hard economic times.” She pushed her wrinkled, tanned cleavage together with her elbows, a skill she’d obviously mastered over the years, and cheekily poked out her tongue at him. “That’s something you would know about with your handsome new sign across the street.”
“You like it?”
“Do I ever. Talk about eye candy for this bland neighborhood,” she said. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it, baby. That’s always been my motto.”
“Girl, you’re wasting your talents in this old shitty diner,” Leo teased back. “I hear they’re hiring down the street at that trendy new nightclub. I’m betting the tips are off the chain there.”
“Nah,” Barbara said. “I’m way too sizzling for that place. I wouldn’t want to hurt the feelings of the younger waitresses who work there. I’m all about spreading the love, baby, not the jealousy.”
“That’s very zen of you.” He grinned as she filled up his mug and gave him another wink. Out of the window, he saw a black dusty van covered in bumper stickers pull up into his parking lot. Black smoke puffed from the muffler, and Leo made a mental note to remind Nate to get his van serviced every now and then. Poor guy was always forgetting about simple details like that.
“Gotta go. Looks like my ten o’clock is here.” He drained the cup before plunking it back down on the table and jumping up to grab his brown leather coat.
“Take another one for the road, baby.” Barbara was already pouring him a fresh cup of coffee into a paper cup. “Take one for your client too. On the house.”
“You’re, literally, the sweetest thing ever. Thank you.” Leo smiled, took both cups, and was out the door. The rain had cleared up and the sun pierced beams of bright morning light. Leo jaywalked to where Nate Rapple stood in front of the clinic with his back to him, nervously wringing his hands and rocking back and forth. Leo knew Nate would never go in there alone because he was uncomfortable speaking to the female receptionist.
“Morning, buddy!” Leo called out to him. “You’re ten minutes early.” He knew whenever Nate was early like this it was because he’d had another breakdown, and it was best to just start the session as soon as possible instead of keeping him pacing and talking to himself on the sidewalk.
“Goodness jellybeans,” Nate’s signature phrase for when his anxiety was getting to be too bad. His knees wobbled melodramatically and he nearly collapsed in relief when he turned and saw Leo approaching. “I’ve gone and done a horrible thing, Doc. Like super bad this time. I need a lobotomy or something. I am serious, Doc, this is a psychological emergency.”
“It’s gonna be okay, dude. Deep breaths, now. That’s right. Find your center,” Leo said.
Nate had had these dramatics before. It usually accounted for something as trivial as he had over-watered his plants or accidentally smashed a carton of eggs in his bathtub. Leo wasn’t exactly sure how the latter could happen, but it hardly qualified as the crisis that Nate made it out to be.
“Have a coffee, man. Chill. Take a load off,” Leo lifted one of the cups to him. “We’ll go inside my office and hash it out.”
Nate’s hands were too busy wringing themselves raw for him to notice the coffee that was being offered to him. When he finally did, he stared at it with a frightened expression and then waved it away.
Leo, still holding both cups, gestured with an elbow for him to follow him into the clinic and Nate stiffly obeyed.
Sarah was sitting at her desk with a confused frown, sorting out the mess of crumpled and ripped papers she’d found kicked under her desk. When she saw Leo come in, she gestured with two upward-facing palms at the mess. “What the actual bloody hell is this nonsense, Leo?”
“Let’s just say I cleaned up your little explosion of paperwork as best I could.” He shrugged.
“What do you mean explosion?” Sarah’s amber hair wound in an impossibly tight braid around her head with strings of hair that she had forgotten to braid into it. The hairstyle matched her disorganized, nervous personality to a tee. “All of these papers were neatly filed in the cabinet yesterday.”
“Well, they were all over the floor when I came in this morning,” Leo said. “I assumed you did it.” Nate ducked behind Leo, as though to avoid Sarah noticing him and trying to speak to him.
“Hell to the no, I did not do that.” She scanned the mess, her round pink freckled face puckered in annoyance.
Leo rubbed his chin, perplexed. He knew Sarah was disorganized as hell, but she was also a good kid and not the type to make up a random lie like this. But he would have to deal with it later. Right now, Nate Rapple was in the middle of a crisis and needed his help. He told her he’d be back and gestured for Nate to come into his office.
“I haven’t been sleeping much, Doc,” Nate said as he found his familiar seat in the therapy room. He’d always refused to sit on the burgundy velvet armchair with its soft hugging arms and plump seating cushion, a luxurious, comfortable seat that clearly had been designated for patients.
Instead, he found his familiar spot, a nook on the floor wedged between the white stone fireplace and the wall with the window that faced a green park and rainbow-colored playground behind Leo’s clinic. Leo always left the blinds open to view the happy, peaceful scene. He knew it was a distraction to some of his clients. But sometimes he needed that mind-numbing distraction as well.
Nate drew his skinny knees up into a fetal position in the impossibly tiny corner. It always looked like the wedge would be way too tiny to fit his tall body, but somehow he always made it. He dragged the heavy blue velvet drape from the window beside him and shrouded himself with it.
“Nate, how about you take a chair today?” Leo put the coffee cups down on his desk. He shrugged off his leather coat and tossed it to the black couch.
“I’ve told you before, Doc,” Nate replied, “I can’t do that. I am happy here in this corner. I feel safe here.”
“Safe from what?” As if he Leo hadn’t asked him this question a thousand times before.
“Did you know I got some machalepi and kala jeera to add to my spice collection?” Nate ignored his question. “They are super rare spices. I am at one hundred and seventy-six spices bottles now, Doc, but I think I might have to invest in a bigger rack. I can’t separate them; they have to all stay together. But the idea of having to find a rack big enough to keep all the spices together is killing me. Literally killing me!”
“All right, all right,” Leo sighed and took a seat in his brown leather armchair with its brass tacks twirling around the arms. He’d always hated this chair; it spat a superficial arrogance at patients that he was not at all intending. He’d made a mental note several times in the past, that he kept forgetting, to trash this pompous
chair and get one of those huge seventies ball chairs that looked like something right out of old school Star Trek. He was thinking neon green with a plutonium frame. Did they even sell plutonium furniture?
“What was it you did that is making you feel so anxious?” Leo said.
They might not sell it, but it sure sounded hella cool.
Leo slumped forward and Googled ‘where to buy huge star trek ball chair’ on his phone as he waited for Nate’s answer.
“I think there is something wrong with me, Doc,” Nate said solemnly. “Something deeply, deeply wrong.”
“Mmm?” Leo said. “And what do you think that is?”
“I do horrible things. Despicable things.” Nate whispered, tightening the drape around himself. “I hurt…women. Especially women who use cuss words when they talk.”
Leo’s eyes lifted from his phone and he regarded the blue velvet drape that now cloaked Nate completely. “Hurt women? Like how? Give me an example.” Leo could already predict it. Nate’s confessions would things such as pushing in front of ladies at the supermarket because he was too frantic to wait in line to pay for a new spice jar for his collection; not replying to his woman dentist’s voicemail in a timely enough manner; naively asking an overweight woman when the baby was due. Unintentionally rude gestures like that.
“Trust me, Doc,” Nate said. “I’ve got a really bad dark side.”
“A dark side, huh?”
“Yes…”
Leo smiled as he placed his phone on the desk beside him. The ball chair would have to wait until later. “Everybody’s got a dark side, dude. It’s called the id. The unconscious aspect of your personality that your conscious ego does not identify with. Dr. Carl Jung referred to it as the shadow. Not that I necessarily agree with his interpretation.”
“Yes, but…”
“The important thing is to not be scared of your dark side. The more in conscious touch you can get with this side, the easier it will be to control.”
Kiss Her Goodbye: Thriller/Romance with a shocking twist Page 3