I don’t mean to be a shit, but I’m already in a bad mood and drama therapy pisses me off.
First it’s a bunch of rolling around on the floor in order to “warm up,” and then everyone presents her “worst memory ever” story—that we’re supposed to have scripted and rehearsed.
Let me tell you, seeing everyone’s tragic and tawdry secrets made into poorly acted dramas is a total drag. Worse than a drag—it’s hell. There are things I don’t want to know about people, things that are just too awful, too pathetic, too sad.
When my turn comes I say, “I don’t have one.”
“One what? A memory?” Clarice says.
“I mean I don’t have anything prepared. I couldn’t think of anything.”
“Are you saying you don’t have a single bad memory?” Clarice asks, her voice rising. “Maybe you have amnesia?”
“I don’t remember.”
This earns me a few guffaws and a killing look from Clarice.
“What exactly is the problem, Lola?”
“The problem is I think this is crap. Sorry. But I think it’s crap and I’m not doing it. I don’t believe airing my dirty laundry is going to benefit me in any way. Maybe for some of you this is therapeutic or whatever, but I think it’s gross and intrusive and I refuse to do it.”
“Young lady, your attitude is—”
“Hey, I’m being honest here. I could have made up a bunch of bull or done some kind of weird abstract number everyone would have pretended to understand and thought was deep and meaningful even though it was a crock of shit. And then you wouldn’t have been mad at me but it would have been a waste of time. Instead I’m just telling you the real deal.”
We were all sitting on the grass, but I’m standing now and so is Clarice. I can see her taking deep breaths and trying to commune with her spirit guides or whatever to keep herself from losing her shit.
“More than anyone I’ve ever met, you need to face your dark side, confront your memories, and start being true to who you are,” she says.
“That’s actually what I’m doing,” I say. “Believe me, I’m totally in touch with my memories. I’m just not sharing them with you. Or OK magazine or the National Enquirer for that matter. So you may as well forget it.”
“One of these days you’re going to discover the power of surrender.”
“Didn’t you get the memo? I can’t surrender—I’m in denial.”
Next is therapy.
Don’t ask.
Okay, well…
Dr. Owens notices my strange mood and I tell her why—not including the part about Adam, which admittedly is a huge part of it. There isn’t a single part of that I can tell her. This means, because I’m avoiding that subject, I end up telling her more about my massage-inspired meltdown than I normally would have, and then she badgers me to death with her bullshit bell until I cave and tell her all about the night I fell asleep and woke up to see my dad charging out of the bedroom he shared with my mom, where he’d discovered her presumably in some state of nudity with Elise and was now totally freaking out.
I tell her about how he stopped to yell at me, demanding whether I knew about them, which I did but which I denied and which he did not believe, and that was before my mom came out and yelled at me for falling asleep at my post (thanks, Mom). It was pretty unfair, considering he wasn’t exactly a saint of a husband and I’d kept all of his secrets, too—secrets just as sordid if not quite as dramatic as Mom sleeping with a female porn-star-turned-stuntwoman.
I don’t tell Dr. Owens that last part, though—about Dad.
“It sounds like they took a lot of their pain and anger out on you,” Dr. Owens observes.
“Uh, yeah,” I say, thinking it doesn’t take a psychologist to figure that out. “It got kind of funny after that, though. Elise came running out with her boobs all spilling out of her leopard-skin bustier and an actual drawer full of socks and started throwing them at my dad, one at a time. His own socks. So Elise is whipping socks over the banister and my mom is yelling and crying and my dad is yelling and the whole thing was so freaking out of control.”
“But painful, yes?”
“Sure. Yeah. I mean, it’s obviously not a great memory. But come on, it’s not like anyone took out the golf clubs, right? By the way, if any of this ever gets out, I’ll know exactly who to sue.”
“You’ve never shared this with anyone else, you mean,” she says, as usual giving everything more significance than it actually has.
“I mean I will sue you.”
“I’m honored that you shared it with me.”
“Don’t be.”
“So while all this was going on, what did you do, Lola?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
I shrug. “I stood there watching and trying to melt into the walls. What else was I supposed to do?”
“But your own emotions, despite your determination to dismiss them, your own emotions must have been overwhelming.”
“People cheat and have fights and get divorced all the time. Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
Dr. Owens rings the bell like a maniac.
I cover my ears.
“Okay, okay, I admit, it sucked. It really sucked. Would you fucking stop?”
She stops.
“Now, when you say it sucked…could you be a bit more descriptive? Could you tell me how it felt?”
“Like a seeping, infected wound that dragged me to an abyss of sharp knives covered in salt that I could only neutralize if I drowned myself in tequila,” I say with a dramatic eye roll. “Like death.”
Dr. Owens holds the bell, poised to ring it, and studies me.
“Go ahead, ring it.”
“Do you have any idea, Miss Carlyle, how much you tell me when you’re trying not to tell me anything?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
So, Monday I am back in the shit, and Tuesday and Wednesday, I remain there. Yes, there was the half day of freedom with Adam, but it was only a brief (and dubious in terms of leaving me relaxed) reprieve from the anti-denial boot camp Dr. Koch has set up for me. Between trying to repress/ignore/forget my feelings for Adam, and dealing with all the people trying to delve into my psyche, I am overwhelmed. By Wednesday, I would gladly pick up a real addiction if one were available.
Anything to ease the stress of everyone on my case and all the emotional drama, not to mention I have not had a single second to myself since my idiotic move at AA on Friday night.
Meanwhile, Adam has retreated to full bran-muffin, perfect-ethics, goody-two-shoes mode, to the point that I’m starting to think I imagined Sunday afternoon. Except if I had imagined it, I would have imagined it going differently. And now I can’t stop imagining it going differently, which results in my being, in addition to stressed, irritated, et cetera, almost painfully drawn to this person who doesn’t want me anywhere near him.
In addition, I keep losing track of my stuff, which makes me feel like I’m going crazy. I have now lost my favorite pair of jeans, a bikini, some earrings, one of my new pairs of sunglasses, a lip gloss, and my Warhol T-shirt; the only person I really like (Talia) is overly intense, clingy, prone to breakdowns and TMI; and my other roommate is an increasingly malevolent presence with a rapidly intensifying head-banging habit. Seriously. And finally, Dr. Koch has slapped me back to Level One status so I can barely take a pee without someone making note of it.
And then things get worse.
It happens in group, where we’re making sock puppet self-portraits.
I’ve got my head down and I’m trying my best to stay out of trouble. Except I’m sitting there as silent as Jade and I keep catching her staring at me with her nasty emo glower and it’s annoying. I mean, here everyone’s been pestering me to death and we have this massively-talented-but-screwed-up hypocrite among us and everyone’s just ignoring her.
And there she sits, all edgy with her black, leather-haired, marble-eyed puppet wearing a freaking dog collar around its n
eck.
“What, Jade, no mouth?” I say.
Her head snaps up.
“How long you going to keep that up?”
She looks at me. I look back at her. The rest of the group is quiet, either studiously ignoring us or watching. Finally Jade shrugs and reaches for a red marker and draws a jagged scar of a mouth on the white tube sock.
“Gorgeous,” I say. “Almost looks like she might burst into song…”
Jade’s eyes go wide and her mouth hardens.
I smile at her, then go back to gluing silver beads onto the right wrist of my puppet.
And then an unfamiliar voice says, “Fuck you.”
I look up.
“Fuck you, Lola Carlyle.”
It’s Jade, standing with the puppet on her hand, holding it in front of her face so we can’t see her mouth moving behind it.
“Okay, you are so weird,” I say.
“Jade,” Mary pipes up in her counselor voice, “is there something you’d like to say?”
“Uh, I think she already said it,” I reply.
Mary ignores me and looks expectantly at Jade.
“Oh, come on. She’s swearing at me and you’re going to encourage her? That’s bullshit.”
“Lola, this is not about you.”
“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you…”
“Why do people always say that? It’s happening to me.”
Mary goes to Jade and puts a hand on her back. “Jade, honey?”
Jade shoves her off and takes a step toward me, puppet in front of her mouth, eyes like throwing knives.
“FUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOU…”
Now would probably be a good time for me to say something calming, or else walk away. Problem is I’m not so good with backing down.
“Fuck you, too, Jade.”
And that’s when she lunges for me. Fortunately, Mary is fast and, dreads flying, gets to Jade before Jade gets to me.
“Stop. Stop it now,” she shouts, holding Jade in something between a hug and a headlock.
“What, you’re going to kill me with a tube sock?”
“You are such a fucking bitch,” she screeches.
“I never did anything to you. I even kept your pathetic little singing secret until now. So what is your problem?”
“My problem is you never shut up,” Jade shouts. “You never shut up about your clothes and your fucking jewelry and your fucking lifestyle. You sit here every fucking day acting like you’re better than us and don’t need rehab, like you just happen to be here because you need a vacation. And you’re full of shit.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You don’t even know me.”
“Oh, I know you. I know you better than you think.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say.
“You don’t want to find out,” she says.
“Oh, I’m scared. By the way, you forgot to use ‘fuck’ in that sentence.”
“Guess what, you spoiled little bitch, I could—”
“Come on, Jade, stop,” Talia says, coming forward. “You don’t need to do this.”
Jade pivots toward her, still straining against Mary. “I don’t have to listen to you, Miss Kiss-Ass. I’m sick to death of listening to you.”
Talia puts her hands up. “Hey, I’m only—”
“You want to be all cozy and climbing into her bed whispering secrets at night and acting like you’re her best friend, go ahead. Wait until she finds your little stash of stolen treasures.”
Talia’s mouth opens and her chest seems to crumple like she’s been hit.
“That’s right. Her clothes, her jewelry, what else have you got squirreled away?”
Talia looks from me, to Jade, and back. Tears come streaming down her cheeks and drip off her chin. “Lola, it’s not… I didn’t… Well, I did but not… I can’t explain but it’s not how it looks.”
I hold myself very still, trying to take this in, while Jade gloats and everyone else stands frozen.
Talia starts toward me. “Please, let me—”
I step back toward the door, palms out in front of me like I’m pushing it all away. “For fuck’s sake, is there not a single person on this planet I can trust?”
Thirty seconds later, I nearly flatten Adam in the hallway.
“Whoa, whoa. Where’s the fire?” Then he sees my face and grabs me by the shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I need to talk to Dr. Koch,” I say, trying unsuccessfully to disengage and go around him.
“About what?”
“Nothing! I need to talk, that’s all.”
“Come on, it’s me.”
“Oh, like that helps. You don’t want anything to do with me.”
“Lola—okay, we need to talk,” he says, taking me by the arm and propelling me down the hallway where he pulls out his keys, unlocks a classroom door, and pulls me inside, closing the door behind us.
“What?”
“Look,” he says, walking into the center of the room. “Maybe I didn’t explain it well Sunday because I was…confused. And now you’re upset.”
“I’m upset? You’re the one who’s acting like we’re total strangers.”
“I am trying to put some…distance back, that’s all. Meanwhile you keep looking at me like you want to punch me.”
“You’re really reading me wrong, if that’s what you think I want.”
“But you’re hurt.”
I look down, wishing, too late, that I’d hidden that fact a bit better.
“You’re hurt and you’re pissed. Because maybe I didn’t explain it very well. I wasn’t thinking.”
“But you’re thinking now?”
“Yes. Can you listen?”
“I’ve got a few other problems right now, but fine. Yes.”
He leans back on a desk and looks at me intently. “I don’t want to be selfish about you,” he says, slowly and clearly like he wants to make sure I hear it. “I don’t want to complicate your already complicated situation here. I want to do the right thing, and the overall worldview right thing, at the moment, is also the right thing for you because we need to have trust. How’re you going to trust me if you think all I’m trying to do is…hook up with you? Not to mention how do I stay objective at all about your care, your program, your headspace, if I’m spending all my time thinking about you like that? I can’t. Not to mention, how would I trust any feelings you think you have for me when they might be transference? When you’re—no offense—so volatile? When every chance you get you’re flirting with that Miller dude? Don’t you get that at all? I’m not doing it.”
“So you’re just…not thinking about me, is that it? You just flipped a switch and shut it off?”
“It’s an attraction,” he says, totally matter-of-fact. “They happen. It’ll pass.”
“Oh, that’s really nice. Now I’m a passing attraction. In that case why do you care who I flirt with?”
“Honestly?” He pushes himself away from the desk. “Because I think you use that kind of thing to distract yourself from the real work you’re doing here. And because I don’t like that guy. And because, as I keep saying, you’re vulnerable right now.”
“What if…” I say, coming close to him, but in a furious, up-in-his-face kind of way, and then stalking him through the classroom as I rant. “What if I am actually just a regular, moderately messed-up human being and not an addict and don’t actually belong here, and half the issues I’m dealing with actually have to do with being locked up with a bunch of lunatics and liars and thieves, which is what I keep telling you? What business, in that case, do you have making all these judgments about what I do and don’t need?”
“You’re here, so it’s irrelevant,” he says, finally backing into a wall of vision boards.
“And if we were out in the real world instead?”
“I would still want to strangle you half the time,” he says. “Most of the time, in fact. But that question, too, is irrelevant. We’re here. W
e’re not doing this.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Okay, fine. Is it passing yet?” I ask, stepping even closer into his space. “The attraction? Has it passed?”
“I’m sure it will,” he says, and swallows. “Any minute now.”
“Right,” I say, putting both my hands on his chest. “Fine. From here on in, I will try to play by your awesome principles.” My hands slide up to his shoulders and he shudders. “But if you want to keep this all professional and everything, I suggest you stop dragging me into empty classrooms because it makes me very…” I’m right up against him, hands on the back of his neck, and I can feel how shallow his breathing is.
“Lola—” he says in a low, warning voice.
And then, because I can’t help it, I kiss him.
At first he lets me. Then he grunts, swears, pulls away, but my arms are still around him and his are around me, too, and with an insanely sexy moan and another muttered curse, he pulls me closer and kisses me back, deep and hard and surprisingly sweet.
It is beyond good or great. It’s dazzling, sizzling, bring you to your knees hot.
It’s bells ringing, birds chirping, insides melting, clothes falling off by themselves hot.
Except our clothes do not fall off because while my little bit of a conscious brain is thinking about dragging him onto the floor and yanking his shirt off, his little bit of conscious brain is telling him…
“Stop.”
He drags his lips from mine, then puts his hands on my shoulders and straight-arms me.
“Shit, shit, shit,” he says, then shoves me away. “No! Haven’t you listened to a single thing I’ve said?”
“I—” I am so breathless and stunned from the kiss, and simultaneously furious and humiliated by being shoved away, that I don’t know what to say.
“We have to get out of here,” he mutters, looking around, then finding his set of keys on a desk just inside the door. I notice he’s breathing just as hard as I am, and he’s also flustered as hell.
“Wait, Adam…” I reach out to touch his face, but he catches my hand, holding it but pushing me away at the same time. “Please, can’t we take a minute? To, uh, calm down?”
Lola Carlyle's 12-Step Romance Page 19