Buried Permission

by Jennifer Kacey

  “Know what?” Kerrington asked, leaning forward, wanting to be as close as she could to the answer.

  “How perfect it could be. That your lips were as soft as I’d dreamed they were and your taste…” Danielle tilted her head and Kerrington wanted her so bad in that moment she almost reached across the table and took her.

  “I can’t do this,” Danielle admitted and stood, slinging the strap of her purse over her shoulder.

  “What? Can’t talk here? That’s fine we can go somewhere else and—”

  “No, not the conversation. Us. I can’t do it anymore.”

  Kerrington tried to stand but her legs wouldn’t cooperate as Danielle’s words sunk inside her, latching on with vicious claws, threatening to tear her apart.

  “What are you saying? That you need a break? Let’s take a few days and we’ll talk this weekend. We can go see a movie or—”

  “This, you, is all I’ve thought about for days. Weeks, if I’m being honest with myself.” Danielle moved around the table and crouched down beside Kerrington’s chair where she sat stupefied and numb. “I’m not enough for you and I’ve accepted that.”

  Kerrington opened her mouth to speak and Danielle covered her lips with her fingers.

  “Please, please don’t say anything to make this harder for me.” A tear slid down her cheek and she dashed it away. “Maybe after a while we can be just friends again, but right now, I have to get you out of my system. Cold turkey is the only way I know to do that. I deserve someone that can love me.”

  “Yes, you do,” Kerrington agreed. “I wish… I wish I could be that person but…”

  “But you’re not,” Danielle finished as she stood, preparing to walk out.

  Kerrington caught her hand, holding on tight, as if she’d never see her again. That fear tightened her stomach in a knot and she latched on even harder. “This can’t be it for us. This can’t be our goodbye?” It came out a question before she realized it really was. The thought of losing her completely hadn’t even been a possibility until it barreled toward her at one hundred miles per hour.

  Danielle held the side of Kerrington’s face and leaned down, holding her close. She kissed her cheek then choked out, “Goodbye.”

  Kerrington tried to hold on to her but she slipped through her fingers and she had no one to blame but herself.

  Chapter Five

  “Kerrington, I’m ready for you,” Dr. Mack said from the doorway of her office.

  Kerrington looked over from the painting she’d been staring at. The doctor’s outfit was perfect, from her classic chignon all the way to her summery platform sandals. Her genuine smile was warm and friendly but Kerrington couldn’t muster enough energy to give her one back.

  It had been the longest nine days she could remember. They were harder than the days after her grandmother had passed. They were tougher than when her parents had divorced, or when they both remarried, or when they had other children and forgot all about her.

  She’d tried to call Danielle but each phone call had gone unanswered. None of her messages had been returned, not via phone, text, or email.

  The Wednesday before, she’d even gone to Amante de la Comida hoping beyond hope that Danielle’d changed her mind and everything would be back to normal.

  But it wasn’t.

  The best friend she’d ever had, truly had cut her out of her life…and the part that sucked the most? She couldn’t blame her for doing it, couldn’t rail at her for needing some space. And the worst part was she didn’t have anyone else she could talk it over with. Anything like that she would have hashed it out with Danielle, bouncing the problem off of her until they figured out what to do together.

  She’d tried canceling her appointment several times but each time David talked her out of it. She’d spilled enough info, in her haste to convince him she wasn’t in any shape to talk to a hypnotist, so he was the only person who had any clue what she was going through. He sat silently beside her, holding her hand. His normal chatter was nonexistent but she was content with the physical contact.

  “Go on, Kerrington. Talk to Dr. Mack. I bet you the last Snickers bar hidden in my desk drawer she can help you straighten out a few things before you leave today.”

  Kerrington squeezed his hand and stood, brushing at the front of her stretchy yoga pants and T-shirt. She felt underdressed and ill at ease.

  Danielle plagued her every thought, sleeping and awake. She dreamed of her each night, of that fairytale moment on the couch. No matter how much she wanted to stay, she still left at the end of each kiss.

  “Come with me into my office and we’ll get started. You look lovely today and I’m so glad David convinced you to keep your appointment.”

  They entered the office and Kerrington glanced around.

  “Go ahead and take your shoes off and set your things over here.” She motioned toward a table at the end of a large sofa. “Then have a seat here on the couch. We’ll chat for a few minutes and you can tell me about yourself.”

  “There isn’t much to tell.”

  “I bet you could fill pages and pages of things you’ve done in your life.”

  Kerrington shrugged, setting her things on the side table, slipping off her flip-flops, settling on the couch Indian style. The supple black suede reminded her of her grandmother’s hugs, warm and soft. She snuggled into it, smiling for the first time in days. “No, not really. I’ve lived here all my life. Went to school here, to college here, I work here as an IT tech for one of the hospitals. Pretty boring.”

  Dr. Mack grabbed a notepad and pen, writing something on the top of the paper as she sat in her high-backed office chair positioned at the head of the couch. “Then we’ll have lots to talk about. What were you thinking of just now? You smiled about something.”

  She cleared her throat. “My grandmother, actually. She died a few years ago.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that. Were you two close?”

  Emotion clogged Kerrington’s windpipe, cutting off her ability to speak for several seconds until she got it under control. “Yes. She pretty much raised me from the age of six.”

  “Pretty much? What do you mean?” She made notes off and on but not enough to make Kerrington uncomfortable.

  “Divorced parents. They played push-me-pull-me for a few years until they both remarried, had more children. I preferred to stay with my grandmother. It was just easier.”

  “Easier on whom, you or your parents?”

  Kerrington squirmed a bit, wondering how they’d gotten to talking about her family drama and not the smoking issue she wanted taken care of. “Both, I guess.”

  “Were you a troublemaker as a kid? I can’t see you rabblerousing but figured I’d ask so I can see the whole picture.”

  “No, never got in trouble. I learned early not to get on my father’s bad side.”

  Dr. Mack looked up from her note-taking and Kerrington wanted to sink into the couch.

  “It’s not as bad as that sounded.”

  “So what was it?” Dr. Mack asked calmly. Her face didn’t seem angry or disappointed or overly expectant, so Kerrington relaxed.

  “My mom was really busy, worked a lot—as did my dad—but whenever I got in trouble she’d always tell me to wait until my father got home. Just hearing those words today makes me anxious. He never did anything horrible, didn’t beat me, yell at me much from what I remember, but his look of disappointment was enough. I wanted to crawl in a hole on more than one occasion.”

  “Good at school?” Dr. Mack switched gears abruptly, for which Kerrington was more than a bit thankful for.

  “Loved school and learning. I studied hard, wanting to make them proud.”

  “Did you? Make them proud, I mean?”

  Kerrington thought about it for a minute. “I made my grandmother proud with my grades. Whether my parents were or not, I don’t remember. They’d moved on and at some point I stopped caring. Don’t know how it happened but I was certainly thankful for i
t. None of this is the reason I came in to see you today, though.”

  “That’s right, so let’s switch gears and tell me what you’d like my help with. Smoking right? You’d like to quit?”

  Kerrington took a deep breath, not wanting to get stuck in thinking about her parents anymore. She’d truly stopped caring what they thought of her long ago but that didn’t mean it didn’t still hurt. She focused on Dr. Mack, glad to be on-topic again. “I’d love to stop. I’ve had the habit for several years, picked it up at work and I just can’t seem to quit on my own.”

  “I can absolutely help with that. It’s actually the second most common reason people come to see me.”

  “What’s the first?”

  “Weight issues actually. People eat the wrong thing, for the wrong reasons, all the time. So I’m a bit of a detective, you could say. I have to talk to people, to their conscious and subconscious selves to figure out why they do…or don’t do what they know they should. Good intentions are wonderful and normally why people call me to begin with, but putting a bandage over a wound won’t fix the cause of it. If we find the cause I can help you eliminate the behavior as well as the symptom.”

  “But you can help me stop smoking, right?”

  “Absolutely, and hopefully I’ll be able to figure out why you started smoking in the first place and help with that too. It’ll be like getting two sessions in one. Before we get started, let me put your fears at ease. I will not make you cluck like a chicken every day at half-past five in the morning. You will not leave here thinking you’re bulletproof, nor a go-go dancer at Studio 54. You will be aware the entire time you’re in my office and I cannot give you a suggestion you don’t want to hear.”

  “But I thought you were going to put me in a trance, tell me to stop smoking and I’d be cured. Isn’t that what a hypnotist does?”

  “That is exactly what a hypnotist does but you have to be ready to hear what I have to say for it to stick. If you aren’t committed to making a change then nothing I say will make any difference.”

  “Do you have a lot of people that you can’t…put under?”

  “No, I really don’t. Normally if someone makes an appointment and pays money to have something fixed they’re very open to suggestion. So, Kerrington…tell me a story.”

  Kerrington stared, opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She licked her lips to moisten them. “What kind of story am I supposed to tell?”

  “Any kind you’d like but I love fairytales.”

  “Umm, yeah…a fairytale.”

  “And don’t overthink it. Tell me the first story that comes to your mind. Once upon a time…”

  Kerrington closed her eyes for a second and said the first thing that leapt from her tired brain. “Once upon a time there was a princess who had been abandoned in a far-off castle. Away from her home and the people she loved, she was forced to stay in a high turret where she couldn’t even see the ground. The princess’s grandmother had come with her to live in the castle in the clouds and for a while they were happy.

  “They told stories and laughed every day. They danced and made signs saying ‘No Boys Allowed’. The princess learned how to cook and they cleaned their castle until it shone in the sunlight.

  “The princess was lonely though. She didn’t have any other princesses to play with, and her books and furry friends wouldn’t cut it anymore, so she asked her grandmother if she could have a friend. Her grandmother smiled and laughed and assured her she could have a playmate anytime she wanted.

  “She went to bed that night, praying for a friend, and the next morning a beautiful girl with strawberry-blonde hair awakened her. They played and played, and ate wonderful food, and talked to the grandmother about everything. The three of them lived happily-ever-after in the clouds.”

  Kerrington opened her eyes, wondering where in the world that story had come from. It was one her grandmother use to tell her when she was little.

  Dr. Mack made a few extra notes and then looked up with a grin. “Wonderful, I knew you’d be a great storyteller, and we’d have lots to talk about. One more question before we get started. Why did you come to the show last week?”

  Kerrington shook her head. “My best friend heard about your show and someone told her it was crazy funny. We decided at the last minute to go. Well, she dragged me there, but I had a really good time. It was definitely entertaining, shocking actually.”

  “What, the people having orgasms on stage?”

  Kerrington blushed but shook her head. “That was pretty out there I’ll admit, but the show made me a believer.”

  “Because you were so easily put in a trance?”

  Glancing at Dr. Mack must have given away her surprise since she continued without Kerrington having to answer her question.

  “It was the exercise we did at the end. Your arms were some of the widest there. You’re a very good candidate for hypnosis. This is going to be great for you. I bet you walked the stairs too. Were you at the top or the bottom?”

  “Started at the top and got about halfway down. My friend, Danielle, bumped my arm and shook me out of it.” Sadness pulled at her, but she tried to shake it off. “I’m glad too or I would have been orgasming right along with the rest of the people up onstage.”

  Dr. Mack made a few more notes and glanced at Kerrington again. “The shows are fun. They give people a tiny taste of what hypnosis can be used for but it’s only a sliver of the possibilities out there. Granted, normally a pretty amazing sliver, but a tiny piece nonetheless.”

  “I’m glad she took me.”

  “I am too, Kerrington. If you’re ready we can get started. Are you comfortable temperature-wise or do you need a blanket? I know I keep it a bit chilly in here.”

  “I’m good actually. Very comfy.”

  “Go ahead and lie down on the couch. Head on this end so you can face the opposite wall with the black-and-white painting. That’s right.”

  Kerrington straightened her legs along the couch, tucking her body close to the crook of the cushions. The arm of the couch reminded her of a thick pillow, so she settled against it, focusing on the framed artwork on the wall in front of her. It was a white house with a murky storm behind it. It was beautiful in black and white with a dark mat and similar frame.

  “I’m going to record the audio of our session so you can have it later and listen to it again.” She clicked a few buttons on her computer and then all Kerrington heard was the tick-tock, tick-tock of Dr. Mack’s wall clock.

  “The house you see in the picture, it’s white for a reason. Do you remember how I told you about the white light inside you when you came to the club a couple weeks ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to visualize that same light, starting at the top of your head. It will slowly move down your forehead, over the bridge of your nose, covering your lips, your chin, your neck.”

  She paused and Kerrington followed her directions while staring at the white house in front of her.

  “Continue wiping your body clean of all negativity and keep focused on that white house. Take a deep breath for me and hold it, slowly releasing your stress and nervousness along with it. It’s leaving your body, flowing out, into that house in the frame. Deep breath and let it out.”

  Kerrington fought to keep her eyes open, trying to send all of her fears that she’d lost Danielle into the house. She took several more inhales and exhales and finally let some of the tension go.

  “Very good, Kerrington. You’re doing great. Take another minute to finish with the white light until you get all the way down to the soles of your feet. When your entire body is bathed in that crisp light nod your head. Keep looking at the house with the storm all around it.”

  She took a bit longer, moved the light past her feet, until her whole being was one bright light. Relaxation made her feel heavy on the couch and tugged at her, pulling her further under. She nodded once, fighting to keep her eyelids open.

  “That’s right, K
errington. Your body’s probably very heavy now, isn’t it?”

  She nodded again.

  “Close your eyes for me.”

  Before Dr. Mack had even finished speaking, her eyes were closed. She sighed in relief, sinking into the couch even farther.

  “You can still see the house and the frame, even with your eyes closed.”

  It was a statement, not a question, and Kerrington figured out she was completely correct.

  “And the house is now black, isn’t it?”

  Kerrington pulled her eyebrows down, not liking the house being black.

  “It’s all right, we’re going to fix it. I need you to walk to that house. I know it might look scary because it’s so dark but light’s on the other side of the door so there’s nothing to be afraid of. Take a few minutes, walk up to the house, go inside and find that staircase you were standing at the top of before. I need you at the top of that staircase and I need you to be comfortable when you get there. So, if you want to put on fuzzy slippers they’ll be waiting for you when you step inside. If you want to be naked then do that. There is no wrong answer here. Nod when you’re ready to continue.”

  Kerrington made quick work approaching the house across the lawn. The light on the other side called to her.

  She made it up the steps, tried the door handle, but it was locked. She scowled, trying it again.

  “Is it locked? The door?”

  Kerrington nodded, glad Dr. Mack was with her.

  “No problem, the key is in your pocket. It’s your house, so you have the key to get inside.”

  She reached into her pocket, extracting a key that fit the lock perfectly. She smiled as the door swung open and she stepped inside.

  Dr. Mack was right. Light emanated from every corner. She put the key back in her pocket and started removing her clothes as she walked to the middle of the house where the stairs were located. By the time she got there and opened the door at the top of the stairs she took a deep breath, humming in pleasure. She nodded, happy to be at the stairs, grabbing the rail, which would help her down.

  “At the top of the stairs you stand there, naked, correct? That’s how you wanted to be, right?”