by Leddy Harper
“What shouldn’t you do?”
“Kiss you.”
Her eyes then traveled to my mouth at my admission. I didn’t miss the very tip of her tongue slip through the sliver between her parted lips before quickly licking her lower lip and then disappearing back inside. “You’re going to have to kiss me eventually, right? I mean, isn’t that part of the plan?”
She had a point and I couldn’t find it in me to argue with her. I closed the gap between our bodies and covered her mouth with mine, pressing her against the counter with my weight. I began to lose control and deepened the kiss, giving her everything I had.
Her hands pressed against my chest and gently pushed me away. Her lips separated from mine and then I opened my eyes, concerned as to why she ended the kiss. There was a look on her face that I couldn’t place and it sent alarm bells off in my head. Then, her small hands continued to move up my chest, up my neck, until they were holding my face still. That’s when she slowly closed the distance between our mouths again, only this time, it was soft, gentle, caring. She didn’t kiss me with the fierceness in which I had kissed her. She kissed me as if she were trying to memorize my lips with hers, as if it were her first and last kiss all rolled into one and she was trying to burn the memory of it in her mind.
Her hands remained on my face with her elbows tucked into my chest and I wrapped my arms around her upper back, pulling her as close as I could get her into my body. I felt a need to feel her closer to me, cocooned next to my body. It was all so different from what I was used to. I had never experienced anything like it before. I had never kissed someone so gently before, so soft and full of emotion. But Ivy had set the pace and I told her I would follow; yet her lips made me want to follow her to the end of the earth if I had to. I felt such a fierce urge to protect her, it made my breath hitch and left me with feelings that confused me. Nothing I had ever experienced during kisses before could compare.
I wasn’t sure how long we slow danced through our kiss, but once she pulled away from me, completely out of breath, I knew the moment was over. I knew that was the end of whatever it was that we had experienced. And when she tucked her head into her arms against my chest, I just wanted to hold her there forever and never let her go. She was going through something and I needed to know what it was so I could hopefully understand what I was going through.
“Talk to me, Ivy,” I insisted.
“I just want to be normal.” Her arms and my shirt muffled her words, but I heard her loud and clear. She had spoken into my chest and I could feel her words reverberate through my body, taking it all in. She was saying everything I was feeling.
“You kissed me; doesn’t that mean something? Doesn’t that show you how much you’re improving?” I asked the question even though I already knew the answer. Her lips answered for her, her shaky arms replaced the words and her inability to look at me told me everything I needed to know.
She shook her head, refusing to look at me.
“Hey,” I said, pushing her back slightly so that I could look at her face.
Her stormy eyes were vibrant. The grey had darkened, making the red stand out. It was hard to look at her eyes like that without thinking of how she had gotten them, without picturing the evilness of her own mother. She may have been long gone, never able to hurt Ivy again, but she remained in her eyes, in her memories, and in the voices in her head. That was something that I knew all too well.
“Look at me,” I insisted. “Ivy, you have come so far in just one week. This is why I’ve kept pushing you, why I kept coming after you. I know what I’m doing. I know how to keep you progressing. No, what I’ve done with you hasn’t been part of my normal coaching, but it’s working.” Lie. Lie. The layers of lies I was spinning were incredible. I hadn’t done anything for her progress. I may have told myself that in hopes that I would believe it, but nothing I did was for her. It was all for me. I was a selfish bastard and it was done to understand myself better through her. It was to spend more time with her. It had nothing to do with making her better… only with making me better. I was a self-centered prick, and I knew that at some point, it would all come back to haunt me. It would blow up in my face.
It had been a long weekend, probably one of the longest weekends of my life. Instead of calling Alyssa and begging her to come over, I spent the time thinking. I had gotten into the habit of calling Alyssa when I needed a distraction. It was much easier to call her than face the thoughts that cracked my foundation. But I made myself face the thoughts head-on instead of giving in to the phone call. And I thought a lot. Then thought some more. I thought so much I almost drove myself insane. In order to keep my mind from thoughts of Ivy, I had started working out every day. For hours every evening I’d hit the hanging bag, beat it and kick it until I was drained. I’d finish with that and then wonder how Ivy was. That’s when I would jump on the treadmill, yet that proved fruitless because I’d run in place and worry that I had pushed her too far. I worried that she wouldn’t ever call me because I had scared her too much. That thought made me realize how much she scared me. It made me think about all of the changes I had felt since meeting her. I’d try sit-ups and push-ups, hoping the counting would keep my mind busy. It did, but only while I was counting. Once I stopped or even took a second to think about something else, my mind was back on Ivy.
I’d take a shower once I was done in the gym, but then my hand would take over and again, I’d think about Ivy. In the shower, though, I didn’t worry about her or wonder what she was doing. No… in the shower I would wonder what it would feel like to finally take her. To finally feel what she felt like on the inside as she surrounded me. I’d think about the things I had wanted to do to her and thought about the things she had admitted to wanting to have done to her. She was everywhere, even with my eyes closed. When my eyes were closed she haunted my dreams, taunting me to do the things to her body. Sensual touches, licks, and positions I had desired for so long. I woke up most mornings with my dick so hard I could’ve sawed through a four by four.
However, with my dreams filled with Ivy, I wasn’t dreaming about other things. I wasn’t hearing the screams or loud voices. I wasn’t feeling the imaginary sweat stick to my skin or the suffocating sensation of being stuck in a small space with not enough air. The haunting visions of my past and the taunting memories seemed to have dissipated. Thoughts of Ivy had managed to push it all away for the time being, and for that, I was grateful. I just wasn’t sure which was worse… constantly thinking about Ivy or my past.
I needed a change in my life. I couldn’t continue with that I was doing. But at the same time, I wasn’t ready to let everything go. My thoughts ran around in circles, one chasing the other. Yet the common thread was my job. I knew I had the opportunity to help a lot of people, but something in me had changed. And it left me having to make a choice.
To keep from making a rash decision, I waited until Tuesday, until my regularly scheduled appointment, where I could speak to my own therapist. I already knew what he would say, but at least he’d ask me questions along the way. Granted, they would more than likely be the same questions I had asked myself for three days, but hearing them come from someone else and hearing my own answers out loud instead in my head made all the difference. Maybe he would draw different answers from me, which would enable me to come up with a different conclusion. I had already come up with one conclusion. Trying to talk it out with myself had become pointless. I would never get anywhere that way.
I hadn’t heard from Ivy since I had left her apartment Friday night. She never called me, nor did I make any attempt to call her. Well, that’s not entirely true. I had made plenty of attempts; I just never followed through with any of them. I had picked up my phone countless times and let my finger hover over her name on my contact list. My heart told me to push that one little button that would easily dial her number, while my mind told me I needed to back the fuck off. I had told her I would give her space and let her lead the way. I was going
to honor that promise. Even if it fucking killed me.
“I feel like I need a break from what I do,” I told Doctor Klaussen as I sat on the couch in his office. I knew he wouldn’t have expected me to start with that. Over the years, we had gone round and round with my choice of career. He found it laughable that I would call myself a professional, and I thought it ignorant of him to dismiss me simply because some of my work was done in the nude.
“And why do you feel like that?” he asked with interest.
This was why I needed to speak to him about it… except now that I was, I began to think it was a bad idea. The urge to backpedal and reel my words back in was so great that I had to make a conscious effort in order to continue. I knew that I would have to be honest with him, and I knew he wouldn’t appreciate what I had to confess to him. “I feel like I’m getting too involved.”
“With a patient?” His eyebrows shot up and I got the feeling like he wanted to yell out I told you so. I knew that he really didn’t want to do that. He was always professional, but my mind was already playing tricks on me due to the difficult decisions that I knew lay ahead.
“Yes,” I admitted hesitantly. “But it’s not like what you’re thinking. I want to help her; I feel like I can really get through to her. But I’m having a hard time separating it all. It’s like I’m facing three decisions… I could change nothing and keep going with everything, possibly crossing lines that I should never cross, ruining my career in the process; I could keep my profession but drop her as a client; or I could give it all up. But the problem here is that out of all of those choices, only one lets me keep her. That’s what I want, to keep her. And that would mean I would lose my job. I’m pretty much faced with my job or her. So I guess I have only two options.”
“You just said that it’s not like what I’m thinking. Let’s start there. What exactly is it that you assume I’m thinking?” he asked in an even tone, keeping his judgment to himself.
“I assume with your reaction you think I’m romantically involved with a patient.”
“And you’re not?”
“No,” I answered honestly due to a technicality.
“Okay, let’s hold off on that thought for a moment and move onto the next thing you said. You said if you keep your profession and keep her on as a patient, you could cross lines that you should never cross. Clarify that for me, please. What are these lines and why do you think you would cross them?”
I didn’t want to answer him. I knew what his opinion was on my chosen career and I really didn’t want to get into that conversation. Putting my hesitation aside, I finally decided to just answer him. “Honestly? I find myself wanting to be around her all of the time. I find myself thinking about her often. It’s like I need to talk to her, to know how she’s doing. I need to see her. I have never experienced this before and so I don’t know what it means. All I know is that when or if the time comes that her treatment is taken to the next level, I worry that I won’t be able to keep it clinical. The lines that are drawn in regards to my kind of therapy are there to keep things professional. It’s to protect my client and myself from becoming personal. Those are the lines I’m talking about. Those are the things I worry will happen. And if we become physical on a personal level… I could lose my job.”
“So then why are you so interested in keeping her as a patient or in your life? If she has the ability to strip you of your job, your self-proclaimed life’s purpose, wouldn’t that be an easy choice to make? Wouldn’t it be a simple decision? What seems to be your fascination with her?”
The real question should have been what wasn’t my fascination with her. That would have been much simpler and shorter to answer. “I don’t really know to be honest with you. There’re so many. I feel like I can really help her. She’s been through so much shit in her life and I feel that I am the most qualified to help. At the same time, I can’t help but think she has the ability to fix me—or break me, I’m not sure which one.”
“Is this really about healing one another or are there other feelings involved?”
“I can’t answer that. I’ve never had feelings for anyone before. I have nothing to compare this to,” I admitted, giving him the simplest of truths. “I don’t know if it’s simply because of how she makes me feel or because I find her so complex and deep, and like for the first time in my life, I have a chance of really getting through to someone on a different level.”
“Well, how does she make you feel?” he asked, digging deeper than I had allowed myself to go.
I looked around the room, trying to focus on something so that I could allow my thoughts to open up. I hated opening my thoughts; that’s usually the time when I remember things I had long since locked away. And that’s when I realized what it was. “She makes me feel. I’ve spent so long living in this dark space, fighting the demons of my past, and blocking out the memories that seem to taunt my every waking moment. But when I’m around her, it’s like she owns my thoughts. She gives my memories a reprieve for the time being and I’m no longer in that dark space. It’s almost like as I help her heal, she’s helping me heal.”
“So your episodes… they’re gone?”
“Well, no. I still have them and will probably always have them. And I’m not saying that I’m healed and now a completely normal person. There are times when her demons provoke mine, but for the most part, she makes me forget.”
“Forgetting your problems is not the same as healing them.”
“I know,” I admitted. “But for the first time since I was eight, I don’t feel like they’re swallowing me whole. I don’t feel like they’re about to jump out of the shadows and suffocate me. And I can’t help but think it has something to do with her. I’m also aware of the fact that without her, I could be pushed even further back into the shadows. And that’s where I’m having the issue.” I leaned forward with my elbows propped on my knees. “Do I give her up or not? And if I don’t, what do I do about my job?”
He tapped his pen on his leg, looking like he was contemplating something. “If you’re asking for my opinion, which I’m assuming you are since that seems to be the only reason why you have kept these weekly appointments with me over the years… I’d say you need to figure out how you feel about her before you come to any decision about giving up your profession. I’d say you need to start dealing with your own demons and facing your own past. It seems to me like you need to look at this with two options at a time. The first one would be: treat the girl or don’t treat the girl. And from what I gather, the reason not to treat her would be to keep from crossing lines. However, you could correct that problem by changing the course of treatment… By eliminating the bed, you eliminate some of that chance. As for treating her… You seem to have a few reasons that range from truly wanting to help her to helping yourself. So I’d say start right there. Figure out what is most important to you and then go from there.”
“It’s not as cut and dry as that.”
“Why not? Why isn’t it that simple?”
“Because it still comes down to choosing between her and my career.”
“What are you saying here, Cade? Do you have feelings for this girl? Because if it’s not simply a choice between treating her or not treating her, then that’s what you need to focus on. You need to figure out in what capacity you want her,” he lectured me while looking me right in the eye. “Sounds like you have some thinking to do. My only advice would to be to think long and hard on whether or not you have feelings for her. And if you do, you need to know what they are before you make any decisions. The last thing you want to do is make a career change for a woman and have it turn out that your attraction to her is nothing that your job couldn’t have taken care of. At the same time, you don’t want to ignore these possible feelings and then lose any chance of ever being able to help anyone in the future because you’ve lost your ability to treat them. This will take a lot of thought on your part. Think hard, Cade.”
I left his office feeling
even more confused than I had been when I walked in. Now, instead of only worrying about the future of my career, I was also worried about these feelings I may or may not have had. Feelings? I had never thought about those before. I never had a reason to.
There was one session on my calendar after my appointment with Doctor Klaussen, but she had canceled earlier that morning. I was relieved, which was peculiar because I was never relieved when a client canceled. Not showing up or participating was more harmful to them and their success, and I didn’t tolerate it. Yet I found myself content with her not coming in.
I went to my weekly basketball game and for the first time, I lost. Well, my team lost, but it was more or less my fault. My head wasn’t in the game. Instead, it was stuck somewhere in the clouds replaying Doctor Klaussen’s words and agonizing over how long it would take Ivy to call me. I felt as if every minute that passed by took forever. How long would she make me wait? And would I be able to sort things out without seeing her? Part of me felt as if I needed to see her, at least one more time before I could try to make sense of anything.
As I drove home from the basketball court, feeling the blast of cold air on my skin, I realized I needed to do something, anything to rid myself of these confusing and damaging thoughts that had overtaken me. My mind constantly went back and forth like a Ping-Pong ball. One minute I was concerned about Ivy and the next I was giving myself a pep talk, telling myself that I didn’t need her. I tried convincing myself that I was only concerned about her because she was my client and nothing more. But then why was I contemplating a career change? How much of that was because of Ivy and how much of it was because of me? Was I simply getting burned out with what I was doing? That had to be it. Maybe I was just getting tired of what I was doing and needed a change. It had nothing to do with Ivy.
In my desperation to find some peace, I called Alyssa and invited her over. I had to promise to talk to her in order to get her to agree, but at that point, I didn’t care. I needed to prove to myself that I was not hung up on Ivy Jaymes. I needed to prove to myself that the obsession I had with her had nothing to do with feelings and everything to do with the fascination to fix her. She was like a puzzle to me, and in order to figure her out, I needed to have a clear head. Yeah… sex would solve my problem.