Looking For Trouble

by Lara Ward Cosio

  I might have overcorrected, however, because when I came up short for what to do, I ended up recreating what Ms. Patterson did when I stalked her that time. So, here we are, sitting awkwardly in The Marker Hotel’s Brassiere restaurant, with tickets to see bloody Spamalot afterward. Jules was gamely going along with this, even though it’s not her scene. That changes when I mention my brother’s name.

  “And is he coming just to visit you?” she asks carefully.

  “Nah. He and the guys are going into studio.”

  “So soon? They just finished—” she cuts herself off.

  I sigh. “Yes, they just barely finished the tour, I know.” It’s that over-familiarity slipping through again. She knows exactly when the band ended their tour because she’s been keeping tabs, despite how she tries to act beyond it all.

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll be glad to see Shay.”

  “Yes, of course.” I hesitate. This is the part I haven’t been eager to get to. “Thing is, when he’s here, I’ll be … occupied.”

  She eyes me. “Occupied?”

  “Well, you know. With helping the band. I have a mind to be in the studio with them, to see what I might be able to learn from those goings on.”

  “Those sessions can be very time consuming,” she allows, and I relax a degree. But that reprieve disappears when she continues. “I spent plenty of my life there—both for my own recordings and with Gavin when they were recording.”

  With Gavin.

  Since our blowout fight, she’s dropped any effort of not mentioning her past relationship with Gavin and Rogue. It hasn’t been constant, mind, but it’s very noticeable.

  “Well, I’ll get to see for myself. This will be the first time I’ve been around when they recorded, so it’ll be interesting to see the process. Though Marty tells me I’ll be bored to tears,” I say with a laugh.

  That reference stops her mid-bite and she lowers her forkful of salmon. “Do you … hang out with the guys?”

  “Outside of the tour? No, not really. They’ve always been Shay’s mates.”

  “But, wait. You said you saw Gavin—to talk about me.” She lets that hang in the air for a moment, but I don’t take the bait. There’s no way I’m going to feel guilty about that, especially given that he was absolutely right about his warning to me. She continues, “And didn’t you say something about Conor and motorbike lessons?”

  “Yeah. Reminds me, I really need to get a bike.”

  Ignoring that, she says, “And now you just saw Martin?”

  “Shay asked me to check up on him. But, yeah, we ended up having a laugh together.”

  “That sounds like mates to me.”

  I shrug dismissively. None of this seems relevant to what I need to tell her. “Anyway,” I say, “I just mean to tell you that I think I mightn’t be in touch very much while Shay’s here.”

  “I could always visit you there at the studio.”

  The idea of her dropping in to see what kind of trouble she can stir up with Gavin has me scrambling to put her off. But she keeps at it before I can think of something to say.

  “Seeing how you were going to talk to Shay on my behalf about getting back into the industry.”

  Me and my stupid gob. What was I thinking ever suggesting that? I was in some sort of love-sick haze, is what. I thought I’d found what I needed with Jules. All because of a spell cast while swimming in the Mexican ocean in the rain. I hadn’t thought twice about it after our epic fight, just sort of assumed we both knew it was an offer no longer on the table. Not so for Jules, it seems.

  “About that,” I say, “I don’t think now is the time to approach it.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “No? Seems terribly convenient with him being back here and in studio.”

  I have no doubt she reads this for what it is. She knows I don’t want her there, but she’s enjoying making me squirm in response. Best to just get to the heart of the matter, even if I know it will sting a bit.

  “Well, he doesn’t even know I’m seeing you, so it’d be a pretty big fucking leap to make at this point.”

  It takes her a second to digest this news. And when she does, I can see my blow has landed exactly as I thought it would.

  “But, I’m the one you love,” she says with phony sweetness. “How can you not have told your brother about your love?”

  It’s a jab that pisses me off. Again, I’m learning how to truly regret my actions. It’s a new and unwelcome feeling. I wish I had never told her I loved her. I wish I had never told her I’d talk to Shay on her behalf. But I have and now she’s only too happy to use my words against me. Jesus, it feels like all connecting with someone gets you is manipulation in return.

  “Just don’t, Jules,” I say wearily.

  “Don’t worry. I’m only too happy to leave you on your own. In fact, let’s start with that right away, shall we?”

  Dropping her napkin over her half-eaten entree, she stands and gathers her purse.

  “Really? This is where you’re drawing the line? Over me not having told Shay? Or is it over me not wanting to ask him to help you?”

  “I should have never taken up with you to begin with. We both know that.”

  I can feel the eyes all around us, watching this end to us play out.

  “What about the show?” I ask lamely. It feels like I should make some sort of effort to keep her, even if a part of me is relieved for her to be breaking things off.

  “Fuck your stupid show and your weak attempts to live a boring existence. You will never be happy living the straight life. You know that, right?”

  She may be right, but I have no desire for her, of all people, to make this assertion. Still, I remain calm and I’m pleased that I’m not tempted to flip the table or send a wine glass flying. That version of me existed not too long ago. The one that would do things without real thought, just to get a reaction. It might have generated fleeting excitement, but this “boring existence” has offered me something more rewarding: a sense of peace. It’s peace because I realize the negativity in my head hasn’t found its foothold the way it so easily used to. Nor have I succumbed to using the low expectations others had of me as a way to justify turning to heroin like I’ve done in the past. What’s made the difference? Maybe it’s because now I have Ms. Patterson’s support.

  The bottom line is that Jules hasn’t helped with either of these things. She has only ever stirred up the darkness in my head and she’s only ever played to my worst instincts—desperate to resurrect and manipulate the remnants of my old self. This is made abundantly clear by her declaring I’ll be miserable with a normal life.

  “My dear therapist would call that projection, you know?” I ask with a laugh and sit back in my leather club chair.

  “You know what I still think about that situation,” she says pointedly.

  “Yeah, well, you were right with your first guess.” I shouldn’t let her goad me, especially knowing that’s what she’s after. But nobody’s perfect, least of all me. “I do want to fuck her.”

  I hear some gasps. The restaurant’s tables are too damn close together, so we have been giving the crowd a show in addition to their pre-theater meal.

  “Just try not to call her Mammy when you do, yeah?”

  I laugh. It was a good comeback, I have to admit. My genuine smile makes her hesitate. She’s been on the verge of turning on heel and stalking out and now she relaxes a degree. The corner of her mouth turns up. That’s the thing, we’ve always, on some base level, understood each other. That’s why it was so easy to go back with her—because her first argument for why we should be together to begin with, that we were the kind of fucked up that only we could understand, still holds true.

  Still, I’m ready to let this twisted connection go.

  “Take care of yourself, okay Jules?” I tell her softly.

  She takes a deep breath and I catch her blinking back tears. “You, too.”

  Once she’s gone, I relax. I’m ready to dig b
ack into my steak dinner but realize I’m still being watched.

  “Oy,” I call out. “I have an extra ticket to the show. Any takers?”

  Shaking my head, I laugh again. It feels good to have resisted falling right back into it with Jules. I feel a sort of calm descend over me, which is a foreign fucking sensation. But also, one I think I’ve earned.

  40

  “My dear Ms. Patterson, you will be so proud of me,” I say as soon as she’s closed her office door behind me and Roscoe.

  “And why is that?”

  I sink into my chair and Roscoe does his usual thing of turning around in a circle a couple times before leaning up against my leg.

  “I made a bona fide good decision.”

  My enthusiasm and good humor is hard to mistake. It seems to rub off on her, too, because she’s gifting me with a warm smile.

  “It’s lovely to see you so proud of yourself,” she says.

  “I am that, indeed. In fact, I may not even need to continue these sessions since I’ve got things so well sorted.”

  That earns me a dubious stare and I laugh.

  “Really, though. Shame it will cost you my business. Oh, and that idea I had of getting you a new client in the form of Martin Whelan isn’t going to work out either, sorry to say.”

  “No?” Her smile has returned, and it’s bemused.

  “Nah, turns out that guy has his head on straight. Wouldn’t think so what with all the tabloid drama, but I saw him the other day and he’s doing just fine. It surprised me, actually. Here I was, thinking he’d be devastated. I mean, all I’ve ever known him as is this married guy with kids. Turns out there was more depth going on there. He said he needed to sort of break away from his wife in order to just be himself. And it must have been the right thing because he looked happy, I have to say.”

  After a moment of absorbing this, she says, “Well, go on, tell me about this good decision of yours.”

  I tell her everything about my date with Jules last evening, including how I stole the restaurant and theater idea. She finds that last bit mildly amusing but isn’t sold on my claim that Jules and I are officially and totally over.

  “Your whole time with Jules has seen you conflicted—about her motives and your motives. You got back together after what anyone else would have found to have been irreparable harm done with that fight in Tulum. What makes you say this is different?”

  “It feels different. I dunno why.”

  She watches me, letting the silence stretch out to encourage me to produce an answer rather than just brush it off. That’s the point, after all, of being here in this room together—to examine things.

  “I guess,” I say after a spell, “that warning Gavin gave me finally clicked.”

  “Remind me what he said?”

  “It was that Jules was only interested in what was good for her. That she was an opportunist. I didn’t really take it to heart, honestly, because it sort of felt like he was talking about me. I mean, for fuck’s sake, hasn’t that been my whole life? Only doing what would serve me?”

  “It was.”

  She emphasizes the past tense and I nod slowly. It’s hard to believe I’m not that guy anymore.

  “Okay,” she continues, “so you recognized yourself in Jules from the start and didn’t want to reject her out of hand because doing so would have meant what?”

  “I dunno.” My good mood is slipping away with this discussion. Wasn’t it enough to have done the right thing by ending it with Jules? Why do we have to rehash everything else? It’s times like these where Ms. Patterson pushes me beyond my comfort zone that I wish I’d never started with her.

  “Could it have been what we talked about before? That if you rejected her, you’d be rejecting that version of yourself and then be left with not knowing what your identity was?”

  “This again?”

  “Well, why not?”

  “Because I’m fucking sick of it,” I snap.

  She takes a deep breath and presses her hands against her notepad. “Let me ask you something,” she says. “How would your friends describe you?”

  “Friends?” I scoff.

  “Yes. Your friends: Gavin, Martin, and Conor.”

  “They’re Shay’s friends.”

  “I think you should re-exam that. I mean, just think about what you’ve told me. Gavin gave you his honest advice about Jules. He told you those personal things about himself to get across a warning in order to protect you. And Martin opened up to you about what ended his marriage. That was also incredibly personal. It shows a degree of trust in you.”

  I shake my head, not ready to accept her generous reading of what those lads are about when it comes to me. “And what has Conor supposedly done to show his friendship?”

  “Well, he gave you his time with the motorbike lesson, didn’t he? Even though you admit to having betrayed his trust before. He didn’t give up on you.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. They’re all Shay’s mates. They’ve come to tolerate me for his sake.”

  Despite my denial, her depiction of the friendship these guys have shown stays with me. I’ve never considered that I would have a connection with those guys on my own, without Shay factoring in. But they have all been amazingly welcome of me, even Mr. Perfect who has every reason to keep me at arm’s length.

  Ms. Patterson laughs softly and shakes her head.

  “What?”

  “It’s just, you’ve made such great strides in our sessions. You are really adept at analyzing your feelings and have come to understand how your decisions have consequences. But the one thing that hasn’t changed is your absolute disbelief that you could really matter to someone else.”

  “Can’t expect miracles, here, can we?” I ask with a wink.

  “I’m going to ignore you again trying to deflect with a joke, Daniel,” she says with strained patience. “The reason Gavin and Conor, and Martin gave you those things is because that’s what friends do. It’s really not what anyone does out of obligation.”

  Though it’s a lovely thought, her insistence on this issue baffles me. “What was your point with all this, anyway?” I ask.

  “I suppose it’s to prove to you that another element of progress you’ve made is in connecting with others. You have people you can call your friends. I imagine they would describe you as a friend, as well.”

  I laugh at the new and improved diagnosis. It’s a far cry from where I once was. “I’m cured, then, am I?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she replies with a smile. “There’s always more work to be done.”

  “Over a pint, though, maybe?” I figure it can’t hurt to try.

  “Oh, look,” she says, “our time is up for today. Until next time.”

  I stand and stretch. Roscoe does the same. I feel drained from this session. But also, lighter. It’s a good feeling.

  “One of these days, Ms. Patterson, I’m going to take you for a drink. And it will be a grand thing, indeed.”

  She smiles, but pivots, saying, “You came in here proud of yourself, saying I’d be proud of you, too. I am proud of you. Good work, Daniel.”

  I can’t help a huge smile from taking over my face. And for the first time in a very long time, I feel like Daniel, not Danny Boy.

  41

  I pick up Shay from the airport even though he didn’t ask for the favor. I figure it’s the least I can do, what with all he’s done for me. I know exactly what he’s doing when he eyes me. He’s trying to gauge whether I’m clean or not. That suspicion isn’t something I’ll likely ever escape, not even if I’m sober for the rest of my life.

  During the drive, he confirms what I assumed about his living situation—his move to San Francisco is permanent. He is committed to making a life with Jessica and that means being there. It’s made him a happy man, so I can’t deny him that. Still, the timing is a bitch. I’ve only just recently reestablished a relationship with the kid, and then he goes and moves halfway arou
nd the world. He suggests Roscoe and I visit him over there, but I get the feeling that offer hasn’t been pre-approved by his better half. I’ve come between the two of them before, so I’m wary of becoming a problem again. I have to give myself credit for such forethought. Or maybe, I should give Ms. Patterson credit for that. Hooking up with her was the best thing I’ve done in my life. I can’t imagine having the same kind of connection with any other therapist.

  I want to tell Shay all about her. I want to tell him what a godsend she’s been, how much she’s helped me, and that I adore her beyond our client-therapist relationship. I want to tell him about the nearly five-hour phone call she and I shared when I was in Tulum and needed a voice of reason and comfort. But I can’t admit to any of that.

  Instead, once home, Shay inspects his house as if expecting to find I’ve trashed it. When he realizes I haven’t turned the place into a drug den and that it’s actually in tip-top form, he relaxes and we settle into the Man Cave with some beers.

  “So, what do you think of me joining you lads in studio?” I ask. “I’ve never seen the process. It could be a real kick.”

  “Yeah, sure. Just stay out of the way,” Shay tells me.

  “What? No guest starring on the album for me?” I tease as I straddle the stool at Shay’s drum kit. I take the sticks and hold one each in my fists.

  Shay rolls his eyes. “Fuck’s sake, don’t hold them like that.”

  “This isn’t right?” I tap on the skins awkwardly.

  “If your aim is to have a wank, then that’ll do.”

  I laugh. “What if my aim is to actually do it proper like?”

  I’m pleased when Shay responds by helping me with the correct way to handle the drumsticks. He’s always been hyper-cautious when it comes to the instrument that has been both his passion and his livelihood. But for some reason I can’t pinpoint, tonight is different. Tonight, we stay up until four in the morning as he patiently teaches me some basics while we talk and drink. It isn’t until we’re headed to our separate rooms to go to sleep that I realize how much I missed the kid. He has always brought out the best in me.