by Phoebe Fox
“Chip,” I said. “I’m sorry about our sessions.”
He shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”
“It is. I let you down. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not.”
That sobered up my sugar high. “You’re not? I thought we... I thought we were doing some good work together.”
“Yeah. We were.”
“But you’re not sorry we won’t be working together anymore?”
“Nah.”
I searched his face, wishing there were at least a sliver of moon for me to decipher his expression. “Oh. Well... Okay.”
He took my hand where it was resting on my knees, and started tracing light, barely-there paths along my fingers, down the back of my hand, in the tender webbing between each finger. I shivered, although it wasn’t cold.
“I don’t want to work with you, Doc. I haven’t wanted to work with you for a while.” He turned my hand over and teased gentle trails from the pads of my fingers to the crease where they met my palm.
“Why not?” I said. Even to me, my quaking voice was barely audible.
He swirled a finger in my palm, and I felt it all the way through my body. “Because as long as I was working with you, I couldn’t do what I really wanted to do. Which was this.”
He tugged gently on my hand to pull me near, and then Chip Santana was so close, smelling of chocolate and cigarettes and something clean and sharp, like deodorant soap, despite the fact that he’d been working all night long, and before I could find the right answer, there was no chance for one: his lips were on mine.
They were soft, softer even than they looked.
I don’t know how long he kissed me; my head was now spinning like a funnel cloud. I registered the unfamiliar tickle of his goatee. He kissed nothing like Kendall. He was nothing at all like Kendall.
He ended it sooner than I would have, but he didn’t pull back. His face was close to mine. “You’re not going to analyze that, are you?” he asked softly, in a rumble that vibrated directly into my reproductive system.
“Chip...” I was having trouble breathing. “Do you even know my first name?”
He touched my face with a hand. “Sure I do. It’s Doc.”
A laugh born of nerves exploded out of me. Chip chuckled too, caressing my cheek as gently and sensually as he had been touching my hand.
“What’s your first name, Doc?” he asked, low, his breath in my mouth.
“Brook...” I murmured. “Brook Lyn.”
“Brook Lyn.” He danced his fingers across my palm, up my arm, along the crook of my elbow as though it were an erogenous zone. Which I had never realized until that moment that it was. “Brook Lyn,” he said again. It sounded rich and sensual in his mouth. He took my face in his hands and brought his lips down onto mine again.
This was bad. It was wrong on so many levels. Even if it weren’t for the muddy charcoal gray area of our doctor-patient relationship, Chip had anger issues. He was a thirty-six-year-old pot smoker who lived in a basement and tended bar. We’d hardly exchanged twelve lines of conversation outside of therapy sessions—or this makeout session. As far as potential relationships went, he was the dictionary entry under “bad bet.”
But that wasn’t what I wanted from him. It wasn’t what I needed right now. What I needed was to feel attractive again. To erase that awful feeling I’d had when Kendall had disappeared on me, when he’d texted me that he “just couldn’t do it,” when he hung up in my ear. I needed to remind myself I wasn’t the crazy girl who sent histrionic emails and text messages, stalked her ex...had gotten a tumescent-donkey tattoo. I was sexy and desirable and wanted.
Chip Santana, as Sasha herself had put it, was the ideal rebound guy.
I almost physically felt the last thread of my resistance snap and fly into the soft sea breeze like so much cattail fluff.
His lips—oh, God those lips—coaxed my mouth open again, his tongue running along my lips, inside, his hands on my neck now...my shoulders, down my arms until they landed on my sides and my whole body arched toward him. My hands wrapped themselves behind his head, pulling him closer, pressing my body as close as I could to the long, hard length of his, like I’d never been touched before and was starving for the contact.
For once I didn’t think everything out to its logical conclusion. I didn’t weigh the pros and cons, balance my options, and analyze the safest, smartest course of action. I let go. Finally, I let go and stopped worrying and followed my instincts, my gut, my raw, atavistic urges that demanded, Yes. This man. Right here...right now.
And that was how I found myself at the Fort Myers police station in the middle of the night, with sand crusted around the damp ankles of my cotton pants and in other places even less desirable, clutching a filthy pay phone and praying to God that Sasha had brought her cell phone into our tent with her.
twenty-six
Deputy Walter Dodd had no patience for the likes of me. I would have thought when he shone his flashlight into our eyes just like in the movies, we’d have gotten some sympathy points for our age—it wasn’t like Chip and I were irresponsible kids causing trouble down at the beach. We were grown people, consenting adults, keeping quietly to ourselves and doing no one any harm.
But Dodd had been strangely unmoved by my arguments to that end. When neither of us could produce any form of ID—Chip had left his wallet in his backpack at his apartment and mine was still in the tent with Sasha—Dodd hauled us in.
I had no idea what time it was, but the sky was starting to lighten, so I assumed it was sometime after six a.m. He gestured us out of the backseat when we got to the police precinct—a place I’d visited only once in my entire life, as an elementary schooler on a field trip. I remembered that as being a lot more fun.
This time I was frog-marched through the back door, where the criminals skulked in. Dodd waved at the woman behind the wire cage as he led us past her and through to a hallway lined with several steel doors. Chip went into one. I went into a separate one.
It was nothing like Mayberry RFD. This was a concrete-and-steel box containing a sink, a metal toilet I could barely make myself look at, let alone use, and a stained concrete bench along one wall.
“When do we get our phone call?” I asked as Dodd started to shut me in.
“Funny about that,” he said, not looking at me. “Despite what you see on all those cop shows, that’s not a constitutional right.” The door slammed behind him.
I stood in the middle of the cell, as if none of this were real as long as I didn’t touch anything. Looking down at my dirty, wrinkled clothes, I patted the sand away from the damp places. A glance in the square of polished steel that served as a mirror showed me how much of it clung to my hair. I ran my hands through it, hearing the soft patter as the sand snowed down onto the floor. I turned away from my reflection.
Dodd walked by my window a few minutes later, and I heard him stop next door and say, “You got someone to call?” Some rattling and a clink, and then he and Chip walked past going in the opposite direction.
“Hey,” I called out, knocking on the window. “What about ladies first?”
Dodd eyeballed my disheveled state through the Plexiglas. “When you act like a lady, we’ll treat you like one.”
I felt as intimidated as I had in elementary school. And just about as mature.
They came back just a few minutes later, Chip catching my eye and shaking his head. We weren’t getting sprung, I assumed. Dodd secured Chip back in his cell and came to stand in front of mine.
“I assume there’s someone you want to call and wake up first thing on a Sunday morning?” he drawled.
Dodd was no more than mid-thirties—close to my age—but he did a hell of a job as the Shame Police. I wished he’d just let me go pick a switch and get my punishment over with.
“Yes, please. Thank
you, Deputy.” Kiss-ass Numbah One.
He shook his head as he fitted the old-fashioned-looking key into the door. “You know,” he said, taking his sweet time with the lock, “I expect this from the kids. They don’t know any better. But you two...” He shook his head again, managing to convey a weary, worldly disappointment.
“I bet you’re a great dad,” I muttered as he led me down the hall. My steps echoed down its length, bounced back and back and back to my own ears off the hard floor and bare cinder-block walls. This was not exactly the walk of shame I had been braced for tonight.
Dodd led me to a mostly bare, characterless desk with a phone and some papers on it. He picked up the receiver and pressed 9, then handed it to me.
Sasha picked up on the first ring.
“Brook?” she blurted. “Is that you?”
“It’s me.”
“Jesus. Are you okay? I’ve been a wreck.”
“I’m sorry, Sash. I’m so sorry.” I stopped to iron the tremble out of my voice. “I’m fine—nothing happened. We just got picked up by Deputy Dawg”—oops—“I mean Deputy Dodd,” I amended quickly. I sneaked a look to where he stood pretending not to listen, but I could tell I hadn’t helped my case with him.
“We? Who’s ‘we’? What happened?”
“It’s... We were...” I eyed the deputy again, and now he was looking straight at me with eyebrows raised and a look that said, Go on. Tell her, why don’t you?
“I’ll give you the full story later. Meanwhile...” I swallowed hard, gearing up to say words I never thought I’d need to use. “Um, can you come bail me out of jail?”
“I’m already in the car.”
I closed my eyes against a surge of relief and gratitude. “Thanks,” was all I could get out past my suddenly constricted throat.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”
I couldn’t tell if she meant it as a joke, but I couldn’t even muster a chuckle. I set the phone back in its cradle and turned to look at Dodd.
He pushed himself away from the wall where he’d been leaning and fixed me with that hairy stare. “Deputy Dawg? That’s really original.”
I held out my arms, wrists together.
“Go ahead,” I said wearily.
He took my elbow instead and wordlessly led me back to the holding cell.
Deputy Dodd released us on what he called a “copy of charges,” a citation. He’d hauled me back out of the cell thirty minutes after he’d stuck me in there again. “Really, Deputy, you’re sending a girl such mixed messages,” I muttered as he led me out, long past even trying to suck up. Sasha stood waiting when we came out into the main area, and her eyes filled when she saw me. I could see how hard she was fighting not to launch herself into a hug. Instead she put her hand on my shoulder and stood close behind me after Dodd gestured roughly for me to sit at that same featureless desk where I’d called her. He sat behind it, scribbling in silence for a while.
“Your court date is April eighteenth at nine a.m.” He stood, arms crossed, and I gathered I had been dismissed. “It will be an undiluted joy to see you again then. Perhaps this time with all your clothes on.”
Heat crept up my face, but I forced my head to stay high as I walked with Sasha toward the entrance. But my dignified exit was ruined when I remembered Chip. Sasha and I waited awkwardly by the front door while Dodd went over the whole rigmarole again with him, and then we all walked out to Sasha’s Jetta in dead silence.
The trip over the Matanzas Bridge to drop him off at home was awkward beyond words. Literally, far beyond words, as we three sat in near total silence broken only when Chip directed her to his street off Estero Boulevard. I cringed, hating that Sasha would see the tumbledown beach shack where he lived in the basement.
Long gone was the flirtatious Chip I’d spent the evening with. This was the Chip I’d worked with in therapy to help him control his seething rage. I was glad he was in the backseat by himself—he was like a land mine waiting to be detonated at the slightest touch. When we pulled into the graveled drive of the house he lived in, he let himself out with only a terse, “Later.” He slammed the door and we watched him stalk inside and slam his apartment door behind him too.
Sasha let out a long breath. “Sheesh. Lovely guy.”
“He’s had a tough night.” I didn’t know why I was defending him.
“Yeah. So have you, honey. Oh, Brook...” She leaned across the seat and finally hugged me, and I let myself cling to her for a few moments before I drew away from our embrace. She put the car into gear and pulled back out onto Estero. “What the hell happened?”
“What do you think? I’m holding a ticket for public indecency, and you just picked me up from jail.”
“Did you...?”
“No. We didn’t get quite that far.”
Sasha blew out a long breath. “Thank God.”
I looked over at her. “What does that mean?”
Sasha shook her head. “Bad news, that one. You need to stay away from him.”
I didn’t say anything. Everything was rubbing me the wrong way right now, and the last person I wanted to take my embarrassment and anger and frustration out on was the one person who always showed up when I needed her.
“Brook...” Sasha said after long moments where we listened to nothing but her tires regularly thumping on the expansion joints as we crossed back over the bridge. “I’m really worried about you.”
I gritted my teeth. Why was everyone trying to parent me—first Deputy Dawg, and now my best friend? If my own mother couldn’t be bothered with the job, I didn’t see why everyone else felt they had to leap into the breach.
“You don’t need to worry,” I grated out. “I’m fine.”
“Stop saying that.”
“What?”
“‘I’m fine.’ It’s like your little mantra, Brook—no matter what happens, no matter how bad things get, all you ever say is, ‘I’m fine.’ I used to think you were just trying to keep people from worrying about you. But you’re even kidding yourself with it. You’re not fine, Brook. You’re messed up right now. There’s nothing wrong with that—anyone would be, with...you know, everything that’s been happening. Especially after what happened with Michael.” She said it slowly and deliberately, as if to make sure I didn’t miss her mention of his name.
I clenched my teeth hard, but didn’t rise to her bait.
Sasha gusted out a sigh ripe with frustration. “You have to let yourself feel what you’re feeling or you’re going to just break down one day!”
I stared out the window at Hurricane Pass, named for the storm that created it in the twenties, which washed away the old swing bridge and tore out a new channel, severing what was now San Carlos Island from the mainland. My hands were clenched into fists, and I concentrated on releasing my tight fingers one by one.
“Okay, Dr. Phil. Thanks,” I said in a monotone.
“I mean it. Talk to me. You never let on that anything’s wrong. I talk your ear off when I’m hurting, Brook. I tell you everything I’m going through.”
“That’s you, Sasha. It’s not me.”
“That’s human.”
“No,” I bit out, “it’s not. It’s one way of dealing with things. And it’s not the way I choose to do it. I don’t wallow, I don’t feel sorry for myself, and I don’t act like an idiot.”
“Oh. Okay.” Sasha was concentrating hard on the road, her hands clutching tight to the wheel. “And I do—is that what you’re saying?”
“No. You’re just more of...an id person than I am.”
She gave an unamused laugh. “I’m not as stupid as you think, Brook.”
“I don’t think you’re stupid.”
“Yes, you do. ‘Id person’ is just a condescending way of saying I can’t regulate my impulses. Like a toddler.”
&nb
sp; “That’s not...” Actually, that was a pretty good description of how Sasha went through a breakup. I struggled for a tactful way to end the sentence.
“Oh, my God.” Sasha looked at me, and I felt the car slow down. “It’s true? That’s what you really think?”
“No—”
“I pour my heart out to you when it’s broken—because you’re my best friend. Because no one else knows me so well or loves me better than you do. I vomit everything up on you, and that’s what helps me get through it.” She had pulled all the way over to the side of San Carlos now, in front of the battered Love Boat ice-cream shop that had been there as long as I could remember. She turned in the seat to face me. “Are you...are you judging me every time?”
I fidgeted, uncomfortable. Was I? I deflected: “You don’t vomit everything up, now, do you?”
“What? What does that mean?”
“I don’t have an exclusive contract on keeping things to myself, Sasha. Who’s been dating all hot and heavy for the last two weeks, and decided to keep her little secret all to herself?”
“I... Brook, I’m just trying to keep my head on straight this time, like you’ve always said.”
I should have been proud of her—Sasha was finally trying to come at a relationship in a more adult way. But selfishly, the timing only made me feel worse about myself. Why did she have to start getting herself together right when I was falling apart? My humiliation made me go on the offensive.
“Sure, Sasha—that’s great. For the first time in your entire dating life you’re playing it cool. So cool you don’t even tell your so-called best friend anything about it. But you want me to confide all my deepest, darkest in you.”
“Brook, that’s not why I—”
“That’s really fair, Sash. It gives me all kinds of warm fuzzies about telling you every stupid, insecure, ridiculous, embarrassing thing about me.”
“Why would you be embarrassed with me?”
“Why would you be embarrassed to tell me about your new boyfriend now that you’re so healthy and mature about it?” I said meanly.