by Q. B. Tyler
Oh, that kind of kiss.
* * *
“SOMETHING’S ON YOUR MIND,” I hear from behind me as I send the golf ball soaring into the air and veering to the right. The air is warm and yet there’s a slight breeze that comes with Novembers in Atlanta. With Charley being out of town, I felt it was time that I disclose what’s been going on the last several months—with my therapist and mentor for several years, Dr. Mitch Tucker.
My head leans back as my eyes follow the ball and I realize how this first shot is setting me up to be way over par for this hole. I curse myself. “You always shoot to the right when your mind is elsewhere,” I hear from behind me. I grip my hand tightly around the club and look at Tuck, the nickname I’d given him years ago. I shadowed him while I was in graduate school and he’d taken me under his wing shortly after I’d gotten my doctorate.
And then, of course, there was everything he’d done for me after that…
Tuck had been more of a father to me than my own had ever been, which is why I’d been avoiding this subject like the plague. Disappointing Tuck was something I hated, and I knew he would be less than pleased about this situation I’d gotten myself into.
I’ve wanted to tell him about Charley for months but I wasn’t sure how to broach the subject. How do you tell the man that instilled so many core values and taught you everything you know, that you had tossed everything out the window?
I slide my club back into my bag and take a seat in the cart. “I’m in love.”
He’s raised his club to hit the ball but sets it down immediately upon hearing my words. “Well, that was certainly unexpected. You tell me this over golf? Who is she?” He smiles as he lines his nine-iron club with the small white ball.
Where to begin about who exactly Charlotte Pierce is. The love of my life? The woman who changed everything? The woman I want knocked up by spring? Take your pick. “Tuck, maybe we should call it a day and grab some lunch?”
“Oh?” he says, looking away from the ball. His curious eyes find mine behind the glasses that are perched on his face, sliding down slightly as he looks at me from over the top of the rims. He adjusts them and runs a hand through his curly brown hair that has started to gray slightly, something he was in denial about as he entered his fiftieth year of life. “Alright let me just hit this one. Tell me about her, what is she like?
“I bought her a house,” I blurt out and I groan at this case of word vomit I have. That’s how we’re going to start this? I rub my forehead, already feeling the headache coming on, and wishing that I was with anyone except Tuck at the moment, because I needed something to calm my nerves.
I see him stumble forward slightly hearing my words, the club hitting the ball and knocking it from the tee. “You did that on purpose,” he says glaring at me. “That doesn’t count, dammit,” he says as he picks up the ball and places it back on the tee.
“That’s one stroke,” I nod at the ball.
“Kiss my ass, Montgomery.”
Two holes later, we call it a day, as Tuck is already a dog with a bone wanting information about this mysterious woman in my life. We are back in the golf cart making our way up to the clubhouse when he asks again. “So, you’re not going to tell me anything about her?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Start from the beginning. How did you meet?”
I know I’m not ready to start there. Maybe if I work backwards, it will be easier.
“We’ve been together for five months, and I can safely say that I’ve never felt like this, Tuck. Ever. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I love her more than…anything. And it’s scary.”
And it’s true. It’s scary thinking about how far I’d go to be with her. With each passing day, I realize just how much I’d be willing to give up for her. How much I would sacrifice for her. It’s why I finally decided to talk to Tucker. Is my love for her clouding my judgment and I can’t see that my life is going up in flames? And if it does, will Charley still be there after the wreckage? If I self-destruct will she be there when the smoke clears?
“Does she reciprocate these feelings?”
I lean back in the golf cart seat and cross my arms. “Yes. She loves me too.”
“Why am I sensing that there’s more to the story?
“Because that is merely the tip of the iceberg, Tuck.” I run a hand through my hair and let it drag down my face. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I crossed so many lines…”
He rubs a hand over his mouth and regards me warily. “When you say you’ve crossed a line…”
“She’s a patient,” I blurt out.
“I was not expecting that,” he says. “Will, you’re a marriage counselor.”
“That’s what it says on the door to my office,” I reply and he gives me a shrewd look.
“So, you’re in love with a married woman, then?”
“She’s divorced.”
“Officially? As in, she filed?”
“Yes.”
“Well that’s something.”
“There’s more.”
“Of course, there is. Go on…”
“Her husband caught us.”
“And you still have a job?” He raises an eyebrow at me as he pulls the cart to a stop.
I give him a quick rundown of what happened with her husband and the tape, how Wells had hired a private investigator, and how we’d run into his best friend that night, effectively setting the chaos into motion. When I finally stop, I think for the first time ever Mitch Tucker is speechless.
“Say something. Tell me, how bad it will be if it comes out that we were together while she was married. That I was sleeping with my patient.”
He lets out a breath and steadies himself to speak. “Bad. They’ll take your license, Will…how did this happen? This isn’t like you.”
I shake my head. “I know. Things just got out of control. In the beginning, I thought that if I just slept with her once I’d get it out of my system and that would be the end of it. I knew I was crossing a line but I was drawn to her like no one else. I tried everything to forget about her. I even slept with a woman that looked like her to try and get the fantasy out of my system.”
I wince, remembering that night and how sleeping with a woman that favored Charlotte, a woman I’d been lusting after for weeks didn’t even begin to scratch the itch.
She’s here.
Those two words surround me, making me instantly hard as if my body is already pre-dispositioned to react to her presence. My eyes rake over her once, twice, three times before I narrow them slightly.
Is it her? I lean forward, trying to ignore my brother Drew as he talks about his current woman troubles. The last thing I want to do is my job when I’m off the clock. And yet my brother always had some issue. I guess that comes with the territory of fucking every woman in Atlanta.
Her brown hair is covering her face, the familiar waves cascading down and around her shoulders, curling just under her breasts. Breasts that just this morning, I thought about running my cock between.
I lick my lips and shift slightly, trying to relieve the ache in my dick as I picture Charlotte Pierce across the room.
Is it her?
The bar’s lighting is low creating an intimate ambiance for people unwinding after a long day.
A long week.
Hell, for me, a long month.
One month, thirty tortuous days of breaking my dick off thinking about my married patient. Thinking about her soft curves underneath my fingertips, her full pouty lips that she sinks her teeth into. Lips I want to kiss. I want to kiss her so thoroughly she wouldn’t have a coherent thought in her brain.
Certainly not that she had a husband.
I wanted to run my tongue between her lips, and make love to her mouth, tasting every inch of her.
Her eyes find mine and only then do I realize how long I’ve been staring.
Shit.
Not her.
I groan, running a han
d over my face as I realize that I really am losing it. I look at her again, prepared to shoot her an apologetic glance when a smirk plays at her lips and a smile crosses her face.
Shit.
It wasn’t until I grunted out Charlotte’s name as I shot ropes of cum onto the woman’s back—whose name I can’t remember for the life of me—did I realize how completely fucked I was.
“Nothing worked, Tuck. And then one day, she looked at me,” I say, recalling the first time I knew she wanted me just as badly. The day I realized I was going to fuck Matthew Wells’ wife all over my office in a private session. “She looked at me like she wanted me. Needed me.”
“Will, you took advantage of her trust in you as her counselor. She was in an extremely vulnerable position, and she confided in you. She trusted you to help her. And you helped yourself to her!”
“It’s not like that.”
“Oh? What’s it like?”
“I didn’t coerce her into sleeping with me” I snap.
“Did you do engage in intercourse in your office?”
“Yes.” Where the fuck else would we have done it?
“Where was her husband?”
“He wasn’t there,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Oh? Why is that?” he says, narrowing his eyes at me.
“Private session,” I grumble.
“And who’s idea was that?”
I clear my throat knowing where his train of thought is going. “Mine.”
“And you don’t see the coercion? Come now Will, you graduated top of your class at Harvard. This was premeditated and you know it.”
I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose. “What do you want me to say, Mitch? I know I fucked up. I should have walked away from her…from all of it. I shouldn’t have continued to see her. The second I started picturing her straddling me during her sessions.”
“How long were you having these feelings before you acted on them?”
“Two months.”
“And when you did?” he asks.
“When I did what?”
“Once you slept with her…how did you feel? Guilty?”
I stare at him for a second before I look out into the vast green lands remembering the guilt and shame I felt every time I masturbated thinking about her. Every time I pulled my dick out the second her and her husband left the room, my cock aching just from the mere scent of her. Every time I whispered her name into my dark bedroom, in the dead of night while my hand was wrapped around my cock.
I felt guilty then.
“I felt a little guilty. But really, I was having the internal conflict of whether I could do it again or if it would just be a one time thing. Mitch, it wasn’t just that the sex was incredible. We have this connection that I’ve never had with anyone.”
When our eyes locked, when I was inside of her it was as if something shifted inside of me sending me into the most intense orgasm I’d ever experienced. She came apart in my arms right after, and I swear in that moment, I saw God.
“And then our affair began,” I finish telling Mitch as we climb out of the cart. “But somewhere along the line, it became more. We fell in love. She’s the love of my life.” He rubs his head and looks me over and I can see his mind racing with a million theories. “What?”
“Have you explored every possible reason for your infatuation?”
“Infatuation? That sounds like a crush…Mitch, she’s the one.”
“Because she’s unavailable? It would be the perfect woman for you based on your commitment issues.”
“Excuse me? She’s very much available now.”
“I’m talking about when you first pursued her. Hear me out, before you fly off the handle. You and I have both decided, through your own self-diagnosis as well as my own that you have commitment issues, and you meet this woman that’s unavailable. Thereby she’s perfect because you don’t have to fully commit to her because—”
“But I am fully committed to her. And at the risk of sounding like a pussy, I now realize why I had those issues with other women. Because they weren’t Charley. Tuck, I know how this sounds. And if I were on the other side, I’d be saying all the same things. Urging me not to do this, to walk away. But I can’t now. I love her.”
“I just worry this is going to blow up in your face.”
“That’s why I’m talking to you now.”
“To prepare you for the fallout? You asked me how bad it would be if the board finds out? You’ll have to go before them and plead your case about why they shouldn’t take your license. They’re going to dissect and scrutinize every little thing that transpired down to what you wore the day you seduced her.” He sighs. “But can we put a pin in this for a moment? What are you doing about the fact that some of your patient’s privacy was violated? What are you thinking about that?” I roll my eyes at the common therapist vernacular.
“I think you know what I’m thinking. I owe it to my patients to tell them the truth.”
He leans back in his chair, and I’m irritated by the look he’s giving me. “Why?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Now we’re concerned about doing the right thing?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You were sleeping with your married patient for seven months, Will. You more or less broke up her marriage. Where was this moral compass then?”
“I know that what I did was wrong, but don’t judge me. And it certainly has nothing to do with the people who were betrayed on my watch.”
“You want to go to the board and explain to them what happened and somehow leave out Charley and her ex-husband? It’s not possible, Will. You cannot spin this story. There is no way.”
“So, you’re saying I don’t have the obligation to tell the board that a dozen of my patient’s had their privacy violated?”
“I say you have the obligation to keep yourself out of Charley’s pants.” He crosses his arms as he looks down at me over his glasses and I resist the urge to break them —while they’re still on his face.
“Okay, well, that’s no longer an option, so how about you give me some actual advice and stop with the judgmental bullshit. And for the record, you and I both know that her being a consenting, competent adult that has no plans to sue me for malpractice obviously, in addition to the fact that she will swear under oath that I didn’t force her to do anything will all work in my favor.
“Will, I’m not judging you. I’m being honest. As your mentor, your friend, your shrink, whatever you want to call me…This is not going to be easy. You can’t reveal this information and expect it to go away in a few weeks. If this gets out…this will follow you. I assume the board will want you to take some time away, but if and when you start practicing again, it will still be there. The skeleton in your closet that you’ll never be able to get rid of. You’ll probably be done for as a marriage counselor. What man would want to bring his wife around you?”
“I would be with Charley, and I would never cheat on her.”
“They don’t know that! They’ll be thinking you collect wives like baseball cards and when the conquest is over you toss them aside to collect dust in the attic. Don’t you dare tell me you’re that naive. If at that point, you and Charley are married, they’ll suspect you as being a man that sees this as a game. ‘How many wives can I fuck, how many marriages can I end?’ Hell, maybe Charley will even be in on it. You’ll have a reputation. And given that no one will know the story of Charley and her ex-husband unless she writes some sort of tell-all book, the assumption will be that you, Dr. William Montgomery, used your power as their counselor to seduce a wife and break up a marriage.”
His words wash over me, and at this point I’m seething. “So, I’m done for.”
“Will, I just don’t see…” He trails off before he lets out a breath and closes the book in front of him where I know he’s taken a novel worth of notes, “how you can come out of this unscathed.”
“I don�
��t want this to touch Charley…I don’t want her to be affected by my mistakes.”
“I do believe she is half to blame.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Oh? You better have your story straight, Will, because if the board thinks even for a second that she’s not culpable in that you coerced her into this affair, then you have a completely different problem. You’re right, if you present this to them with all of the factors that you shared with me, it does change things. According to the AMA, the board judges cases of sexual misconduct involving a consenting adult on a case by case basis. So, it’s a very real possibility, that there will only be minor consequences in that regard. But they’re going to want to talk to Charley and evaluate her level of consent for themselves. So, if you make it seem like you were a slave to your hormones and she was just this innocent woman going along with your advances it won’t work out well for you. If you want to paint Charley as—what? the victim—in all of this? Be my guest, it’s not my career.”
His voice softens and I think he regrets his choice of words. “I get that you don’t want it to come across that she’s some bored housewife, or a gold digger or any of the things you think could be said, but you have to stop focusing on what the perception of you and her will be separately and focus on what the perception is of you together as a couple.” He sighs rubbing a hand through his hair and scratching his beard. “Will, let me asking you something. Have you…had anything to drink recently?”
My heart rate spikes hearing his question, and I remember that twelve month chip tucked into my sock drawer at home.
“Mitch, nothing is going on.”
“Not what I asked you, Will. I’m asking…if you’ve had anything to drink.” His tone is even, but with a hint of scolding.
I slide my Ray-Bans onto my face, not knowing how to look my old sponsor in the face and lie to him about the scotch I’d had before bed —and the beer I’d had before I met him on the course.
“No, Tuck. I haven’t.”