A Game to Love

by Fox Brison

  “Tired?”

  “Oh, no, I’m okay. It’s just because I’ve just eaten.” Her protestations were belied with another traitorous yawn. “It always makes me sleepy.”

  “Seriously, George, there is no need to pay out for a cab. You’re more than welcome to stay until Kevin arrives. Besides, it’ll save you having to come back tomorrow.” I could tell she didn’t want to put me out, but she really wasn’t. “You were just saying you didn’t get much time to chill well now’s your chance. How about a film? Or a box set? My friend Dana, the woman I rudely didn’t introduce you to yesterday, gave me a copy of a new show, Wynonna Earp I think it’s called. I have no idea what it will be like, but she raves about it.”

  “If you’re sure? That sounds good,” Georgia said, when I answered with a nod.

  No, it didn’t sound good at all. The thought of a lazy Sunday afternoon curled up on the sofa next to George sounded great.

  More worryingly it sounded just about damned perfect.

  Chapter 26

  Georgia

  “George… Georgy…” I felt something touch my shoulder and opened my eyes; baby rabbit caught in headlights didn’t quite do my expression justice. Shit. Dreaming about sexual relations with Emma was bad enough, but to do it when I was in her home?

  Not cool.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you. You were a bit restless… were you having a bad dream?”

  “Restless? No, no just a bad dream. Sorry. I’m okay.” My cheeks could have melted the polar ice caps and I pressed my thighs tightly together. I was so turned on I ached. Please ground open up and swallow me whole. The only thing I could think about was getting off the sofa before it became clear I wasn’t having a nightmare but an unbelievably wet dream about my therapist!

  “Anyway, I wouldn’t have disturbed you only the mechanic just called,” Emma looked embarrassed. “He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  “Thanks. Gosh, I’m sorry I fell asleep. I was enjoying the show.”

  “Really?” Emma had a teasing glint in her eye. “You only saw the first fifteen minutes. Is that all it takes for you to know you’ll enjoy something?”

  “Sometimes things build up slowly and take time for me to fully savour the nuances. Other times, it’s quicker. I relish the differences.” Okay, so maybe this conversation was no longer about television shows, but Emma wasn’t running with it. In fact, she looked like she was about to run away, shuffling nervously towards the door. Maybe I had been too obvious? I picked up a photo that was placed, obviously with pride, on the lamp table. “Is this your son?” I asked before Emma backed all the way into last week.

  “Yes, that’s Lawrence. We named him after my father.” Emma picked it up and looked at the small boy in his school uniform, his cap flopping over his ears. “This is his first school photo. I used to have more family photos around, but Lawrie hated them. Now he hides whenever he sees me with a camera. And as for having a picture of him on the mantle, God forbid! It would ruin his street cred.”

  “He looks like you.” The boy in the photo had the same rich brown eyes and strong bone structure as his mother, however, his hair was much darker.

  “Do you think? Most people say he looks like his Dad.”

  “Really? With those eyes?” I said but then realised I had no idea what the boy’s Dad looked like. Maybe he had brown eyes too. But there was something about Emma’s, they had such a distinctive twinkle, which judging from the photo her son had inherited.

  “I guess he is like me around the eyes.” Emma took the photo from me and studied her son’s face like it was the first time she had seen him in years. “He’s going through a rebellious stage, in fact that’s why he is at his Dad’s.” Emma’s voice held a hint of a tremor. It somehow made her more human. “Lawrie wants to go and live with him permanently.” Her eyes glistened as she spoke and it was the first time I’d seen her show even a modicum of vulnerability. “He spent the last term there, a trial to see if they could live together.”

  “Why did you and your husband split up?” I wanted to cradle Emma in my arms and give her the comfort she so clearly needed.

  Emma hesitated before answering. “Erm… we were never married.”

  “I guess it’s my turn to make the assumptions.” I smiled and was pleased when Emma did likewise. “So who was commitmentphobe, you or him?”

  “Well we only spent the one night together, so take your pick.” My eyes widened at her blunt honesty and Emma laughed out loud. “James and I were very good friends at university. One night after a particularly successful regatta where both our eights won, we downed several glasses of champers.”

  “Champers?”

  “Of course, anything else would be soooo heathen darling,” Emma put on a affected voice and I giggled. “So I was still…” she paused for a moment as if searching for something, before continuing, “I was still too focussed on my rowing career. So drunk as skunks, we explored the possibility that our relationship might run deeper than just friendship,” before I could say anything Emma quickly added, “it didn’t, but unfortunately biology didn’t know that.”

  “A one night mistake that turned into a lifelong commitment.” I was amazed at yet another thing Emma and I had in common. We had both made one mistake, a mistake that completed changed the road we were on. I could argue, and I think I would argue, that both these errors in judgement were blessings in disguise, although initially I certainly didn’t feel that way and I’m sure Emma probably didn’t either.

  “Something like that. We’re connected now, irrevocably, through our son.”

  “So what’s going on with Lawrence?”

  “I don’t know. I could sit him down and shine bright lights in his face…” Emma tilted her head. “Or maybe a bit of waterboarding. The rack has its advantages, but as he’s already five foot eleven, I might hold off on that. It’s hard enough finding him school trousers that fit.”

  “Hmm, I’m glad you haven’t tried any of those techniques in our sessions yet!”

  “Hey, give me time,” Emma joked. “Maybe part of the problem is that when I’m home, I sometimes forget to switch off the therapist gene.”

  “Does he resent you for that?”

  “No… yes… maybe. Our last argument was a doozy and that’s when I agreed to this trial term at his Dad’s… oh God, I apologise, George, I shouldn’t be sharing this with you. You’re my client, not my friend.”

  Ouch. The words stung. “Sometimes it’s good to get a different view of the situation. When I was that age I was going through my narcissistic period, I believe it’s called, and I was so self-absorbed I couldn’t see past the nose on my face. It didn’t help I was at an all-girls boarding school and trust me, those girls liked the swaggering arrogance a teen superstar brings to the table.” My tone was not only self-deprecating, but it was contemptuous as well. “Probably not the advice you’re seeking in this instance. Are you going to let him go permanently?”

  “Hell no!” Emma swore and I smiled at her vehemence. “Besides I don’t really think James wants him full time. He likes to be the fun parent, the one who takes him on holidays and buys him computer games. He doesn’t want the hassle of the mundane, like getting Lawrie to do his homework and clean his room, that sort of thing. He’s got in with this crowd at school… right now I think I’m going to swing for him. And as for his friends,” Emma shuddered. “I know I can’t pick them for him, but I don’t understand how his judgement can be so impaired.”

  “He’s a teenage boy,” I said, as if that explained everything and the way Emma looked at me, it probably did. “Julia has a nephew, Patrick, he’s the same age. Caroline was just round the other day saying what a huffy little sod he was becoming. Maybe I can give her your number? You can start a support group and discuss how you’d like to wring your sons’ necks.”

  “As a therapist, George, I’m obliged to say that is very inappropriate,” she said seriously, before adding, “but as a mother of a teenag
e boy I think it’s a wonderful idea!”

  Chapter 27

  Emma

  Kermit was fixed before eight o’clock that night, Kevin only taking half an hour to correct the spark plug issue. I waved goodbye through the lounge window then picked up my briefcase, pulling out George’s file and my Dictaphone.

  “Client notes, George Maskel. George opened up about the time she was informed about the results of her positive drugs test and subsequent ban. I was utterly shocked by her mother’s reaction. There are parents who live their lives through their children, pushing them into becoming the next Serena Williams or Roger Federer regardless of their ability. Was Helen Maskel one of these?

  Was her daughter a failure in her eyes?

  There are a couple of mums like that at Lawrie’s school. One even had her son at speech lessons when he was only four and another had her daughter learning Mandarin and German when she was six. I thought she took the biscuit but Mrs Maskel takes the cake and muffin too.

  Did George want a mother or a coach?

  Did she have a choice?”

  Once more I clicked off the recording to keep my more personal feelings secret. They had seriously escalated over the week, I’d only been seeing George for a week? By the end of the ten sessions I’ll have proposed, married her and honeymooned in Rome. I felt my stomach twitch a little. Hunger. Not for supper, although I did feel my blood sugar dipping, no I was hungry for more of Georgia Maskel. I wanted to know more about her, her likes, what she did for fun… about the way her now shaved head would feel beneath my fingers, about the way she smiled when her mind drifted to talk about her friends or her father, about the way my heart skipped when I heard the familiar putt-putt of George’s camper van pulling into the drive. Straightening in my chair, I looked at the doodles on my notepad.

  I wanted to piece her back together. I felt a desire to hug her better and wanted to be the person she came to when she’d had a bad day. The right thing to do was step back and try to gain some semblance of control over my burgeoning desire, but it had been so long since I’d experienced such a connection, if in fact I ever had, that I was finding it difficult. I had shared things with her I’d only ever told Dana before, and that scared me.

  In fact it terrified me.

  It was clear the attraction was mutual. The long pauses, the unguarded comments and the looks, oh my God the looks, the eyes filled with… I wasn’t just flirting with a patient, I was flirting with career and relationship disaster. Add Lawrie into the equation… I groaned, dispiritedly.

  Strike three and we were out.

  Even if I could put a hold on my attraction until she was no longer a patient, the problems I was having with Lawrie meant a relationship would have to wait until hell froze over. It was time to call on reinforcements again. “Hey, Dana. Do you have an hour tomorrow? I need some advice.”

  “Advice?” Dana asked. “Or a slap around the chops for being so stupid.”

  “Her car broke down and she stayed for lunch. She’s just left.”

  “Oh Jesus, Em, you didn’t you sleep with her?” I heard the concern in Dana’s voice and hurried to assuage it.

  “No I didn’t, but God I wanted to. I don’t know how to explain this, Dana, she’s so charming and self-effacing.” The psychologist in me inevitably began a questioning analysis; was this a new thing? Was she born that way or had a sculptor chiselled away at her core? “I can’t get a true read on her.”

  “That’s strange, usually you have the opposite trouble and you read your clients too well.”

  “I know. I thought inviting her in when her van broke down would give me more of an insight into her issues. But although my intention was noble, it was more like we were on a pseudo date, as if we were closer… I forgot I was her therapist and she was my client.”

  “Em-”

  I continued, ignoring Dana and the now warning note in her voice. I needed to say out loud what I’d been holding inside. “It’s been so long since I enjoyed myself so much. The conversation was easy and definitely didn’t come under my therapy remit.” How close I was to that invisible ethics line was unclear, but I knew that the more time I spent with Georgia Maskel, the more the line grew blurred. Yeah, right, I’ve only gone and leapt so far over the line it’s now three miles behind and disappearing through a fog of lust.

  “We had this discussion in Cambridge. Yesterday. When we met George and that luscious creature, Julia.”

  “Oh rub it in why don’t you? You can have lustful thoughts about a woman but I can’t.”

  “You can have whatever thoughts you want, as long as they remain that. Look, I don’t have a great deal of time during the day, but I can shuffle a couple of appointments and be free from about four. How about I meet you and Lawrie at his lesson and the three of us go out for pizza? Maybe he will tell me what’s going on in his Gordian little mind. Then when he’s safely ensconced in his bedroom doing whatever teenage boys usually do of an evening, you and I will sip a rather nice cabernet I bought last week and start with the title: Three reasons I may not shag my client; discuss.”

  I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “Sounds like a better plan than mine.” Which was to hide my head in the sand and hope my desire went the way of the dodo.

  Chapter 28

  Georgia

  The first Monday of any holiday was always a little manic, and the Easter holidays were no exception. The good weather had brought out three differing types of people simply to annoy me, and I was starting to fixate on ramming my racket over someone’s head, the most likely candidate being Adam who was trying to teach some lanky kid a single handed back hand. Jerk. Who’s he trying to impress?

  Okay, so who pissed in my Cheerios?

  Firstly, exercise junkies had taken over the gym that morning so I had to wait twenty minutes for an elliptical machine to become free. At six am. Without coffee. So that was annoying person number one. I didn’t have anything against exercise junkies usually, but honestly it appeared that today, just to piss me off, most of them were hopped up on steroids and/or isotonic sports drinks and they hogged the equipment in order to get rid of the aggression brought about by their unnatural diet. There was no obvious end to my sexual frustration which I’d had since waking up that morning and even a quickie with my right hand in the shower did little to alleviate it. As a result, I almost come to blows with one Neanderthal; this prompted me to take my leave and plump for an aerobic workout in the swimming pool, hoping against hope this would cure my ails.

  It didn’t.

  The swimming pool was full of children. Not a problem. Again usually. However, whichever bright spark decided that there would be only one adult lane available at the same time as a minibus of old aged pensioners turned up for their weekly swim? She was annoying person number two, the sort who didn’t think beyond the end of their nose, and when it was pointed out, politely, that possibly a better system than hers could be implemented? Yeah. She got arsy and I was asked to swim elsewhere.

  In a crocodile infested Aussie creek, was the helpful suggestion.

  Up your arse, bitch, was mine.

  And now annoying people number three. Yes. They were so annoying they warranted a plural. The tennis pros who believed it was their God given right to take up every single court with their mis-match of incompetence and arrogance. Swanning about in designer gear, showing off for the mums who came to watch their kids learning, quite frankly, how to be superficial show-offs, Christ, they made my teeth hurt. Adam, was hammering the ball towards a kid who truthfully, was about as capable of mastering a one handed backhand as I was of ignoring my feelings about…

  “Oh come on, you’re kidding me,” I groaned.

  “Good afternoon, you sound as frustrated as I am.”

  I turned in my seat and saw the soft melodious tones belonged to, “You’re Emma’s I mean Ms… Dr Myers you’re… erm… you were with her. In Browns.” Christ I sounded even more idiotic than usual.

  She nodded and clambered
over the two rows of seating which separated us. “That’s me,” she said, cheerfully. “Dana. Dana Wilson.” She offered her hand and I took it.

  “Georgy Maskel. How do you do.” I winced because Adam was getting a little vocal in his condemnation of Lanky’s (my new pet name for the kid) ability. “That bloke is, quite frankly, a wanker.” I winced again.

  “So he’s not very good?”

  “Hmm?” I was frowning now. “Seriously, Adam. Give him a break,” I muttered. “Teach him to… oh for fucks sake.” Lanky had swung so wildly, and missed so badly, he’d ended up on the floor. I saw he was growing more embarrassed by the minute, especially since his shortcomings were attracting the attention of a gaggle of giggling girls on the court next door.

  “The teacher. You don’t rate him?” Dana persisted.

  “Not even as a hitting partner,” I replied, abruptly, my attention focussed on the scene in front of me. “You have a kid here?”

  “No my...”

  “Adam!” I angrily cut her off. I’d had enough and raced down the steps. “You can’t speak to him like that.”

  “I can speak how I want,” he hissed, his back to Lanky.

  “Yeah? I don’t think so. Now piss off before I start making noise about space and timings and incompetence. I don’t think you’d be Mr Popular for too long if we got put on the clock because of you.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Try me.” I walked away from him and sat, cross legged on the hard blue floor next to a red-faced teenager. “Hi. I’m Georgy. The one handed back hand sucks, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you like tennis?”

  “Yes.”

  I suddenly felt empathy for Emma having to deal with a teenager every day. “Would you like me to show you an easier way to hit that shot? C’mon stand up.” I gave him a hand and pulled him to his feet. “Okay then, try this.”