Lust (10 page)

“And do what?” she asked in a soft voice.

“We’ll watch a movie,” I suggested and moved to the couch.

She stood where she was, not moving and only staring at me with a questioning gaze.

“What?” I asked without patience. “Are you staying or not?”

“Why do you want me to stay?” Her tone was demanding. She wasn’t asking a question, she was demanding an answer, one I wasn’t sure I could give her. But she didn’t let up with the intense stare as she stood before me with her hands perched on her hips.

Normally, I would have looked at those hips and felt the need to feel them writhing beneath my fingertips, but not now. All I could do was shake my head, run my fingers through my hair, and ask myself why I had offered for her to stay.

“Do you want to talk? Because I already told you, Cade, I’m here to listen to you if you do.”

“No, I don’t want to talk,” I barked out, clearly irritated. At whom, I wasn’t sure. One thing was for sure. I didn’t want to fucking talk.

“Then what is it?”

“I just don’t want to be alone, all right? Is that okay with you? Is that a decent enough of an answer to satisfy you?” I had lost it. My hands were so tightly wound in my hair that I could literally feel the roots being ripped from my scalp. The scowl was so hard on my face that my face muscles began to hurt.

Alyssa let her arms drop to her sides and then she slowly approached me. She straddled my lap, cupping my face in her hands as she made me look her directly in the eyes. This wasn’t the kind of affection I was used to. It had never happened to me before and I didn’t know how to handle it. She didn’t say anything to me, just sat on my thighs and stared at me, waiting for me to speak.

“I just don’t get it,” I finally said. I continued before I lost the nerve to get it all out. I knew that if I allowed even a moment of hesitation, I would end up burying those emotions deep down, hiding them inside until they burned me from the inside out, along with every other emotion I had ever kept hidden. “I have always liked to be alone. It has never bothered me before. It’s what I’ve wanted for myself. But her… she doesn’t want to be alone.”

I knew I wasn’t making any sense, and I could tell Alyssa agreed by the confusion written all over her face. She didn’t need to verbally ask me for clarification, her eyes asked for her. And for whatever unknown reason, I felt the need to explain it to her.

“She’s spent her whole life blocking everyone out. She lives in her head and through the books she reads. She’s so out of touch with reality it’s ridiculous. But for some reason, when I look at her, I understand her. I see myself in her. The difference is, she doesn’t want that. She wants to live in the real world, she just doesn’t know how. Whereas, I know how, I just don’t want to. She’s lonely—I want to be alone. So why is she changing me? Why is she making me question everything I’ve ever felt before?”

I finally stopped once I heard everything I had said. I never expected to say all of that. I’m sure Alyssa never expected to hear all of it, either. But now I had thrown it out there and I couldn’t take it back. Deeply concealed feelings and thoughts had resurfaced and I didn’t know how to handle it. I tried to look away from her sympathetic eyes, but she wouldn’t let me.

“So why are you alone?” she questioned.

“Because I want to be.”

“Obviously you don’t.”

“Obviously you didn’t hear me. I do… I just don’t want to end up like her.”

My harsh tone made her flinch, but she didn’t back down. Her hands never left my face and her penetrating gaze never left my eyes. “Like her how? Alone and in need of human interaction? So desperate that you’d pay someone to listen to you? Are you saying you don’t want to reach the point when you find yourself so alone you’d call the only person that will talk to you for free just come over and give you some attention?”

My anger was increasing with every word she spoke. I could feel my grip on her thighs tightening, and I knew it was about to go very badly if she didn’t stop her rant.

“Because the way I see it, Cade, is that you’re already there. You pay a psychologist to listen to your problems. You play basketball with a group of guys that don’t even know your last name, let alone what you do for a living. They know nothing about you. You sit and listen to other people’s problems all day but not once do anything real to address your own. And then there’s me. You get so lonely that you call me up so that I can come over and fuck you. That’s desperation, Cade.”

“You know nothing about me,” I argued as I fought back the urge to remove her from my lap and my house.

Her expression softened and she suddenly looked sad. I didn’t understand the change. “I do, though, Cade. I do know you. You’re the one that doesn’t.”

She left a long, emotional kiss on my forehead and pulled herself from my lap. I was left alone, and that’s when it hit me. The darkness grew omnipresent, and the need to fill the deep hole with something worthwhile grew larger. Why was Ivy the way she was, and why did she want to change? I didn’t know the answer to that, but I was going to find out.

*****

It was Friday and my work was done. I always scheduled my Fridays to end early. That gave me time to clean up my notes for the week and send them out. In order for me to work with someone, they had to be currently seeing another therapist, a traditional therapist as I liked to call them. Not only that, but I had to be referred by such a professional. We had to keep in contact regarding the progress of their time with me. So I needed to send weekly evaluations on any progress or setbacks that occurred during their time with me. It was the part I hated the most. I also took care of my own billing, so I usually sent out weekly invoices at the same time.

Once I was done with that, I headed to the grocery store. My kitchen was bare since I had spent so much of the week either entertaining Alyssa or spending time with Ivy. I was in the produce section and staring at the fresh zucchini. I don’t know why I was there or why I was staring at it. But I was. That was when a thought entered my mind, completely taking over all other thoughts and leaving me paralyzed to do anything to stop it.

I gathered everything I needed and then rushed out of the store, hurrying to my destination without even thinking about it.

It wasn’t until I was sitting in her parking lot, staring at the bags of food on the other seat, when I realized what I had done. Why was I there? What purpose did I have to be there? There was no way what I was doing could have been viewed as productive. In fact, it was counterproductive. Not only to me, but to Ivy as well. I was crossing all sorts of boundaries and borderline stalking her.

Practical thoughts of backing out of the parking lot and driving home entered my mind. I allowed myself to give it a quick thought, and then turned the car off. I grabbed all of the bags and headed up to her door. Again, I stood there and scolded myself for what I was doing. The words unethical and unproductive were being screamed at me by my conscience. I was a man that typically listened to those voices of reason, but not that night. That night, I ignored them and pushed them back as I knocked on Ivy’s door.

She opened it up a few seconds later wearing short cotton shorts, a long and loose tee shirt, and an unbuttoned sweater that hung barely below the hem of her shorts. Her hair was in a thin ponytail that hung down her back and her eyes were wide in shock. There was nothing more beautiful on the face of the earth.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, standing in the doorway and blocking my entrance.

I held the plastic bags up enthusiastically. “I brought dinner.”

“Why?”

“To eat?” I said as if the answer was obvious. After she still didn’t move, I shifted the bags in my hand and said, “These are kind of heavy, Ivy. If you don’t mind letting me in…”

She shook her head as if she were shaking herself from a daze and backed away, leaving enough room in the small space between her and the door for me to pass through. I set the bags on the tiny counter space in the kitchen and turned to look at her.

She was breathtaking. Completely and utterly beautiful and sexy without even trying. How was that even possible? How could someone that had gone through all that she had have the ability to hold herself in that way? She was insecure and thought very low of herself, I knew that from the moment I met her, but seeing her in her own element, dressed for staying in, and holding a tablet that I was sure she had been reading from… she looked like something I could come home to every day. And that fucked with my head more than anything else did because I never wanted to come home to anyone, especially every day.

I needed to shake that thought from my head. But no matter how hard I shook my head, I knew that thought wouldn’t be erased. It felt too good to think of the possibilities of it. I knew firsthand the worst way relationships could end, and that’s why I had never felt the desire to be in one. Never. And I didn’t need to start now. There was no point in it. I wasn’t capable of trusting someone to that extent. Not to mention, she was legally in my care. I couldn’t entertain the idea of a relationship with her. That was unethical in every sense of the word. All I needed from her were answers, reasons as to why she was the way she was. I needed to fix her and then walk away.  That’s why I was there.

“I don’t understand why you’re here,” she said without moving.

I was silent while I thought of an answer. “I don’t know, either. But I’m here.”

She shifted on her feet but didn’t move. I could tell she was uncomfortable with me standing in her kitchen after inviting myself into her home. Hell, I was uncomfortable standing there. But if was anything at all, I was committed. And because of that, I had no plans to leave, no matter how awkward it was.

I quickly turned to the counter where I had placed my bags. I didn’t want to show any vulnerability. I wasn’t used to feeling it, and I certainly didn’t want anyone to see it, especially Ivy. I was her therapist. I had to be strong, confident; I couldn’t show weakness or confusion in my actions. She was trusting me and I needed to show her that she wasn’t wrong by doing so. But why then did I feel as if I were doing something wrong?

“I got stuff for alfredo. Is that okay with you? Do you like alfredo, I mean?” I mentally cursed myself for my sudden inability to speak properly. Something had come over me and I needed it to disappear quickly. I couldn’t afford to have her think less of me. I didn’t want her to lose her confidence in me. But how was that possible when I was losing confidence in myself?

“Yes, it’s fine,” she said from behind me. There was a softness to her voice that made me turn around to see her again. She was a walking contradiction. She read erotic books yet couldn’t even make eye contact, let alone engage in sexual activity. She had little to no self-esteem yet she looked like she could grace the covers of magazines. She was defiant at times yet she stood in front of me looking like a scared child about to be scolded for coloring on the walls.

I quickly cleared a space on the counter and slapped it with my palm. “Here, hop up. I’ll cook while you keep me company.” I waited for her to move, but she never did. Finally, I went to her, wrapping my hands around her small hips and dragging her to the counter. “Come on, you can at least talk to me while I make you dinner.”

“Why?” she asked meekly.

“Because it’s boring to cook alone.”

She shook her head. “No, why are you making me dinner?”

Why the hell was I having such a hard time finding an answer to her question? It wasn’t that difficult. It was dinnertime and we both needed to eat. I worried about her eating habits and wanted to make sure she had a decent meal. There were still things we needed to discuss about her progress plan. I could have picked any of those excuses, yet the one that came out of my mouth was, “Because I wanted to see you.”

Her eyes grew wide on her face.

“Not like that,” I quickly recovered, silently kicking myself for my admission. “We have a lot to discuss. You’re way more closed off than my other clients and I feel like we are having a hard time moving forward. I just need to know more before I can feel confident in the work we are doing together.” What the fuck was wrong with me? I was a professional. I knew better than to do what I was doing.

She finally relented and climbed onto the counter.

“That’s good because I wanted to see you, too,” she admitted, gaining more of my attention than she already had.

I continued to arrange the food on the counter, acting as if her words hadn’t just gotten to me. “Oh yeah? Why did you want to see me?” I asked nonchalantly, not looking at her, hoping she wouldn’t notice my nervousness at her confession.

“I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

That made me stop and look at her, freezing in place. The cocky smile slipped away from my face. “What do you mean?”

“You’re really good at what you do, Cade, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t think you can help me,” she said the words quietly as she looked down at her clutched hands.

“You haven’t given me a chance.”

“I have seen you every day this week. It’s too much. I’m confused and uncomfortable.”

Well, shit. I hadn’t expected her to say that. It made me feel worse for what I had done to her. I had pushed her too far and it had made her want to call the whole thing off. I didn’t know if I was ready for that. Why had I done it? Why had I been so desperate to see her every fucking day this week? I should have known it would freak her out.

“I’ll back off. I understand that some people may find my methods too extreme or suffocating, but you can’t give up now. We can do this; I know we can. I will let you make the call from now on. I’ll leave it up to you when we see each other again, and I’ll follow your lead.”

She gave me a silent nod and I felt my shoulders relax as if I had been holding my breath for her answer. Maybe it was a good thing that I back off; it seemed as though she was getting to me more than I had thought. I mean, I knew she was affecting me, I could tell that by my night with Alyssa. But I hadn’t realized the possibility of my dependence on her, and that worried me. I hadn’t been dependent on anyone since I was eight years old.

“What are you reading?” I asked, pointing to the tablet in her hand as I busied myself in her small kitchen. I wanted to act calm and unaffected, and the only way I knew how to do that was to ask questions and keep myself moving.

“It’s called ‘The Truth About Mack’ by Jettie Woodruff.”

I waited for her to tell me more, but she never did. I guess I would have to work harder at getting her to talk to me. “What’s it about?” I asked, hoping she would give me more than a few words.

“Lots of things.”

I looked at her and raised an eyebrow, demanding she continue without speaking. I knew that books were one thing she could usually talk freely about.

She rolled her eyes and continued after huffing out a breath of air. “I haven’t gotten very far in it, but I don’t think I can continue.”

“Not good?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s not that. It’s very good. It just hits too close to home. I don’t know if I can finish reading it, which upsets me because it’s a really good book so far.”

I silently finished cutting up one of the chicken breasts and turned to her. “Why do you think it is hitting so close to home?”

She shrugged and looked to her lap. “The book is about this girl, Mack, and when she was in high school, something happened between her, her best friend, and their teacher. But the book isn’t about her in high school; it takes place seven years later.”

“What happened to you in high school, Ivy?” My question didn’t come out in concern, it came out as a demand, commanding her to answer my question and answer it honestly.

She looked at me with confusion spread across her face.

“Ivy, don’t bullshit me. What happened to you in high school?” I had lost my patience with her.

“Cade, nothing happened to me… not in high school, not at home, not by a family member or a stranger. I don’t understand why you just won’t believe me!” She jumped from the counter in a huff and began to walk away.

I followed her around the corner to the main room.

“You said the book hits too close to home and then you say it’s about a girl and her teacher. I don’t understand how you could have such traumatic issues regarding sex if nothing has ever happened to you. I want to believe you.” I grabbed her by her upper arm and turned her around so that she had no choice but to look at me. “I really want to believe you, but you can’t blame me for questioning it. All of the facts point to something sexual happening.”

“I told you last night. We were standing in this same place when I told you that I hadn’t ever been sexually molested. What more do I have to do or say before you believe me? I’ve told you, I lost my virginity when I was twenty-two. Would you like for me to see if I can find him so he can attest to that? Would you believe him if he tells you the details of it? Huh, Cade? What will it take?” She was frantic as streams of tears fell from her eyes so quickly they were dripping from her chin.

I wanted to calm her down so she would stop; I didn’t want her to cry. I wanted to make it better, to make
her
better. “Then why can’t you read the book? Why is it hitting too close to home? Please, I want to believe you. I want to know that you were never abused that way.” My voice was calmer as I begged her to answer with my eyes.

She wiped her face and straightened her spine. The defiance I had gotten used to seeing small glimpses of was back in full force. Her shoulders squared as though she was preparing to fight me. “As I was saying before you rudely interrupted me, the story takes place seven years later. She’s trying to live and cope with a mental disorder. She’s crazy and can’t confide in anyone why she feels the way she does. She’s living somewhat of a double life and that is what’s hitting too close to home.”

I wanted to ask multiple questions, but I held my tongue. I needed answers, but the last thing I wanted to do was set her off by jumping to the wrong conclusion again. I had already wondered if she, herself, was suffering from a mental disorder, but I had nothing to support that fact. It was just an educated guess because nothing else seemed to fit. I just had to bide my time and wait for her to tell me everything. I told her I’d let her lead and set the pace, and I was going to try my best to do just that.

After staring at me, presumably waiting for me to question her, she finally spoke again. “No, I’m not crazy. My mom was crazy. There was something wrong with her, but I never knew what it was. I don’t think she even knew what was wrong with her. I remember one of her boyfriends arguing with her after she accused him of looking at me. He told her she needed help, and if she didn’t go on her own to get it he would intervene. I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but social services came a few weeks later and took me away.”

“Did your mom have a lot of boyfriends?” I finally asked.

She shrugged. “Kind of. I mean, I thought she did, but it was over the span of eleven years so I guess it wasn’t that many. I obviously don’t know how many she dated when I was really young, but I remember most of them once I reached the age to remember.”

“And they were good to you?”

“Yes. Some of them didn’t have much to do with me, but the ones that did were always really good to me, treated me like I was their own kid. Two of them even ended up moving in with us. I remember those two the most. It was the last one that told her she needed to get help. He was the one that ended up getting me out of there.” She was soft spoken and had a hard time keeping eye contact with me while she explained her life while living with her mom.

I reached out for her hand and she reluctantly gave it to me. I pulled her gently with me until we were back in the kitchen so that I could finish making dinner while she watched. The last thing we needed was to burn the place down. I waited for her to resume her place on the kitchen counter as I went back to cutting up the chicken for the frying pan.

“Okay, so the book is good but you’re having a hard time reading it because of your mom. Do you think that maybe reading it could help you learn more about the things she struggled with?” I needed to put my work hat back on and think more like her therapist and not her friend or something more.

“I guess. Mack doesn’t really remind me of my mom, though. I mean, aside from being crazy. The things she does in the book aren’t the things my mom did, which makes it easier to read, but I still can’t help but think about the things I had to grow up around. The thoughts Mack experiences trigger the things I actually lived through. I’ll finish the book, it’s really good and it’s about way more than her mental disorder, but it’s just bringing up a lot of things I had thought were buried long ago.”

“That’s not always a bad thing, Ivy. You can’t expect to compress things and be okay. All it does is fester and grow and you never know it until it smacks you in the face. You have to deal with it head on. Face it and move on. Have you ever talked to your mom about it?”

“I can’t—she’s dead.”

Why the fuck didn’t I know that?

“She killed herself a few weeks after social services took me away.”

“Where did you go? What happened to you?”

The room was silent aside from the chicken sizzling in the frying pan. The silence affected me—
her
silence ate me alive. I was desperate for something other than the sounds of dinner, anything to make the internal suffering go away. I knew once she started talking the pain wouldn’t go away. She would more than likely tell me a slightly different version of my own life. I wasn’t prepared for that. I was conflicted. I wanted to yell at her to stop talking while at the same time beg her to continue.

“You already know that; I was sent to live with foster families.”

I took a deep breath, fighting with myself on whether or not I wanted to dig deeper. Ultimately, the therapist in me won out. No matter what she said or how it was going to affect me, I needed to know more. If not then I would never be able to fully understand her. And I needed to know everything about Ivy Jaymes.

“What about your family? What about your dad?” I asked; now I was the one avoiding eye contact.

“I never had a dad. I don’t even know who he is. There was never a name listed on my birth certificate. And at first, I had gone to live with relatives, but they said they couldn’t handle me so that’s when I went into the system.”

My gut clenched as I heard the sound of her voice when explaining that her family couldn’t handle her. That’s never something easy for a child to hear; it’s incomprehensible at that age… at any age, really. I knew exactly what that felt like and could feel her pain throughout my entire body. The abandonment she must have experienced couldn’t have been easy for her to handle, first from her mom and then the rest of her family.

“How old were you?”

“I was eleven when I was taken from my mom and sent to live with an aunt I really didn’t know for six months before I was shuttled off to another family member. I only lasted a few months there before they said they couldn’t care for me the way I needed. That was their words. Translation—they didn’t want me, either.”

“Did you have anyone at all that you trusted?”

“The second foster family I was placed with was a very good family. They didn’t baby me and the woman was really understanding with my episodes. I was there until I was fifteen. She didn’t do long-term placement and needed the space for younger children. I think that was just an excuse. I’m sure she tired of me as well.”

“Episodes? What kind of episodes?” I felt like I was learning more about her in that one conversation than I had the entire week we had been talking.

“My mom never let me go to school; she always kept me at home. So when the state came in to take me away, I didn’t have any kind of formal education. I was really far behind the other kids my age and had difficulties catching up. The first foster family I was placed with didn’t work out because her kids went to the same school that I had been enrolled in and they teased me a lot. In fact, the whole school teased me. I hated going there so I didn’t go most of the time. When I went to live with the Kellys, she worked with me a lot at home in the evenings and on weekends. It took the rest of the school year and all summer, working every single day for me to finally be able to survive with kids my own age. Well, not my own age, I ended up a year behind where I should have been. But still, that was a lot closer than I had been when I first started.

“Although, it didn’t stop some of the kids from teasing me. I had really short hair when I left my mom and it had started growing it out. Mrs. Kelly did her best to make it look stylish as it was growing, but it still looked ridiculous. I was teased about that. I was also teased about my clothes. We didn’t have much money so I wore things from secondhand stores. I can remember going in there with Mrs. Kelly and she let me pick out whatever I wanted. I had never been shopping before so I was in heaven. It was the first time I felt truly loved by someone. I picked stuff out only to learn later by some of the kids in school that it was what poor people wore. I was called all kinds of names but I couldn’t tell Mrs. Kelly that. It would have broken her heart after she spent all that money on me. She really did love me and was the first person that showed me she did.