The Imperfection of Swans (37 page)

Casper laughed, some of his tension lessening. “Yeah. It’s a bit much. I’m glad someone understands.”

“Oh, I do, honey. Though I’m the only one. At least the only one who would admit it to you. I think they all try to outlast the others.”

“Good to know.”

“Don’t get me wrong. They are wonderful. All of them. Well, there’s a couple I could do without, but I’ll let you figure those out on your own.” She chuckled.

Noelle was even better than being by himself. He’d been starting to get a little heady. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

He thought he meant for making him feel better in this moment, but then realized he meant so much more than that. “For making me feel welcome. For believing in Kevin and me, though it’s fast and crazy and kinda atypical.”

“Oh, honey. You don’t need to thank me for that.”

The motherly expression almost hurt. He already felt closer to her than he did to his own mother. Hell, he even sort of felt that way about Renata too. “Well, I mean it. You made me feel like a part of the family.”

“You are a part of the family, Casper dear.” Noelle patted his shoulder gently.

“That’s what I mean. No one else would do that to a guy their son had been dating so briefly.”

“Oh shoot. That’s just stupid.” She gave him an exasperated look. “How long have you two been together now? Gotta be pushing four months, and you’ve known each other about eight or nine, and it was obvious back then, way before you two figured it out. You know how long Renata and I dated before I moved in with her and Kevin?”

Casper shook his head.

“Two months. Two. Now that was fast and maybe stupid. But I knew. I just knew. I loved her and I loved him. Kevin was almost three at the time and nearly as bossy as his momma. Enough to make a sane person run for the hills. But they were my family from the moment we met. There was no running to be done.”

He couldn’t even fathom that. Two months, and with a little kid. Even he wasn’t that trusting of fate.

“I’ll tell you another thing.” Noelle gave him a mischievous smile. “I probably shouldn’t say this, as it’s rather mean, but you’re family, so it’s okay.” She paused again, winking. “Kevin was married to Scott for years, and he was never family. And it wasn’t that we shut him out, at least at first, but he wasn’t family. You can’t fake it. You can be married to someone for fifty years, and they still might not be family. But when they are, you know.”

Why couldn’t she have been his mother? How amazing that would have been. Although he supposed that she was, or at least would be.

“May I give you one more piece of advice, and this one will be a little more like a command coming from Renata?”

“Of course.”

Noelle glanced at the door to the waiting room and was seemingly satisfied as she began in a lower tone. “It takes a lot to love someone like Kevin and Renata. They are powerful, intense, and driven, and a billion other things. All wonderful, and all-consuming if you let them. It took me a bit to figure this out too. Hold your ground, at least on the things you find to be the most important to you. And find something that’s just you. For me it was my salon. For you, it won’t be your business, it’s too close, but you’ll find something. Maybe it will be your friendship with Charu, sweet girl.”

“You’re starting to make me nervous.”

She raised her hand. “Oh, goodness, I don’t mean to do that. I’m just saying you and I are partnered with people who are a lot more forceful than we are, but that doesn’t make us less powerful or important. We balance them. They balance us. Which is the point of any relationship. All I am saying is, stay Casper. Always. After all, Casper is who Kevin fell in love with. You’ll both be happier if you make sure Casper stays around.”

SURE ENOUGH,
Casper and Kevin’s moms were the only ones allowed into his room. The charge nurse started to object about Casper as well, but Renata put a stop to that instantly.

The surgery had been a success, at least as far as the procedure went. Now they just needed to wait for Kevin to heal and see what difference there would be in his acid reflux.

Kevin looked exhausted. His lips were dry and cracked from where he had been intubated. Outside of his raspy voice, though, he seemed all right. He was heavily medicated, and the nurse said the pain would worsen over the next few days.

Though he was awake when they entered his room, it was nearly a half hour before he seemed to come back to the present. Kevin’s eyes lit up when he turned his head and saw Casper sitting beside the bed.

“Hey, Kev. Nice to see you back with us.” Casper leaned forward, brushing hair off Kevin’s forehead. It wasn’t needed, but he wasn’t sure what else to do, and he wanted to touch him. “The doctor says everything went well.” He motioned toward the other side of the bed. “Your moms are here. Actually, every Bivanti this side of Italy was here, but we sent them away.”

Kevin gingerly turned his head to look at his moms. Between the two, Casper was surprised to see that Renata was the one who cried.

THE THREE
of them stayed for the rest of the evening, flipping the TV back and forth between Food Network and a marathon of
Say Yes to the Dress
. At last the nurse came in to usher them away for the night.

“I’m going to stay.”

Kevin spoke up from the bed, sounding tired and drugged. “Babe, you don’t have to do that. You need rest.”

“No. I’m staying. I’ll….” He started to say that he’d stay all three nights, then thought back to what Noelle had said earlier. “I’ll stay tonight, just to make sure things are okay, and so that you’re not lonely.”

“We’ll take turns,” Noelle chimed in. “You’ll get sick of us in no time.”

And it was decided.

IT TURNED
out he needn’t have stayed. Kevin was so drugged and exhausted that Casper doubted he even realized Casper was there.

Casper lay with him for the first hour, stroking his hair, whispering plans he dreamed for the two of them.

The nurse put a stop to that when she came to check Kevin’s vitals. Too many IVs to be pulled out. Too many stitches to pop. Too many everything.

After that, Casper pulled the recliner of questionable fabric choice next to the bed and stretched out, keeping one hand on Kevin’s as they slept.

KEVIN

DR. WYNN’S
office was a dark mustard hue. It instantly made Kevin question the credibility of the therapist. After all, who in their right mind would use the color of baby shit to paint their walls? To add insult to injury, on the desk next to the wall of bookcases gleamed a two-foot-tall brass unicorn. Brass! Mustard and brass!

And
he
needed a therapist?

If Casper weren’t waiting for him in the vestibule, he would have booked it. Surely someone with such bad taste couldn’t help anyone with an eating disorder.

Whoa, he’d just thought
eating disorder
without hesitation. He was sure the woman sitting in the puffy armchair in front of him would say that was a good thing.

Whatever.

Her frizzled hair was as puffy as the armchair.

Again. This was the one qualified to dig around in his psyche?

“You look nervous. Is your anxiety kicking in?” At least she had a pleasant voice.

They’d only said hello to each other less than a minute ago. Unless the pain pills that kept him from driving had started blocking out time, Dr. Wynn not only had bad taste, she also was presumptuous. “How did you know I struggle with anxiety?”

She cocked her head. “It was one of the questions on the intake form I asked you to fill out online the other day. Did someone else fill it out for you?”

Oh, right. Maybe it was the pain pills. Noelle had helped him by typing in his answers. Since the surgery and the medication, the fuzziness of his brain impacted every thought he had. It was worse than the numbing effect of the anxiety medication.

“I’d forgotten about that. And, no, surprisingly, I’m not having any anxiety issues at the moment.” Which was true, though the mermaid painting he’d just noticed on the opposite wall might change that.

Mustard, unicorns, and mermaids.

Maybe they could work on a barter system. She could fix his brain, and he could fix her lack of taste.

Seemingly satisfied, Dr. Wynn sat back in her cloud of a chair and took out a pen and pad of yellow paper. “Once we get to know each other, I’ll ask you to determine where our sessions go, but for now, I’d like to take a more directive role, if that’s okay with you.”

Kevin opened his mouth, then reconsidered what he’d been about to say and adjusted. “That will work. I think I’d prefer that anyway.” Telling her that was what he was paying her for probably wouldn’t get things off to a good start.

He reprimanded himself for his poor attitude. He wasn’t unaware that his dislike of the woman had more to do with him not wanting to have to do therapy than anything about her personally, but still. And, bad attitude or not, bad taste was bad taste.

With a soothing smile, Dr. Wynn looked up from her notepad. “So, your surgery was last week, if I read your intake correctly. How are you feeling?”

“I’m doing fine, thank you.”

Her smile widened. “Kevin, as I said, I will be direct. This is an easy question, and I’d like us to get into the habit of giving true and detailed answers. If we keep things on a surface level, progress will be limited. Don’t worry, we aren’t headed to any deep waters today, and I won’t spring anything on you that will plunge you into dark places.”

Maybe he was starting to feel the anxiety. At her words, Kevin could almost see sharks swimming around the open spaces of the office.

“Let’s try it again. Can you tell me how things have been going for you since your surgery?”

Direct was an understatement. All he’d said was that he was fine. You could put her and Renata in a barrel to see who would come out on top. He studied the therapist for a split second and saw it. Behind the fluff, fuzz, and excruciating propensity for tackiness, there was definitely a Renata spark hidden in her eyes.

Maybe this would work after all. And if there were any mommy issues that came up, she’d be able to play the part perfectly.

“Okay, then.” He took a breath and forced himself to lean back into the puffiness of the matching sofa. “I’m doing all right after surgery. The first few days were a little more agonizing than I’d anticipated, but I’m better now, and the pain medication is making it so that I’m more uncomfortable than in pain. And making it hard to think clearly. I’ve got two more weeks of recovery before I can go back to normal, so they say.”

He’d expected her to compliment the better answer, but she didn’t. She just plunged right in.

“I know you haven’t sought treatment before, but judging from your intake form and what I can see of your personality thus far, I’m betting you’ve done some research into eating disorders already. Would that be true?”

He felt his defenses weaken. “Yeah. I have. I’d looked at stuff before. But since all this came up a few weeks ago, I’ve been doing a lot of looking stuff up online.”

She nodded knowingly. “Pretty scary stuff, I would imagine. From what you’ve read, do you feel that it is accurate to say that you have an eating disorder? Or did it not seem to fit with where you are?”

The question surprised him. Why else would he be there? “A lot of it fits. I wish it didn’t.”

“That’s a great place to start, Kevin. I’ve seen clients who are much further down the road than you, ones who even a person off the street would be able to identify as having an eating disorder, who did not feel they had a problem.”

The skeletal woman at the gym.

Kevin wondered if she was doing this same thing somewhere right then. If what he saw when he looked at her was his future.

“Kevin?”

He glanced up at Dr. Wynn, startled.

“You left me there for a moment. May I ask what you were feeling? You had a defeated look on your face.”

His voice cracked with emotion when he started speaking. “Online….” Kevin cleared his throat and commanded the tears to stay where they were. “Online, almost everything I read was that eating disorders are some of the hardest things to treat and that people often don’t beat them.”

The expression on her face made her look more like Noelle than Renata. “Searching for things online can be a bit terrifying. I’m sure if you’d looked up your surgery, you’d find a billion warnings and stories of how it could go wrong.”

Kevin just nodded, not trusting himself to speak. She was right, of course. Casper had nearly forced him to put the laptop away before he triggered a panic attack as he’d researched the procedure.

Dr. Wynn continued, “Before I address that concern, I’d like to ask you something else. In searching eating disorders, what did you find about what causes them for a lot of people? Was there anything that rang true for you?”

He’d thought they weren’t going to dive into deep water that day. “Uhm, I guess the things that seemed to fit talked about the need to be perfect and struggling with anxiety.” Kevin couldn’t hold back a disgusted laugh. “They might as well have put my name there.”