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I should have opened my heart to her. I could have told her that a new part of myself was opening up, even if I didn’t understand it. But I didn’t want her to know. I wanted to stew in my desires without volleying someone else’s needs.

This was mine.

FIONA

B
y the time I went for my nine o’clock session, I was jumping out of my skin. Deacon was coming at eleven. Two more hours. I’d already put on my jeans and blouse, laughing at the unsexy, dowdy shoes.

“Who picked these?” I asked Elliot. “You?”

“Debbie.”

I laughed again. “She and I used to joke that these were the least sexual type of footwear in the world. She obviously thinks I need to tone it down a bit.”

“Is there a way to be who you are without thinking sex is all you’re meant for?”

I didn’t even know if I could answer him, because his fingertips on the blotter were making me crazy. How lightly they touched it, as if enjoying the warmth of the leather. I tried not to stare, but I kept seeing his hand out of the corner of my eye and hearing the light rustle of his touch. I wanted to finger myself in lieu of trying to seduce him, because he was unseduceable. I was lower than a rat in a sewer to a guy like him.

“I’m not ashamed of what I am, so I never thought of needing ‘more,’ if you know what I mean,” I said. “I would show up at Maundy and strip down to my underwear. Deacon would leave my stuff by the door. When I put my ankles in the leg spreaders, it was like my job. I did it, and when I got turned on, it was just me doing what I was meant to do. I walked to Deacon’s room, and he’d be waiting. Except it’s not like I could walk in the spreader, so I’d tip or do something wrong. That was also my job. To fuck up so he could tie me down with my legs open. To beg when he asked. To be a whore for him.”

Elliot’s finger stopped stroking the leather, and he swallowed. If he stood, I would have seen a rock-hard erection. That was also my job.

“You take a lot of pleasure in talking about sex,” he said.

“I do.”

“I need less of that.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re trying to arouse me, and I want to keep being your therapist.”

“I’m not trying,” I said.

“Please try
not
to then.”

“I’m a fucker. It’s what I do.”

“You’re not. You are not defined by sex.”

“I’ll define myself any way I want.” My voice was shot through with defensiveness, and I hated it. He made me feel as if I’d wasted my precious time doing and learning things that were worthless. “I’ll decide what about me is worthwhile. I’ll decide what I talk about and what I do.”

“You’re not deciding. Your addiction is deciding.”

He was so confident he was right, and I felt a swell of violence I had to quell. I was T-minus ninety minutes to seeing Deacon. I would not be baited by a sexually frustrated motherfucker who wanted to rip away who I was. My lip quivered with the effort, and my eyes filled with tears. I resisted the urge to tell him how grateful he’d be for my skills if I got my lips around his cock for five minutes.

“Do not tell me who I am,” I whispered.

“I don’t know who you are. But I know who you’re not.” He slapped a box of tissues in front of me. “You’re not a mindless, heartless ‘fucker.’ Maybe you should listen to the people around you talk about you. They don’t think you’re a bag of sex either.”

I ripped a tissue out of the box as if it had personally offended me, which it did. Fucking tissue. I blew my nose in it. “I decide, okay? I decide what goes and what doesn’t. How other people see that, I can’t help it. People get hurt, you know, it happens, but I don’t lie. Everyone’s on board.”

“Everyone? You just said people get hurt.”

“Sometimes.”

He moved his notebook out of the way and leaned on his desk as if I’d said something he wanted to latch on to. “Tell me the first time someone got hurt.”

“The last time was Deacon—”

“Not the last time. The first time.”

“The first time was my fault.”

“Okay. Let’s hear it.”

I didn’t want to tell that story. I didn’t want to say what I’d done, how careless I’d been. But Elliot had come back for me, and I said I’d play ball. So I just had to spit it out, didn’t I?

“Evan. I won’t use his last name, because you know his father. I mean, not know know, but know.”

“That’s fine.”

I cleared my throat. Could I just pretend he wasn’t there while I told this story? Like maybe I was lying in bed, staring at the door to the bathroom as the sun came up. “So summer after high school graduation, I’m dating this guy Evan, who’s going to Brown in August. We don’t have a permanent thing, because he’s leaving and I’m just going to UCLA. And so he’s fine and all, but his best friend Gary is pretty hot, and he’s staying in town. So I suggest to Evan that it would be fun for the three of us to get together more or less at the same time.”

Why was I hemming and hawing? Why was I using soft words? That was bullshit. I held my chin up and rephrased the last part. “I told Evan I wanted a threesome with his buddy Gary. It hurt his feelings. He said no, because he liked me for a girlfriend. I hadn’t told him I wasn’t girlfriend material.”

“And he broke up with you? How did that feel?”

Fucking feelings already? Jesus. “It felt nothing because he didn’t break up with me. Not until later. Not until… He went to Brown anyway, so it didn’t matter.”

“So he stayed with you for the summer?”

“Why do you want so many details?”

He shrugged. “If you’d stop skipping things, I’d stop asking questions.”

“What makes you think I’m skipping things?”

“It’s my job.”

Fine.

Fuck him.

“After Evan said no, Gary invited me to his place. Which was fine, because fuck it. If Evan was going to get his knickers in a bunch, fine. But Evan was there. And I think,
This is not a threesome. This is not them being cool with it.
Because there’s no drinks and there’s no drugs, and the music is off and all the lights are on. So I’m like, ‘Hi, guys, what’s up?’ Evan makes a dumb comment like, ‘my dick’ or some dumb jock thing like that, and Gary…” I stop, because I feel my face crunching up.

Elliot lets me sniff and get it together.

“Gary pushes me. He puts my face on his kitchen table. He does it hard. So I’m like, ‘Get off me.’ But Evan, he comes around and yanks down my jeans. And then… I couldn’t move, because Gary was holding me down. God, I can’t tell you.”

“You don’t have to.”

But I needed to. I needed to fucking finish it because I’d told my therapist I’d play ball. Just because I had fantasies of a normal life with that therapist didn’t mean anything had changed for him. I was the one who had to just get through it and do what I said I’d do.

“I’d never had anal before. I didn’t know you have to lube a lot and do prep and you have to be really turned on. Evan didn’t either, because he just opened up my crack and spit, which is never enough… God, it hurt. It hurt my ass, and it hurt my insides. And he wouldn’t stop. I kept saying, ‘Stop, stop. You’re hurting me.’ Gary wouldn’t let go, and Evan kept doing it. After he came, they switched places.” I stopped. I wasn’t crying because I’d shut off all my emotions. If I let them out, I wouldn’t have been able to tell the story to the object of my silly, normal fantasies.

“I’m sorry that happened.”

His face was ice cold, as if he didn’t care. As if it was one of a hundred stories he’d heard about a girl getting ass-fucked twice with a mouthful of spit for lube. Just another patient with a stupid story. That was all I was.

“It was my fault,” I said. “See, I did face consequences once.”

“For what? For wanting to explore your sexuality? For wanting to move on from a relationship that wasn’t going anywhere? No, Fiona. No.”

“Well, fuck it. I said never again. From then on, I was crystal clear. I’m not anyone’s girlfriend. I fuck around. Period.”

“So you can never have non-consensual sex if you consent to everything?”

“If you want to put it that way,” I said, crossing my arms. I had to hold back tears when he said it though.

“That’s brought you to quite an impasse.”

“It was working really well.”

“Until it wasn’t.”

“Yeah.” I sniffed. If he was trying to empty my head of snot and fluid, he was three quarters of the way to me opening the valves.

“I spoke to Debbie when I got your clothes,” he said softly. “She talked about you as if you were a real person. One with honorable qualities.”

“Debbie sees the good in everyone.”

“She said you helped her acclimate when she got to Maundy.”

I rubbed my nose. “She’s very young, but she didn’t need me. She’s plenty mature. Martin would tell you what I am, and how good I am at it. But you wouldn’t believe his opinion because you don’t already agree with it. Right?”

He paused too long. I took that as a victory. I’d stumped him with his own relativism. I didn’t stick my middle finger in his face and piss on his desk, but I felt that good… until he spoke.

“Martin wasn’t in New York before Christmas. You said he was away when you were knotted by someone else, or something like that?”

I felt myself blink. Felt a skip in my brain. He was right of course. Martin hadn’t been in New York. I knew that. So why did I feel as if a mental drain was clogged?

I felt a shot of pain in my tooth. I put my hands over my mouth, because neurons that hadn’t fired since the stables connected again, and I was afraid that memory would fly out of my head.

“Martin. He knotted me while Deacon was away. Oh my God, that’s worse than fucking him. That’s why he was so mad.” The words spilled out of me with the memory.

Hanging, the sway of the ropes in a deep fog, and the ceilings, a pale blue instead of Deacon’s wood beams. I wanted it so bad, but his hands were wrong. They pulled at odd angles, unsupportive when I needed it, and my stomach roiled with alcohol and drugs. The colors blurred, and the rough hemp ran on my raw skin as everything under me fell away before the lightning bolt crack of the floor.

“Martin was sloppy, and he dropped me. I fell on my face, and my wrist was tied all wrong. I didn’t feel it because I was fucked up on something.” I pressed my fingertips to my cheek, where the damaged molar was. “Deacon really didn’t hit me. I thought he might not have, but I didn’t know what to believe anymore. But it was that dumb shit.”

“The dumb shit who knows what you should be valued for?
That
dumb shit?”

I didn’t say anything for a minute, maybe two. It took me that long to shake the surprise.

As if he could tell when I was ready to hear it, Elliot said, “I told you the memories you called up under hypnosis would be colored. What was important were the feelings you unearthed. You weren’t afraid of Deacon when you remembered him hitting you, and that’s important. But you colored the event to absolve yourself of guilt for breaking the rules with Martin.”

“What about the stables?” I said. “What did I change there?”

“You’re going to have to ask Deacon.”

I nodded and folded up my tissue.

“We have two minutes,” Elliot said. “I’m taking those to give you a task. When you talk to yourself about yourself, I want you to try something new. I want you to use different words.”

“Like?”

“Like loyal. Strong. Trustworthy. Spirited. Brave. Selfless. Use those words, Fiona. Stop lying to yourself about who you are.”

ELLIOT

I
 didn’t know when my emotions flipped during the session. If I hazarded a guess, it was when I gave Fiona that box of tissues. I defined her not just to her but to myself, and speaking those words, I saw past all of her bullshit and my own arousal. In asking her to define herself, I’d done the same in my own mind, and I knew how deep my trouble cut.

Then when she told me she’d been raped by her boyfriend and his friend, my detachment went to hell. I’d heard a hundred more violent stories, yet I wanted to find those two men and eviscerate them for hurting her. I hoped for Fiona’s sake that I’d kept my shit together.

I heard her brother one rec room over, banging on a ping-pong ball. But in this room, it was quiet. Patients read and chattered softly. This room had a window overlooking the drive. It was my turn to watch and ask myself how I felt when the black Range Rover rolled past the gate.

I felt insignificant. I felt lost in a whirlwind. When Deacon Bruce handed the valet the keys and I stood in that fucking window like a stalker, I felt like a pebble in a shoe, waiting to get shaken out and discarded. When he looked up for Fiona and saw only me, I felt as if my heart was being squeezed. He saw me and waved. He knew what I was doing. He knew he had what I wanted, but he wasn’t worried. I was the also-ran, the second place, the beta in a pack of wolves. I waved back as if accepting my position.

How did I feel?

I felt as though I was going to be late. I felt the weight of my responsibilities to other people shedding from me. I walked to my office which overlooked the garden, and on the way, I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I barely paused as I called Jana.

“Hey, are you—”

“No. I’m going to be late.” I spoke quietly and tersely.

“How late?”

I’d used the wrong word. I’d shuffled and shimmied when I should have just stated the facts. “I’m not going.”

“Should we reschedule?”

“Cancel it. And I’m not discussing it further. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m not working at Carlton Prep.”

“Elliot, we agreed.”

“You agreed. I have to go.” I hung up and pocketed my phone.

There would be painful repercussions to just about every decision I’d made in the past thirty minutes, but they were the best decisions I’d made in the past two years.

FIONA

I
n the end, I wore the psycho suit with the sneakers. On the one hand, I was sick of their damn indoor/outdoor Velcro slippers. On the other, I didn’t want to be different. I didn’t want to hide what I was from Deacon. I was troubled, and he knew it. I knew it. Jeans and a blouse wouldn’t change that. So I wore the sneakers remembering the laces under the Velcro, like a bit of adulthood hidden under the child-safe fastening. I never bothered to unlace and retighten them. I’d rather jam the back of the shoe down and pivot my foot as if I was doing the twist.