After a long and tiring weekend, going back to work was almost refreshing. Emerson blocked Richard's number on my work phone, and luckily he did not have my cell phone number. I had Emerson reschedule a lot of my meetings, because I didn't want to overwhelm him or myself by being busy. Everyone could survive by postponing a meeting. Plus, I wanted to meet with my therapist, Cheryl, later in the day. She was able to squeeze me in for a re-consultation. I hadn't gone to see her in a few years, but I finally made the lunge to see her again. Therapy had always been hard for me, mostly because opening up was hard. I knew she was there to listen. It's what she was paid to do. Still, it was not easy.
And yet, for Emerson, it was easier to open up to him. He wasn't my therapist, though, and he wasn't paid to have me dump my traumas on him. I know he said he was always there to listen, but it wasn't fair for him. We had already gotten too close. I cared about him. He cared about me, but he shouldn't care about me. I didn't deserve his care or his kindness. I didn't deserve that from anyone. It sounded dramatic, but it wasn't. It's just how it was for me.
Em usually got lunch with Sasha on Mondays. Instead of eating by myself, I decided to see if anyone else would want to get lunch. I didn't really want to get lunch with anyone other than Emerson, but I wanted to prove myself wrong.
Michael was sitting on the edge of Emilio's desk when I went in, tapping the doorway. "Well good afternoon," he said, eyeing me over his shoulder. Even when he greeted me he sounded like he was being sarcastic.
"Hi," I said. "Do you guys have lunch plans?"
"No," Michael said.
"I want to go to the food truck festival," Emilio said, making Michael frown. "But someone doesn't like food trucks."
"I could go to a food truck festival," I said, smirking at them.
"I just feel like they aren't clean," Michael said.
"Well you don't think anything is clean," I said.
"Just because it's affordable doesn't mean it's unclean," Emilio said.
"That's not-"
"That's so classist of you," I said, making Emilio laugh.
"Oh my god, we're not in middle school. We can go to the stupid festival," he said, huffing.
"Should I see if Carla and Marion want to go?" I asked.
"They're on vacation," Michael said. "It's their anniversary week dipshit."
"So testy, mi amor," Emilio said, kissing his cheek, making Michael soften up even though he still rolled his eyes.
We put on our jackets to brace for the chilly autumn afternoon. The food truck festival was only a few blocks away so we walked there. I couldn't help but think about how nice it would be to go with Emerson. There were a lot of people, almost too many that it was kind of annoying, but I tried to keep cool.
We started with some Mexican street corn as we perused the street. I settled on a corn dog next while Michael begrudgingly ordered the same tacos as Emilio. While they ate their tacos, I ordered a mac and cheese from another truck. I walked back over to them where they had successfully claimed a table and chairs, leaving one for me as well.
"Did you hear about Marcus?" Michael asked.
"Marcus? No," I said. Marcus was an old boyfriend of mine from my early twenties. While I was roughly on good terms with most of my exes, Marcus and I hadn't spoken to each other in years. We started dating when I was twenty-two as we were starting the company. He was a model. We actually didn't get along that well at all, but the sex was good and we were a little too dependent on each other so we managed to stay together for a couple of years. We broke up about two months before the incident in the hot tub.
"He's moving back to New York," Michael said.
Michael, Emilio, and I moved to California after graduating college. This is where I met Marcus. We tried the company out on the west coast for only a year, but I hated it so much that I moved back to New York and everyone came with me, including Marion and Carla. Marcus moved back to California a year after we broke up.
"How'd you find that out?" I asked, stirring my mac and cheese.
"We're still friends on Facebook," he said. "He also messaged me about it. He said he wasn't going to be contractually bound anymore and that if we wanted him to model with us then he was available."
"No," I said, chewing. "He can submit his portfolio like any other model."
"I told him to look for our call outs, but I do think he'd be good for the new collection."
"No."
"I heard you the first time."
"Do you guys ever talk?" Emilio asked.
"No. I haven't talked to him in years." The last time I had seen Marcus was five years ago when he was walking a runway in New York City. He made a snide remark. I made one back. Then we had sex in the back seat of my car.
"Speaking of ex-boyfriends, I think I spot Liam," Michael said, looking over my shoulder. He flashed a smile and waved, because of course he did.
"Damn, who is he with?" Emilio asked.
"I know, he's hot."
I turned around when Liam approached. Next to him, was Owen, the handsome and strong man that brought a drunken Emerson home the other night. Emerson told me over the weekend who he was and that they had been in a relationship but broke up a while ago. "Hello," I said, looking between Liam and Owen.
"Hey there," he said, awkwardly. "How are you guys?"
"Oh good, just enjoying lunch together," Michael said. "How are you? We haven't heard from you in a while."
"Fine, fine," he said. He glanced at me and then to Owen. "Owen, these are some old friends, Michael and Emilio."
"Hi, nice to meet you," he said with a smile.
"Nice to meet you, too," Michael said, then kept glancing between me and him. "This is Lafayette, but maybe you've already met?" Michael assumed a threesome.
"Yeah, well, we just..."
"I guess you could say..."
"He's Emerson's ex-boyfriend and we all bumped into each other over the weekend," I said, hoping to speed up the awkward interaction.
"You dated Emerson?" Michael asked.
Emilio elbowed him.
"Yeah, it was a little bit ago," Owen said.
"Well, we should be going," Liam said, thankfully. "It was nice to see you guys."
"Nice to meet you all."
They quickly hurried away.
"I can't believe Emerson got someone that hot to date him," Michael said.
"That would be quite the interesting couple," Emilio said. "But it looks like he likes skinny, lanky twinks."
I sighed deeply after finishing off my mac and cheese. "I want to go to the cake truck," I said. "You coming?"
I was thankful Michael didn't make a big deal about my ex-boyfriend being on an apparent date with Emerson's ex-boyfriend. I didn't like all of this talk of ex-boyfriends. I didn't like thinking about how many failed relationships I had. So many were hardly relationships at all. They were either closed off like with Liam or toxic like with Marcus. I never made them happy. Little joy came from most of my relationships. I think I liked to punish myself by Liam's lack of care and Marcus's passive aggressive jealousy, the same way I liked to punish myself with Richard's phone calls.
At therapy, I mentioned this to Cheryl.
"What did he say to you on these phone calls?" she asked in that quiet voice of hers.
"Bad things. He would say I was disgusting, pathetic, that I deserved to choke, to die, that my family hated me, that I was a whore. Just all kinds of stuff," I said.
"Why do you think you liked to punish yourself with his calls?" she asked. "What is it about these things he said that you wanted to hear?"
I shrugged. "I'm not sure," I said.
"Well, when people seek to hurt themselves, it can be for a number of reasons. Sometimes they do it to feel something, if they tend to be more numb to the world. Other times, it's because they think they deserve to hear these things."
"I think it's maybe both, but more so the latter," I said. Cheryl was good at phrasing things in ways that I was the one to state the fact or the conclusion, because I think she knew if I stated it then it helped me more than if she spoke at me.
"Why these phone calls with him? There are other ways that you can hurt yourself. I'm glad you didn't choose the more dangerous or violent ways, but these phone calls are more unconventional," she said. Her questions always seemed so interrogative, but they weren't. She wasn't asking to be nosy.
"It's mostly because of him," I said, swallowing. "He, uh..." I had never told Cheryl about Richard and the hot tub. "This man, in particular, eight years ago, he ended up sexually assaulting me in my hot tub in my townhouse."
"I'm sorry that happened to you," she said softly. "Do you still live in the house?"
"Yes," I said. "The hot tub is still there."
She nodded. "What do you think about him, when he's not calling you?"
I shoved my hands in my pockets, leaning my head against the armchair. "I think about going to his house and beating the shit out of him. I think about violent things. Sometimes I want him to die. Sometimes I think about what his childhood had been like. Maybe he had been molested as a kid or something. I think about whether or not he's done this to other people before. Maybe he's a psychopath with no conscience. I know this probably makes me sound like I'm the psychopath, though."
"These are common responses, actually. Just because you think these things, doesn't mean you want them to happen or to be true. You grow angry at the thought of him, you wish him dead. You find an excuse for his behavior, whether his own trauma or his lack of conscience."
"But no matter what, I can't control anything," I said. "I mean, sure if I kill him, then I would have control, but then I would ruin my own life."
"But you can control whether you take the phone calls, and you already have," she said.
I looked over at her, then up at the ceiling. "My assistant actually did that," I said. "I mean, I almost fired him because I was so mad, but he threw the phone on the ground. He blocked Richard's number. At first, after I kicked my assistant out of my office, I wanted to call Richard again. I wanted to continue with the self-inflicted torture. But, then I realized I had the choice again. I could call him, or I could ignore him. So I decided to ignore him."
Cheryl nodded. "Has he tried to contact you again?"
"I don't know actually. I have no way of knowing now. It's kind of nice," I said.
"Good. That's progress."
After my therapy session, I arrived back at the office a little before five o'clock. I entered through the back way and almost sat down in my seat, but then I wondered if Emerson was still in the office. He was required to leave before five-thirty. I walked into the reception area to see him resting his head in his arms on his desk.
"Sleepy?" I asked.
His head popped up. "No," he said. "Just resting."
"You can always leave now if you want," I said.
He yawned. "It's okay. I have thirty more minutes." He stretched his arms.
"How was your day? I feel like I didn't see you much today," I said. I walked over and sat on the edge of his desk.
"It was fine," he said. "I'm just nervous about staying alone tonight."
"You'll be fine. I think you'll get accustomed to it. You might even enjoy it after a while. If you get anxious, you can let me know, though," I said. "Chances are I'll be awake."
"Well, you shouldn't be awake. You need to sleep like a normal person," he said.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," I said. "We'll see how much sleep I get tonight. I'm actually kind of tired now. I almost want to take a nap and I never take naps."
"I love naps," he said. "I'm a taurus, so we love naps."
"Oh yeah? Did you nap when I was gone?" I asked.
"No, but I almost did. I didn't sleep that well last night," he said.
"Even though I was there?"
He looked at his hands in his lap. "Yeah, just...being in a new place," he said, but he wasn't the best at lying. Something else must have kept him up, but I didn't want to force it out of him.
"Well, if you ever have to take a nap, feel free to," I said.
He smiled up at me. "Really?"
"Yeah, sure. The couch in my office is more comfortable, though. You can crash on that one. If you want."
"Thank you, Faye."
"You're welcome, Emmy."