Page 39 of Sanctuary

“Isn’t it obvious? I couldn’t have faced her again. One-night stands are fantasies for me. I wouldn’t have been able to take the shame of seeing her every week.”

“Shame?”

“Embarrassment then, if shame is too strong a word for you.”

“This isn’t about what I think about words though, is it?”

Lori rested her head in her hand and tried to summon the strength and patience to continue. This was why people didn’t want to go to therapy; it was too much hard work. What’s hard is also worthwhile. She didn’t need a peppy fridge magnet quote; she could always rely on her mom’s voice in her head. “I’m not a one-night stand person. I don’t judge anyone who is, but I’d find it mortifying to bare everything to someone and then have to keep seeing that person at the coffee shop or the bank. Sex is more than just sex to me, and that’s not going to change just because my heart has been stomped on.”

“So has the attraction faded now that Gabe is part of your everyday life?”

Lori snorted. “The opposite. I’m even having dreams about her. And before you ask: yes, they’re sexual.”

“And how are you handling all those feelings?”

“I’m not handling them. That’s part of the problem.” Lori closed her eyes and pushed her head against the back of the chair. Rae knew everything; she knew all about the far-reaching effects of the lawyer’s infidelity and the emotional abuse that followed.

“Do you know how you would like to handle them?”

“How I want to handle them is nothing like how I should handle them, and how I should handle them bears no resemblance to how I’m currently able to handle them.” But, God, how I’d like to handle Gabe.

“Okay. Well, let’s talk through what’s going on and, just for now, put aside how you think you should be handling it.”

Lori nodded. “I’ll try.”

Rae gave an encouraging smile. “That’s all we can ever do.”

Break it down into bite-size pieces. That strategy usually worked for her. “If I’m honest, I think that I’ve been avoiding dealing with the workshop and the car without really being conscious of it.”

“They are elements that you’ve never mentioned before,” Rae said.

Lori was about to protest but stopped herself. She remembered telling Rae about finding the lawyer in flagrante delicto—a phrase a little too on the nose—but not where. “The location didn’t seem important at the time. I was more concerned with what she was doing, not where she was doing it.”

“Understandably.”

“I’ve been focused on my emotions surrounding the betrayal and the aftermath, on everything she said to me and accused me of. I’ve wanted to get back to my old self, the me that she destroyed, and away from the person I’d become as a result of that relationship and its failure.”

Lori’s mom had been the one to illuminate that issue in a particularly frank conversation post-divorce. I’m afraid I’m losing you. Her mom’s words had been the final push to acquiesce to therapy.

“And that’s been going well, hasn’t it? You’ve been working on rebuilding your self-confidence and your social life. You told me that the night with Rosie went better than expected, even if it was cut short with food poisoning.”

Lori laughed but shouldn’t have. It took poor Rosie a week to get back to some semblance of normality. “It has, you’re right. And Rosie is respecting my wishes and has stopped trying to set me up with someone else. Meeting Gabe was a good thing, even though my physical response to her was a little overwhelming. I’ve never had that kind of…overtly sexual reaction to a person. It was feral and animalistic, like a bonobo ape.” Even now, she had to squeeze her thighs together when she thought of those dreams. “I’ve always been more of a panda when it comes to sex.”

Rae noted something on her pad for the first time. “I like that you give me something to research almost every time we meet. You’re better than the Discovery Channel.”

“You’ll appreciate them; they’re a matriarchal society.”

Rae smiled and glanced at her books on the extensive floor-to-ceiling shelves covering the largest wall of her office. Lori knew very little about Rae, as she’d come to discover was key to a successful therapist-client relationship, and most of what she knew came from paying careful attention to what was on those shelves. While therapy books were the most prominent, second place went to feminist texts aplenty.

“Anyway,” Lori said, aware of the ever-ticking clock and her session time dwindling, “Gabe’s presence triggered the next step in me putting the lawyer in my rearview. I just didn’t know there was another step, so I guess I stumbled and fell flat on my face.”

“And the next step is?”

“Dealing with the workshop and unpacking the emotions connected to it.”

Rae nodded and looked impressed. Or that’s how Lori interpreted her expression. Rae had said from the very beginning that Lori had all the answers she needed and that she could work everything out for herself. Only now was she beginning to believe that. And boy, it felt pretty damn good. “So my feelings around Gabe are complicated. She made it clear that she’d be interested in dating me, and I shut her down immediately. We’ve agreed to be friends, which is especially good now that we’re kind of working together in addition to her visiting Max…”

“Now that you’ve said all that out loud, how do you think you’re handling all those feelings?”

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