Page 72 of The Unraveling

I smile. “Hi, Rebecca. How are you?”

She plops herself down on the couch, much like a child. “I’m tired.”

“Oh? Are you not sleeping well?”

She shakes her head. “I broke up with my boyfriend.”

“Is it because of what we spoke about? You felt you weren’t sexually compatible?”

She twirls a golden lock around one finger and shrugs. “I guess. We started fighting a lot, too. I accidentally called him the wrong name during sex once or twice, and it upset him.”

“I see. Are you second-guessing your decision to break things off and that’s why you’re not sleeping well?”

She looks away. “No, I don’t care about him. My ex is seeing someone.”

“This is a different ex than the one you just broke up with?”

Rebecca nods.

“Okay, and that’s what’s upsetting you? Interfering with your sleep?”

“Of course it’s upsetting me. We should still be together. He was the love of my life. And I was his.”

“And what happened to end your relationship with him?”

“He was married.”

“Oh.” I’m not sure what else to say. So I wait until she speaks again.

“He was going to leave his wife for me.”

Of course he was. Aren’t they all?

“Why didn’t he?”

“How should I know!” Her raised voice catches me off guard. I startle and sit back, putting a few more inches between us. I don’t usually do that. In my line of work, patients have outbursts. I’m fairly used to it. Today I’m just jumpy. On edge. Because he still hasn’t made contact. Because I haven’t been sleeping well, either.

“How long ago did you and your ex break up?”

“I don’t know. A while ago.” She looks out the window again, then very randomly smiles. “I slept with someone the day before I broke up with him.”

“Him? You mean Steve? The man you just broke up with?” I’m getting lost in all of these unnamed men.

Rebecca rolls her eyes. “Who else would it be?”

I’m not about to point out that she’s talked about three men in the first five minutes of our session, so it would be reasonable to be confused. Instead, I nod and offer a smile. “Right. Okay. Do you like this other man? The one you slept with before breaking things off with Steve?”

She shrugs. “Not particularly. He was nice, I guess.”

Rebecca and I are probably only a little more than a decade apart, yet I feel like it’s an entire generation when it comes to sex and dating. I’d never used an app for dating until recently, nor had a one-night stand. Hell, the term hookup hadn’t even been coined when I started dating Connor—at least, not in my vocabulary.

“So this other man wasn’t the reason you broke up with Steve? It was just sex?”

“Steve and I had a fight, so I stopped at a bar on my way home. A guy came over and tried to buy me a drink. I didn’t want to waste time if he was like Steve in bed, so I told him I liked it rough and asked if he could do that for me. If he was into that, I said he should keep his wallet in his pocket and come to my place instead.”

Oh my. That doesn’t sound safe.

“So you went back to your place and he… fulfilled your need?”

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