Page 12 of The Girl and the Cobra

Mabel glances between Wolf and me, and she must sense that something’s wrong, perhaps that Wolf isn’t happy with me being here, because she hurriedly says, “He just came out here to make sure I was okay.”

Yet another thing I’m not used to. First a smile, then a laugh, and now she’s defending me when she has no reason to. I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything.

The severity on Wolf’s face lessens when he addresses Mabel once more, “And are you okay?”

She nods, but she does look at me before she gives the affirmative, like she’s checking to make sure I’m okay or something. “Yeah,” she whispers as she stares at me. “I’m good.”

“Wonderful,” Wolf muses dryly. “Now, we should get back to your session.”

Mabel meekly gets up, listening to Wolf, and I have to fight every instinct inside me to leap up and stop her. I want to, God how I want to, but I let her go, and I watch as she walks past Wolf and disappears inside the house.

And just like that the sky seems darker, the world a little more gray.

“Give me a moment to speak with Tristan,” Wolf tells her. “I’ll be with you shortly.” He must wait until she’s no longer nearby—no longer in earshot, in other words, before he strides over to me.

I don’t get up. I know if I do, it’ll be seen as an act of aggression… and at this point, considering the fact that he’s the only reason Mabel and I aren’t talking more right now, it might actually be aggressive on my end.

“She has her demons, as you do, but your demons are a different type than hers. I don’t think you’re ready, Tristan. Do you?” His current doubt in me makes me wonder if there will ever come a point where he’ll claim that I am, in fact, ready, or if he’ll always come up with some excuse as to why I must be a prisoner in this house and on these grounds.

My jaw grinds, and in the end I don’t say a single word. How can I, when Wolf has a thousand retorts ready to prove me otherwise?

I’m not ready. I might never be ready, it’s true. A huge part of me is dead. That part of me died in Cypress when my beloved Shay shot me three times.

Wolf takes my silence as his answer, and he turns away from me and goes to presumably return to his session with Mabel, leaving me outside in the grayish day all alone, as I typically am.

The wind brushes past me, touching my cheek like an invisible lover. I close my eyes and remember that smile, that laugh, how she defended me without hesitation even though she doesn’t know me and I never asked her to. When I open my eyes, I realize something.

She looked at me. At me, not at the scars. When she met my gaze, she did so in the full definition of the word. Her stare never once fell to the many thin scars scattered across my face. Mabel looked at me like I was a man, not a man wearing a face full of scars.

Such a short encounter, so short it would be hardly worthy of note to most people. Completely forgettable to some. But not to me. My conversation with Mabel and everything therein will keep me up tonight, I just know it.

And that smile… it will haunt me until I see it again.

I need to see it again.

I need to see her again.

That need overtakes everything I am and forces me to wait inside. I sit near the window on the second floor, the same window I watched her leave in before. Time crawls by, but if there’s one thing I learned in the past, it’s that patience is truly a virtue. Sometimes you need to wait close to eternity to get what you want—and sometimes no matter how long you wait you’ll never see your dreams achieved.

I don’t know what, if anything, could happen here, but I’m going to find out. My need to see Mabel’s smile again feels just as strong as the obsession that ultimately led me to be here in the first place.

My obsessions never end well.

Chapter Seven – Mabel

The first words out of my mouth are “I’m sorry” once Dr. Wolf walks into the office. I watch him gingerly take his seat and grab his notepad. He adjusts his glasses, but he doesn’t say a word back. “Talking about Jordan is just… it’s hard for me.”

It takes the man a moment to say, “Don’t apologize. I understand completely. We can change topics if you’d like.” He pauses, and maybe it’s all in my head, but I swear I see a muscle in his jaw twitch, like he’s grinding his teeth or something. “It seemed as though you felt comfortable with Tristan.”

Is that what he’s upset about? Weird.

Shrugging, I mumble, “Yeah, I guess. He doesn’t know who I am or what happened, so it’s easy to kind of just… pretend.”

“And you don’t know what he’s been through, so I imagine he feels the same.” Maybe Dr. Wolf senses that I’m about to ask more about Tristan, because he doesn’t give me the chance to speak. He asks me, “Do you often find yourself pretending?”

The answer that comes out of me is depressing: “Lately, it’s all I do.”

“And before the shooting?”

---