Page 11 of Fluffed and Folded

“My therapist.”

He blinked. “You…you tell your therapist you love her?”

“Him, and we’ve been together a long time, years.”

“Oh,” Eli drawled, not certain how to continue.

Layla gave a dismissive little laugh. “Don’t worry, I’m not crazy or anything. I just needed to work through some issues and it felt so nice, that connection, that I kept going, you know?”

Eli nodded, but he wasn’t certain he meant it. While he had no problem with therapists or those who sought therapy, he’d also never known anyone who spoke about it so freely.

“When I was seven, I accidentally got locked in a closet for twenty four hours,” Layla said, pausing to take a sip of her water.

“Oh, no. How?”

“As soon as I arrived at school, I wandered into the janitor’s closet, and it closed and locked behind me. No one knew I was in there, and no one knew I was at school. They tried to call my parents to inform them of my absence, but they were at work and my mom’s phone got left somewhere. Anyway, then I didn’t come home, but it took them a while to realize because of my sister’s dance class and, long story short, I wasn’t found until the next morning, when someone puked and the janitor unlocked the closet to get the mop.”

“That sounds horrible, I’m so sorry,” Eli said.

Layla chuckled lightly and used her hand to wave away his concern. “It’s fine. I mean, I sort of blacked out and dissociated for a while whenever anyone turned the lights off or closed a door in a room, but my therapist helped me make good progress, and I don’t really have that problem anymore.”

“Good,” Eli said. He reached for a menu.

“Then someone tried to kidnap me in Walmart, and I sort of developed agoraphobia,” Layla said, not looking up as she scanned her menu.

Eli stared at the top of her head. “Someone tried to kidnap you?”

She nodded.

“After you got locked in a closet?”

She chuckled again. “I know, right? What are the chances? Anyway, the agoraphobia didn’t last too long.”

“Good,” Eli said again, a little more uncertain this time.

“But then I was in an abusive relationship in high school and, well, you know how that goes.”

“Um, not really,” Eli said.

“I don’t have any relationship issues because of it,” she assured him. “We hardly dated.” Before he could congratulate her on that, she continued. “It was more the anorexia because of it that was a problem.”

“Oh,” Eli said slowly, his eyes automatically scanning her frame. She wasn’t overweight, but neither was she skeletal.

“That led to bulimia. My therapist started an overeater’s anonymous group for me. I’ve been doing really great with my eating since then, really great, totally back to normal.” She tossed him a smile and resumed scanning the menu.

“Um…” Eli said softly, not sure where to go next.

“Now we’re down to, you know, normal stuff. Anxiety, depression, the occasional hallucination and psychotic episode. But that’s what meds are for, am I right?”

“I…” Eli’s words ran out. He had no idea, none whatsoever, what to say next.

“Mushrooms,” Layla said. She pressed both palms on her menu and gave him a look he couldn’t interpret.

He hadn’t noticed a mushroom dish on the menu, and it didn’t seem like she was talking about the food anyway. “What?”

“Magic mushrooms, that’s the way to go. My therapist is really into it. He does them with me because he says it’s not the sort of thing a patient should do alone, mostly because you can have a psychotic episode that will break your brain and you’ll never recover.” She gasped and leaned forward. “You should totally do them with us sometime. It will really open you up, fix everything that’s wrong.”

“I’m not really comfortable taking things,” Eli said as he surreptitiously reached for his phone beneath the table.

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