Bedside Manners (The Breakup Doctor Series Book 2) Page 12

  After dinner Adelaide reluctantly acquiesced when I insisted she let me do the dishes, but she perched on a stool at the breakfast bar and we continued chatting as she iced her knee. Afterward we sat side by side on her sofa while Adelaide pulled up articles on Pyrenees on her iPad to show me what she’d told me before—that most of Jake’s crazy behaviors I’d come to her to learn how to control were actually bred into him for hundreds of years.

  “But he never seems to do any of that with you,” I said as I scrolled through one of the articles. “Ben says you’re a dog savant.”

  She waved off the compliment. “Oh, anyone can learn how to handle a dog properly—just learn how they think. They want structure and leadership, and a good dog owner—or temporary one,” she added with a nod at me, “makes sure to provide it.”

  That was exactly what Sasha had said.

  “But if these behaviors are innate, that’s just who Jake is, right?” I asked. “Trust me, I’d love to get a full night’s sleep, but how can I change what’s bred into him?”

  “You don’t. You can’t change a creature’s nature. You just have to let them be who they are, and figure out how to find a way you can both live with it. And not everyone can—there are plenty of people who don’t like a Pyrenees.”

  I looked down to where Jake had his head resting in my lap, looking up at me with adoring brown eyes as I stroked his giant head. “How can anyone not like them? Look at him—he’s so affectionate and loyal and protective.”

  Adelaide smiled. “That’s true to the breed too. But they’re not for everyone.”

  “He can be a pain,” I admitted with a laugh, and then heard what I’d said. “I mean, he’s great, and no trouble—” I added quickly.

  Adelaide interrupted. “It’s okay, Brook. It’s still nice of you watch him for Ben.”

  “No, really—he’s sweet and I do like him. I’m happy to have him. I just...” I caught her eye. “He’s been a little hard for me to control, but I didn’t want to worry Ben. I saw how good you are with Jake; I thought you might be able to give me some tips.”

  “Well, that I can do.” She pushed herself to her feet. I reached out a hand to steady her, but she caught her balance on the arm and I dropped my arm before she saw, instead holding Jake back from surging toward her.

  “Jake, come.”

  He scooted instantly to her and planted his butt.

  “Lie down.”

  He gazed at her, his tongue lolling in a happy grin, and pawed at her with one long limb.

  Adelaide looked over at me. “Now we’re in a battle of wills,” she said. “Exactly where you don’t want to be with a dog—especially a Pyrenees. They will outstubborn you every time.” She sidestepped his paw and moved two steps away, not looking at him, and he hastened over to sit in front of her again, pawing her leg. “You have to give him something he wants more than he wants to follow his own mind. And Jake—bless his sweet heart—wants my attention. But he has to earn it.”

  Still ignoring him, she moved back to her original position and Jake followed. This time he sat still, not touching her, and after a moment Adelaide met his eye and stroked his head. “Good,” she said calmly. “Now lie down, Jake.”

  He threw himself to the floor, and I laughed at his fervor.

  Adelaide winked at me, but again said only, “Good,” in a light, approving tone, and bent to rub his ears for a moment. “Stay.” She straightened and looked at me as Jake remained planted to the floor as if glued there. “It won’t always work with a Pyr, but remember that consistency is the most important thing. And don’t overpraise him—he’s not curing cancer; he’s just obeying a command. If a dog gets too much attention for doing things that—Ahhhh!”

  Jake had shot to a sitting position and pawed at her leg again before either of us could react—this time directly on her bad knee. Adelaide’s yelp was followed by her crumpling to the floor, and Jake surged over her, delighted.

  “Jake!” I cried, already on my feet and lunging for him. I grabbed his collar and tugged him off her, then sank down beside her.

  “Adelaide! Are you okay?”

  A groan seeped past tight lips, but Adelaide was already pushing herself up to sit. “Just a moment.” She was holding her knee gingerly, her face pale and her eyes shut.

  After a few moments she opened her eyes, reaching with a hand for my arm and squeezing. “That felt fairly awful. Help me up, would you, Brook?” Gingerly I did, and walked her carefully to lie on the sofa, Adelaide putting as little weight on the leg as she could manage by leaning on me.

  I ran to the kitchen for ice, and when I came back she was reclined against one arm with her leg propped on the couch, Jake face-first in her armpit.

  “Jake! Stop that!” I barked, but Adelaide only patted his back.

  “It’s okay. He didn’t know he’d hurt me.”

  I held the ice pack to her over Jake’s long body, and Adelaide laid it over her swollen knee, letting out a held breath. “That’s a help. Thank you, honey.”

  She didn’t seem to realize the endearment had slipped out, but it spread over me like warm syrup. Perching on the club chair cattycorner to her, I leaned forward. “Jake was the reason you fell last weekend, wasn’t he?” I said quietly.

  Adelaide lowered her eyes to the dog with a soft smile, stroking his fur. “You didn’t tell Ben you were having trouble with Jake because you didn’t want to worry him or make him feel bad when there was nothing he could do about it,” she said. Her gaze shot abruptly to mine and she held it. “It’s very lovely that you were able to take care of his dog so he could give his full focus to this project that’s so important to him.”

  She spoke slowly and carefully, and I heard what she was really saying.

  “I won’t tell him,” I promised.

  fifteen

  Another middle-of-the-night klaxon call tore through my consciousness and plucked me out of a sound sleep.

  “Gooboy. Thas gooboy, Jakie,” I mumbled reflexively. “Go sleep now.”

  Closing my eyes, I was just drifting back off when another growling bark yanked me awake again. “Okay, Jake,” I muttered, trying to sound authoritative while half-conscious. “I’m safe. That’s enough.”

  I rolled over and squeezed my eyes shut, but I knew it was no use now—I was fully alert. Dammit. I sighed and twisted onto my back, dropping a hand to pat Jake, hoping it would keep him quiet and soothe us both to sleep.

  When the next bark came, though, I realized it had followed another sound—the bleep of my phone.

  My heart gave a thud. Middle-of-the-night calls never meant anything good. I pushed myself up and leaned over to the nightstand, grabbing it off the charger. Three texts.

  Hey, Doc.

  Doc, you awake?

  Brook?

  What the hell was Chip Santana doing texting me at—I peered at the time stamp on the last message—three fifty in the morning? Way out of bounds. I let the phone drop to the nightstand and flopped back onto the bed. Sleep was off the table for a while, but I pressed my eyes closed anyway, hoping it might sneak up on me.

  My phone beeped again. Jake let out another bark.

  Annoyed, I sat up and grabbed for the phone.

  Really need to talk, the message read.

  Chip, it’s 4 in the morning. We can talk tomorrow. I hit send.

  I sat there in the darkness holding the phone for a few moments, but it stayed blank, and after a moment I set it back down and lay back against the pillows.

  Beep.

  “Rrrruuuffff!”

  Was he kidding? I shot up, yanking the phone to me to tell him this was inappropriate and unacceptable.

  Sorry. I know it’s late. Just really in bad shape and u always help. Talk 2mrw. Night, Doc.

  I held the phone in
my hand, staring at the lit screen.

  No. This was a bad precedent to set. Whatever was troubling Chip would wait till morning. And he needed to learn to self-soothe. I set it down and lay back, willing myself to go to sleep, but monkey mind took over.

  U always help.

  Up until recently I would have said Chip Santana would never have admitted he needed help, let alone asked for it. This was another milestone in the journey he was working so hard to make.

  I sat up yet again. I’d just make sure he knew this couldn’t become a habit, I decided as I reached for the phone.

  What’s the matter?

  His reply came back almost immediately: Talked to Katie.

  Oh, boy. Are you okay? I texted. Although considering their history, “Is she okay?” might have been the better question.

  The phone stayed silent in my hand for so long I wondered if my text had gone through. Just as I was about to resend, his reply came.

  Shattered.

  I frowned. What happened?

  She called & agreed to talk. Met here—work. Got ugly.

  She came to your dad’s dealership? Why would she agree to meet Chip in such an isolated place after all that had happened between them?

  There was another long pause, and then: Wanted to talk face2face.

  So the two of them met in the all-but-deserted car dealership after hours to talk about...what? And what did he mean by “Got ugly?” And where was Katie now? There was a stubbornly paranoid part of me that kept reverting to fear for her safety. If Chip’s anger had gotten the better of him and he got violent, would he tell me?

  It was ludicrous to try to have this conversation via text, and my instinct was just to dial his number. But that felt like another boundary I didn’t want to cross—middle-of-the-night texts were bad enough without adding middle-of-the-night consultations. And I guessed there was a reason Chip hadn’t called in the first place. It might be easier for him to talk about what had happened in the more impersonal milieu of texting.

  So what happened? I prompted when no elaboration seemed forthcoming.

  After a lengthy pause I got three texts in a row: She spent an hour telling me all the ways I was a bad byfrnd. Knew all that. Said I wanted to make it right. She said no way. Tried to say sorry and she said she wldnt accept it. We argued a lot. Ill nvr be able to make this right. She hit me—just whaled on me.

  Did you hit her back? I texted quickly, my heart pounding.

  No answer.

  Chip—did you hit her back?!

  No, Doc, come on! I wldnt do that. Pls believe me.

  Guilt pricked at me, but not too long ago that question wouldn’t have been so out-of-the-box with Chip. A certain shooting/strangling incident came to mind.

  And then I remembered how that incident had ended.

  Did you have sex? I texted.

  A few seconds ticked by. Would you be mad if I said yes?

  My lungs deflated. What was the point of working so hard—with Chip, with anyone—if people just engaged in the same behaviors over and over, and then kept coming to me wondering why their life didn’t look the way they wanted it to? What good did it do to push myself so hard if I wasn’t really helping anyone?

  These are your decisions, I texted wearily. It’s not up to me to be mad.

  His answer came quickly. I was just joking, Doc. Bad taste again. Sorry. No, didn’t sleep with her. Promise.

  Chip...My fingers hovered over the keypad. What? Was I going to go into his inappropriate sense of humor now, at—I glanced at the phone—four fifteen in the morning? Why bother? If I just ended this pointless communication and tried again for sleep, maybe I could get a couple more hours and at least salvage something of this night.

  Another text came in as I sat there, undecided.

  U make me nrvs, Doc, and I say stupid things. Pls 4give me.

  I sighed, rereading his message several times.

  It’s ok, I finally wrote. You don’t have to be nervous with me, Chip. I’m on your side, and I won’t judge you.

  I waited a few moments, but when no reply came I finally put the phone back on the charger and flopped exhaustedly onto my back. Chip and I had arranged to meet again on Monday, four days from now—well, three, since it was technically already Friday. We could finish discussing this then.

  It took a long time, but finally my mind quieted in the silence and I felt the edges of consciousness begin to blur.

  My phone beeped again—I’d forgotten to silence it. Jake barked. Sighing, I groped for the phone and brought it to my face.

  U r everything I wish I deserved.

  I had a hard time concentrating with my clients the next day, and had to work to stay focused in my radio appearance on the Kelly Garrett show that afternoon.

  Chip’s last text had thrown me. What did he mean by it? Was he just feeling bad about himself? Did he mean he didn’t think he was up for working together to make amends to his exes after all?

  Was it some kind of declaration?

  I was still parsing out the single sentence by the time Ben swung by on his way into town that night to pick up Jake—I actually felt a little sad to see the dog go, though I’d get him right back Sunday. We had a date scheduled for tomorrow—Friday Ben planned to spend with his mom, running her around to take care of errands she couldn’t handle on her own, and then taking her out to dinner.

  After he left I called Sasha.

  “Hey,” I said without preamble. “What are you doing tonight?”

  “Dinner, movie, then a ton of sex. You want to join us? Not for the sex part.”

  “Ugh—Sash, please!”

  Part of me did want to join them. But what I really wanted was an evening with my best friend—to talk about Ben and figure out together our relationship. About Jakie, and my efforts to yield some kind of obedience from the willful dog. About Adelaide, and my guilt because I’d spent the kind of evening with Ben’s mom that I’d never had with my own.

  About Chip, and what the hell his cryptic last text message meant.

  We couldn’t do any of that in front of Stu. I loved my brother, and we were closer than a lot of siblings. But he was still a man, still my brother—still Stu, for that matter, with whom trying to discuss emotional nuances was like describing a rainbow to a meatball.

  “I’ll catch up with you guys on Sunday at my parents’,” I said. “Go have couple time.”

  She made an attempt to change my mind, but it didn’t take much to convince her I’d be better off staying home and getting some much-needed respite from my overfull schedule.

  I loved that she craved solo time with Stu, but sometimes, like tonight, I couldn’t help a twinge of jealousy.

  Antonio Moretti was full of remorse.

  “It was a total accident, you guys. I swear,” he said as soon as the session started that Saturday morning, practically lunging for the claw.

  I barely held in an exasperated sigh as I saw a few of the women roll their eyes. We were seeing a familiar pattern in his sharing, but Antonio never seemed to be progressing—just repeatedly transgressing. “What happened?” I asked reluctantly.

  He regaled us with the story of his latest conquest: While he was taking Mary Lynn’s car for an oil change, the woman in the waiting area next to him started chatting.

  “I tried to ignore her. I had a magazine and I just buried my face in it—figured she’d get the message, right?”

  “And did she?” I said automatically, already knowing the answer.

  “Nah, she starts in on her divorce, and how it was just finalized, and her husband used to take her car in for her too, like I was doing for my wife—what a good husband I was. And then she started to cry, you guys, and tell me how lonely she was, and...I swear to God, I didn’t mean to do it.�
�� He shrugged and put the claw back in the center of the circle, then sat again.

  “But you did do it.” My tone was flat.

  “Well, yeah, of course. But it wasn’t my fault—I really tried not to.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Antonio, if your dick came out of your pants who else’s fault is it?”

  In the silence that greeted my outburst, Antonio and everyone else in the group stared at me with shocked expressions I was pretty sure mirrored my own. That was not how I talked to clients. Ever.

  I shot to my feet, hands clenched at my sides. Muttering, “Excuse me for a moment, please,” I beelined out of the room, hearing a buzz of curious chatter fire up among the group as I stalked down the hall of the yacht club and into the ladies’ room. I slammed the door shut behind me and locked it from the inside, then leaned back against it. My hands shook.

  Where had that come from? Yes, I was frustrated with Antonio. I thought we’d been making some good progress when he’d finally realized how much his behavior hurt Mary Lynn, no matter how he tried to justify it. No wonder I was irritated with him—here he was again, abnegating responsibility for controlling his impulses, as if we’d never even had that session.

  And here I was, I realized, abnegating responsibility for not controlling my own.

  Classic: The therapist mirroring the patient’s behavior.

  I don’t think I’m better than any of you, I’d told the group at our first session. But that was a lie, wasn’t it? I’d been sitting in judgment of Antonio for doing the exact same thing I’d just done—letting my base impulses take over my better judgment.

  I rubbed my eyes, scratchy with lack of sleep. I’d thought last night I’d sleep like the dead with a respite from Jake, but I’d found I missed his breathing, the sound of him moving around beside me.

  That and I’d lain awake gnawing on Chip’s message again like Jake gnawed on my textiles.