Bedside Manners (The Breakup Doctor Series Book 2) Page 5

  And I was beginning to think that this crazy idea might actually work.

  six

  Ben picked me up that evening at six and drove us downtown. When we pulled into the parking lot of the Plantation, I slanted him a look.

  “Pretty fancy,” I said, my eyebrows lifted.

  One side of his mouth rose. “We have to celebrate your first group session.”

  The 1902 manor had been refurbished and operating as a restaurant since I was a kid, but I’d been there only a few times—once with a prom date when I was a junior, and with Mom and Dad for my graduation from both high school and college. It was designed for special occasions—a wood-lined bar that looked painstakingly hand-carved, chandeliers over each linen-covered table, and a brick fireplace in the center of the main dining room.

  The host seated us at a table by the staircase in a corner, in a cheery yellow room I suspected was once the formal parlor, and Ben ordered a bottle of red wine for us. When the sommelier arrived with it he flourished the bottle toward me and then Ben, opening it with great flair and making rolling hand motions over the neck, presumably to waft the aroma toward us. Then he tilted the bottle over one of the balloon glasses to pour off a taste, finishing the pour with a stylish twist of the bottle to avoid spilling a drop.

  “Monsieur,” he said with a slight bow, proffering the glass as if it were frankincense and myrrh.

  Ben tried to hide his grin, but I saw it playing around his lips when he noticed mine plastered across my face. “Merci,” he said, schooling his expression and taking a sip. “Excellent, thank you.” He gestured toward me. “Please pour for the lady.”

  “Just so, sir.” As the man spilled the dark red cabernet into my glass, he added, “If I may be so bold, might I recommend the veal this evening? It’s supremely satiny and tender. Fed entirely on a diet of vegetables and squash.” He brought his bunched fingers to his lips and kissed the air an inch in front of them. “Exquisite.”

  By this point I had my face buried in the bowl of my wineglass.

  “Thank you, my good man. We will certainly give that our deepest consideration,” Ben said seriously.

  As soon as the sommelier was out of the room and well away from earshot, I giggled. “Oh, my God. I love him.”

  “Vegetables and squash. That must be why the veal is so satiny.”

  “‘My good man’?” I teased. “Have you been taken over by a Jane Austen novel?”

  “I couldn’t help it. He was contagious.”

  I reached across the table spontaneously and clasped his fingers in mine. “You didn’t have to do this, Ben. But it was very sweet. Thank you.”

  “To the Breakup Doctor’s new venture,” he said, holding his glass aloft. I lifted mine to meet it.

  “I should be taking you out—it was your idea for me to do these in the first place.”

  “Tell me how it went.”

  And I did—through the appetizers we ordered (crab cakes and oysters Rockefeller), and into the entrée, a fancy chateaubriand we shared that required half an hour to prepare. I didn’t mean to hog the conversation, but Ben asked question after question, so interested in the session and me and my work that my tongue tripped along of its own accord.

  He always really listened, and had such an easygoing good nature. Those shouldn’t be such unusual qualities—they seemed like just basic human decency—but I’d dated enough to know a man like Ben was rare.

  Finally we moved on to other topics, like the house he was building for a quirky millionaire in Cedar Key, who wanted the design to include a sensory deprivation room—black floor, walls, and ceiling, with no windows, where he could go and “commune with his inner oneness.”

  We talked and laughed through the entire meal and dessert—a crème brulee so silky it was almost imperceptible on our tongues except for the explosion of sweetness and the crunch of the sugar topping. When the bill came I tried to split it with Ben, but he refused.

  “I wanted to do this, Brook. I want tonight to be special,” he said, and the sincere expression he wore kindled a little glow inside me.

  And suddenly I wanted the night to be special too. I’d been holding Ben at arm’s length for so long, telling myself I was making sure we weren’t a rebound relationship, that I wasn’t jumping in too fast, that I was being careful. When the truth was that I was being cowardly. So afraid of making the wrong decision again that I made no decision at all.

  I made one at that second. I’d found an extraordinarily good man, and—for better or for worse—I was ready to move things forward and see what happened.

  “Ben,” I said, my voice sounding breathless in my own ears. “Can we go back to my house?”

  I’d realized on the charged drive home what my invitation had sounded like, but once inside I guided us to my sofa in the living room, and I turned on two lamps instead of the candles I usually preferred in the evenings.

  I wanted to come clean, and I wanted to be well lit to do it.

  “There are some things I need to tell you,” I said. Ben just looked at me with a calm, patient expression I wished I could take a picture of. It was exactly how I always thought of him: steady and open.

  It was time I was open with him.

  “This is about me, not you,” I began. “And not us.”

  He smiled slightly, but I could see a hint of unease behind it. “Is this how the Breakup Doctor starts a breakup? Because if it is, you can just be honest with me.”

  “What!? No! Oh, my God, I’m sorry, I’m just not sure how to...” I blew out an impatient breath and stood. “Okay, let’s just dive right in.” I reached to unzip the side of my dress.

  Ben’s eyebrows lifted.

  “Oh! Not that. I mean, yes, I want to do that, but not...Oh, good lord. Just...here.” I turned slightly so he could see my shoulder as I revealed my giant tumescent jackass in all its hideous glory.

  Ben’s eyes widened. “That’s quite a statement,” he said.

  I didn’t know if he meant the tattoo itself or the actual statement inked underneath it.

  “Inadvertent,” I said. “I was drunk and made a really stupid decision.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you.”

  Bless him. “That’s what I want to talk to you about. It wasn’t like me—at all.” I pulled my sleeves back up over my arms and zipped the dress, sitting back down on the sofa next to Ben. “Can I tell you how it happened?”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Okay.” I took one more fortifying breath, and then plunged in. “A little over a year ago I was engaged.”

  His eyebrows crept up his forehead, but he didn’t interrupt.

  “A month before the wedding my fiancé got cold feet—I didn’t know why then, and I still don’t. But instead of trying to find out, or talk to him, or even work through it on my own, I acted like it was fine. Ate all the deposits, got my things, and bought the first house I found that I could afford, just to prove that it didn’t impact my life at all.”

  Ben nodded, some understanding lighting my murky past. “That’s why this was such a fixer-upper when I met you.”

  “Right. Mortgage in haste, repent at leisure. Although I love it now.” I looked around at my still-in-progress living room—Ben had drywalled for me after Sasha and I made a hash of stripping the ancient wallpaper. I hadn’t figured out what color to paint, and I hadn’t hung curtains or accessorized yet, but I felt a fierce rush of pride. “I love that it’s mine. That I did this—but that it also represents pieces of all the people I care about who’ve helped, like my dad, and Sasha, and Stu—and you. Thank you for that, Ben.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said simply.

  This man deserved every last bit of honesty I could offer him. I reached over and took his hand, and he wrapped his fingers around mine. “I
was pretty devastated by my fiancé’s...by Michael’s decision.” Despite how long I’d refused to say his name—to let anyone else say it—speaking it aloud to Ben seemed to rob it of the power it used to hold over me. “But I didn’t know it at the time. Or I didn’t let myself feel it, anyway. Instead I jumped right into another relationship—Kendall.”

  “The guy you were dating when I met you in the hospital?”

  Ugh. I’d landed in the ER for a tetanus shot after a fight we’d had, when I’d tromped down on a carpet tack strip while venting my anger on home repairs, instead of to Kendall, where it belonged. For a therapist I’d made every mistake in the book. When I’d met Ben—in the hospital with a broken arm from the job site—and he’d been kind to me, I’d blurted out that I had a boyfriend. Which I had, at that point—until he broke up with me by text message the next day.

  I nodded. “Yes. It ended right after that. Badly. And I kind of lost it. Hence”—I pointed a thumb over my shoulder—“the tattoo. It wasn’t about Kendall,” I added. “Or it kind of was. And it kind of was about Michael too—I’d never really dealt with my feelings about our breakup.” I looked down at where our fingers were still entwined. Where Ben hadn’t let go, despite my revelations, and I wondered why I hadn’t told him sooner.

  “I didn’t used to deal with a lot of things. I thought it made me strong if I didn’t let anything affect me—so I shut everything down and didn’t show anyone anything but the ‘good stuff.’ But I’m trying not to be that way anymore. I like you, Ben.” I squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back. “I mean I really like you.”

  “Brook,” he said, his voice barely a vibration of the air. “I really like you too.” He lifted my hand to his lips and pressed a soft kiss to my fingers, and inexplicable tears pricked my eyes.

  “I don’t want to shut down with you,” I whispered. “But I’m trying to take baby steps, or I’ll freak myself out. And that’s why...Well, that’s why we haven’t...um...”

  “Brook, I’m really only in this for the sex.”

  I froze. “What?”

  “I’m kidding.” Ben grinned at me, and my heart started beating again. “Look, I love your company. I have a great time with you. You’re fast becoming my favorite person to talk to. This is a good thing—a really good thing. Things will happen when they happen. So just don’t worry, okay? I’m happy.”

  My chest felt so full I figured I’d grown a cup size. “I’m happy too,” I said. And the truth of that felt like a flower opening up all around me.

  He reached over and stroked his fingers down my arm, and I shivered. “For the record, that’s not to say that I don’t want to do those...other things,” he said in a voice so low and sexy it vibrated my Fallopian tubes.

  I let out a shaky breath. “Me too, actually. Some nights it’s all I can do to stop.”

  He was still grinning. “Good.”

  And now that we’d talked—now that Ben knew everything, and the sky hadn’t fallen and a nuclear bomb hadn’t detonated and I wasn’t left in a helpless puddle of patheticness on the ground—it seemed ridiculous to wait any longer. I liked Ben. I trusted him. And, God, I wanted him.

  But he was already standing, holding out a hand to pull me to my feet. “I’d better get home,” he said, bringing me close. “Jake and I are working on the Fiat first thing tomorrow morning with my buddy Malik.” I’d met Malik—he and Ben had been rebuilding an old Spider convertible together for the last year and a half.

  I let my arms wrap around Ben as if they belonged there. “Jake’s helping, huh?”

  “Are you kidding? If that dog had thumbs he’d have his own auto body shop.”

  He leaned in and kissed the smile off my face.

  seven

  “So, what’s happening with the sex?”

  Sasha was lying on my outdoor sofa on my lanai, her body sprawled across the seat and her legs angled up over the back. Periodically she reached for the daiquiri I’d planted in front of her and held it down below the sofa, where she could sip from the bendy straw by just turning her head, rather than going to all the trouble of lifting it.

  I was cradling my drink in my fingertips to avoid melting it too quickly with the heat of my palms, balancing the glass in my lap in the overstuffed patio chair cattycorner to her, my feet propped up on the wrought-iron cocktail table. Frozen drinks seemed a little like overkill for a Sunday afternoon, but it felt like ages since I’d gotten to sit like this with Sasha—just Sasha—and lazily talk over our lives, and it felt like an occasion.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing is happening with the sex yet. I told you that. We’re—”

  “‘—taking it slow.’ Bleh. Bo-ring.” She slurped her drink. “I’m assuming that when it happens I’ll know about it?”

  “Almost before he does,” I assured her. A smile crept across my face. “We talked about it, though.”

  Swinging around to sit up, Sasha folded her legs underneath her and regarded me rapaciously. “Phone sex? Hot. Tell.”

  “Not phone sex, pervy. I mean we talked about doing it, what it means...why we’re waiting. You know.”

  “Oh.” She sounded like she’d opened a gift and found a vacuum cleaner, slumping back in the sofa. “Still boring.”

  “Smart,” I corrected her. “I like him, Sasha. I mean, a lot—more and more, actually. And I don’t want to ruin it, or move too fast, or do anything before I’m more certain. You have to admit I’ve had a bad run lately.”

  “True dat,” she admitted. “And you are the responsible one of us. Look at me—I’ve leapt all the way in with your brother.”

  “Well, in your defense, you have known him for nearly twenty years.”

  An expression took over her face that I could only call dreamy. “Yeah. It’s crazy. But it feels so...normal.”

  It tickled me to death to see her like this. For once, Sasha seemed secure. Content.

  “And you know the best part?” she asked softly.

  I smiled back at her. “What?”

  “We have so much sex. Everywhere. All the time.”

  “Agh! Stop it! Why do you always do that?” I said, jumping up and snatching her nearly empty glass away.

  Sasha was practically doubled over with giggles. “Oh, God,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “Because it is hilarious. It never gets old.”

  I was a mental health professional. I knew that if I stopped reacting, she’d stop provoking. And yet she got me with it—every single time. “You’re disgusting,” I said. “I’m getting more drinks. Subject change when I get back.”

  By the time I’d blended another pitcherful, Sasha came in to scavenge for food, and we took a ragtag assortment of cheese and crackers, candy bars, beef jerky, and grapes outside with us. I knew Sasha would probably only eat the grapes.

  “So,” I said as I ripped into a piece of jerky. “I tone hin aba Maca.”

  She lifted a brow. “Beg pardon?”

  I finished chewing and swallowed. “I told him about Michael.”

  “Stop it! You just said his name!”

  “Yup. And I said it to Ben.”

  “No. No way. What did you say? What did he say?”

  I recapped our conversation to her—adding the bits about Kendall too, and I even told her about showing him my tattoo.

  “Who are you?” she asked, shaking her head in wonder. “I can’t believe you said all that. Out loud. To a boy. It’s like...Oh, my gosh, Brook, it’s amazing.” Her eyes grew wide and solemn. “It’s like you’re becoming human.”

  I threw the last bite of beef jerky at her.

  I’d missed talking things over with her like this. I loved that she and Stu seemed so happy together, but sometimes it felt like I’d lost a bit of each of them—like I was on the outer valence of their atom of two. And Sasha must hav
e sensed my feeling of neglect—she’d suggested this aimless afternoon on my lanai before we headed over to my parents’ for Sunday dinner.

  “Hey,” I said, readjusting myself sideways in the chair and swinging my legs over the arm to face her. “You remember that guy from Faryn and Jan’s party last March?” I asked. “The bartender?”

  Raising her eyebrows, Sasha drawled, “Uh, the one I bailed out of jail, along with you, after you two sneaked out of the party in the middle of the night and nearly humpback-whaled on the sand? Your former patient? Chip Santana? That bartender? No, not really.”

  “Shut up. I’m seeing him again.”

  “What!?”

  “No, no—not like that! He just asked for my help.”

  “Brook, is that a good idea?”

  “I think it’s okay.” I told her about Chip’s mission to make amends to his exes. “I’m not taking him on as a client. I’ll just be sort of...well, an adviser now and then. I think it’s healthy.”

  “For him, maybe. But is it healthy for you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Um, naked horizontal beach volleyball? The fact that the guy flips your switch? Ben?”

  To get out from under her laser stare, I reached for my drink. “I thought about all that. It’s strictly professional, Sash. He asked for my help. And he’s changed.”

  “People don’t change.”

  “Of course they do!” I yelped. “Otherwise you just invalidated my entire profession!”

  But Sasha shook her head adamantly. “Not like that. Not guys like him.”

  I sighed. “Sash, I appreciate your concern. And I get it—normally I might agree with you. But you have to trust that I’m a professional. I know when a change like this is genuine, and believe me—Chip Santana is a different man. He wants to be a better person. How can I turn down someone who comes to me with a request like that? That’s the whole reason I got into this line of work in the first place.”