Page 22 of Dirty Diana
“I’m just worried…” I pull the covers off us.
“Ignore the fucking smoke, Di—” The high-pitched beep of the smoke alarm cuts him off.Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Oh shit!” I grab a pillow and stand on the bed waving it furiously. “Fan the smoke!”
Oliver runs to open a window. “Fuck. They’re sealed.”
The alarm keeps screaming.Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.“Oliver!” I fan harder as the sound gets louder and louder.
Oliver’s erection is gone, defeated by the alarm. “I’m calling the front desk,” he yells.
Too late. The sprinklers come on and water rains down. Everywhere.
Chapter 8
—
“We didn’t know what else to try. We both agree that we’re sinking.” Two minutes into therapy and Oliver already looks defeated.
“Is this how you feel, Diana?” Miriam asks.
Oliver and I found Miriam online, typing:best couples therapist, Dallas,into the search bar.
“What if we can’t afford the best one?” he’d asked me.
“We’ll go with like number four or five on the list.”
That was Sunday night, two weeks after the hotel incident. We’d been out to dinner with L’Wren and Kevin, the first time Oliver and I had been together without Emmy around. When we got in the car, tired from a long night of pretending everything was normal betweenus, Oliver held his head in his hands and neither of us spoke until he said, “My mom suggested we talk to somebody.”
“Yourmom? Oliver.”
He shrugged.
We didn’t fight. We drove home, paid the sitter. We opened my laptop and searched and landed in Miriam’s lap.
Oliver crosses and recrosses his legs on the couch beside me. I’m not sure where to look—at him? At her? Looking at both of them is impossible. I pick Miriam. From the neck down, everything about her is soothing to me—the way her many linen layers drape across her body, her hands resting gently in her lap. But her sharply angled bob and glossy dark-red lipstick suggest someone a little more severe, which confuses me. I scan her office for clues, but I don’t recognize a single book on her shelf, and her hands are clasped in a way that makes it impossible to tell if she’s wearing a wedding band. “Diana?” she repeats.
I clear my throat and rest my eyes on her red-stained lips. “I think our rhythm has been a little off. Yes.”
“Well,” Miriam says. “I want to commend you both for taking such an important step together. So maybe as a place to start, let’s have you take turns and state how you feel around the other person.”
I sneak a peek at Oliver. He looks so vulnerable, staring down at his own hands. It all feels like a performance. We’re sitting on a couch together and not touching, like strangers. This is crazy! He’s my person! I want to scoop him up off the couch and sayLet’s get out of here. We don’t belong here, right?I will him to turn and look at me, too, but he doesn’t.
“No accusations or judgments,” Miriam says. “I just want you to tell me how you feel when you’re around each other.”
“Which of us would you like to go first?” Oliver asks.
Miriam smiles. “Since you asked, Oliver, maybe you?”
Oliver lets out a long breath. “Around Diana,” he says, meeting Miriam’s eyes, “I feel unattractive.”
There’s a prickly sweat at my hairline.
“Why is that?” Miriam asks.
“Because Diana doesn’t touch me anymore.”
“That’s not true,” I interject. “I touch you every day.”
