Page 95 of Regal Feather
I should’ve added something about possibly developing a sex addiction.
Yes, Ever had told me all about how that wasn’t a thing beyond right-wing propaganda, but whatever. If it worked, it worked, and it wasn’t leaving my thoughts. Or my therapy’s office? I was still unclear on how much she wanted me to open up. She had said something about not being the kind of therapist who thought everything went back to childhood and upbringing, so maybe she just wanted to talk about the military, and Stuart. And why I’d clung to whatever that was like a lifeline, even with all the blurred thoughts and feeling like I wanted to throw up more often than not.
Even when I had thrown up.
Fuck.
I was supposed to be good. To be in control.
“I’m ordering Vietnamese,” Ever shook me off my thoughts. “We haven’t had any since I picked you up from the airport.”
And he was terrible at coming up with excuses, but I loved him anyway.
“Okay.”
The small concession had him grinning wide. It was the two of us against the world, again.
My hands moved to his hips, my lips to his like there was a magnet connecting us.
“Do you want cake, too? The place we hang out at by the bus station has started delivering, too, and they have red velvet that’s actually authentic, and it’s so good.”
“Sure.” He was the one with a sweet tooth, not me, but it wasn’t like I could tell if I’d even have appetite for pho, so the food might as well be something he actually wanted. “Order whatever. Then join me in the shower?”
I’d never been the type who thought showers helped to clear up my head. It would certainly not be that type of shower if Ever joined, but in no universe would I not want to shower, or do anything, without him if the choice was there. My therapist could psychoanalyze that all she wanted, I could be ten times more stubborn than Ever.
“If I join you, we might not be out of it by the time the delivery person arrives.”
I huffed.
He wasn’t supposed to be the voice of reason. “Fine.”
I didn’t want to be reasonable—there was a small voice at the back of my head begging to throw a tantrum and pout and complain until I got my way. That voice was quickly squashed.
I was an adult. I was Ever’s bodyguard, for fuck’s sake, even if it was on paper only and there had never been a single threat against him or anyone around him. Just because his parents could go a bit paranoid didn’t mean that they didn’t have trust placed on me. Expectations.
I shook my head. I was a twenty-nine year-old on a funk because someone else’s parents had a vision of me that didn’t quite fit. Was that something I could bring up on Tuesday, or did that fall into the childhood and upbringing stuff she said she wasn’t interested in?
Huh.
Had she said that she wasn’t interested in, or that she didn’t think everything went back to that? Did it mean something different? Was it worse if my case traced back to childhood and parents and all of that?
Fuck.
No, I was not going to think about therapy again until I was back on that waiting room on Tuesday.
I was just going to finish scrubbing off, and eat some food. Maybe I’d grab Ever and convince him to eat in one of the couches in the living room, and he could be on my lap even if it made it very inconvenient to actually eat without making a mess.
Yeah, okay. That sounded like a plan. I could focus on making Ever squirm, and keep his weight on me, and that would be all.
Until Tuesday.
Very adaptive behavior.
The psychiatrist on base used that word a lot. My new therapist hadn’t used it today.
Nuh-uh.
All those thoughts weren’t going to be a thing until a professional was sitting in front of me.
