What We Called Therapy After Dark novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Garage

Mitch did not come out of the garage all day Saturday.

I watched the light under the big door from my bedroom window.

He had dragged the old cot out of the loft, and I could see its shadow through the side glass.

I texted Nikki at noon.

Nothing happened, I wrote.

She wrote back: Liar. Eat something.

I ate a piece of toast standing at the sink, and it tasted like paper.

I kept replaying the way he had said "I can't."

He hadn't said "I don't want to."

By night I had stopped pretending to read.

At eleven I put on the yellow sundress, the first one, the one my mother had laid out.

I stood in front of the mirror and looked at it for a long time.

Then I took off my shoes and walked across the wet grass in my bare feet.

The side door was unlocked.

Mitch was sitting on the edge of the cot in a gray T-shirt and jeans, with his elbows on his knees and a half-empty glass of water in his hand.

He looked up when I came in, and he didn't look surprised.

"Go back to the house," he said.

"No."

"Marin."

"Your rule, Mitch." I stopped in front of him. "Read it to me."

He stared at me.

"Nothing happens outside that room," I said. "That was the rule. Say it."

"Nothing happens outside that room."

"Then this isn't happening outside that room. Because there's no room. There's no doctor, no door, no mother. There's me and you."

He put the glass down very carefully on the floor.

"You're eighteen," he said.

"I've been eighteen for nine months. I know what I'm asking."

"I'm your stepfather."

"You're the man who stops when I say no. You're the only one in that house who ever stops." I took a breath. "I'm not scared of you. I'm scared you'll say no because you think I'm a kid who doesn't know what she wants."

Mitch looked at me for a long time.

"I think you hate me," he said, very low. "I think you dress like that to prove I can't touch you. I think this is a game you play with a man who can't win."

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