They Paid Me to Fix Their Marriage, So I Took Over Their Bed novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Keep It
In the last session of the day Hana puts her hand on Signe's knee, Signe writes REFUND across the form, ends treatment and turns the deadbolt.
Hana put her hand on my knee before her husband had finished his first sentence.
I had been a sex therapist for six years, and no client had ever touched me.
I had a rule about it, and the rule had a perfect record.
"We haven't had sex in fourteen months," Dane said.
He said it to the rug, with his big hands hanging between his knees.
It was five-thirty on a Tuesday in October, the last session of my day, and rain was hammering the porch roof outside my office window.
The loveseat was too short for two people who did not want to touch.
They had taken opposite ends of it anyway.
Hana's end was a foot from my chair, and she had been looking at my mouth since the second minute.
Now she leaned over the armrest, rested her palm on my knee through my skirt, and left it there.
It was warm.
She did not look at me when she did it.
She looked at her husband, who had stopped talking.
"I moved out of our bed a year ago," she said.
"I didn't say why, and he didn't ask, and I think we have both been waiting for the other one to go first."
"That's very common," I said.
My voice came out level.
It was the voice I used on every couple.
I could hear that it had no business coming from the woman whose knee was being held.
I looked at her hand.
She wore a plain gold band on it, on the right.
Hana saw me look.
"Kiln burn," she said. "I can't get it over the knuckle on the left. I make mugs for a living."
"You don't have to explain it."
"I know."
Her thumb moved once across the fabric.
I felt it in my stomach.
Dane's wedding ring sat on the correct hand, and he turned it with his thumb when he was nervous.
He was turning it now.
He was a very large man, six foot three, with a red beard going gray at the chin.
His forearms were scarred by rope, the forearms of someone who works on boats.
He had called me the week before and given his name and his wife's.
He had said they were married nine years, and I had put them on my calendar.
They had paid for all six sessions in advance, half on one card and half on another, because his had the better points.
I had thought nothing of that.
I did not think about it now.
I thought about the fact that Dane was watching his wife's hand on my leg, and that he did not look angry.
His knuckles had gone white on his knee.
His breathing had changed, and I told myself it was the loveseat, because it was a hard loveseat.
The room was so quiet I could hear the radiator tick.
Nobody moved, and nobody took anything back.
It was Dane who broke it.
"She does that to everyone with a prescription pad," he said, in a dry, flat voice.
"I don't have a prescription pad," I said.
"She hasn't noticed yet."
Hana laughed, short and surprised, and her fingers tightened.
It was the first time in forty minutes that either of them had looked at the other.
They looked at each other for a full second.
Then they both looked back at me.
I had a decision to make, and I knew it.
The clinical thing was to remove the hand, name what had happened and ask what it meant.
I had said those words to a hundred couples.
I looked at Hana's face, with the small gap in her front teeth and her black hair cut straight across her forehead.
She was holding perfectly still, waiting for me.
"What do you want me to do with it?" I asked.
I had never asked a client that.
"Keep it," Hana said.
I put my own hand over hers.
I slid it, slowly, two inches up my thigh, and I held it there.
Her breath caught.
Dane made a sound in his throat.
I did not look at him yet.
"Dane," I said. "Do you want her to stop?"
He took a long time.
"No, Doctor," he said.
I let go of Hana's hand, and she left it where I had put it.
I picked up the intake form from the side table.
It had their names across the top and the box marked Married circled in blue pen.
I took my own pen and wrote the word REFUND across the page in capitals.
I signed it, and I handed it across to Dane.
"As of this minute I am not your therapist," I said.
"Your six sessions go back on both cards tonight. I won't treat anyone I am about to put my hands on."
He read the page twice.
"What are you, then?" he asked.
"Yours, if you can be good about it."
I stood up, with Hana's palm sliding off my leg, and crossed my own office to the door.
Nobody had ever locked it from the inside before.
I turned the deadbolt.
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