What We Called Therapy After Dark novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Eyes Open

Marin refuses to undress and sets her own terms for the room: one minute, eyes open, dress on, ending with her fingers on Mitch's racing pulse.

I took the paper from Dr. Keene's hand and read it standing up.

It was one page, typed, with my mother's signature at the bottom.

The date was last Friday.

It said she consented to a course of exposure therapy for her daughter and her husband, including undressing and supervised contact.

The line above her name said she understood the sessions would be private.

"She never said a word about this," Mitch said. He had read it over my shoulder.

"She didn't want to frighten you," Dr. Keene said.

Mitch let out a short, hard laugh.

Then he crossed the room, caught the door handle, and shook it.

The lock held.

"Open it," he said.

"Mitch. Sit down."

"Give me the key."

Dr. Keene didn't move his hand from his pocket.

"If you leave," he said, "I will tell Joanna you refused treatment. She has already told me what she'll do."

He looked at me when he said it.

"She'll take Marin to her sister's in Ohio, and the marriage will be over. Joanna said so herself."

I knew my mother.

She said things like that quietly, with her hands folded, and then she did them.

When I was fourteen she had sold my father's piano in a single afternoon because it made the house too sad.

Mitch stood at the door with his back to us, and his shoulders were rising and falling.

I looked at the form again.

Then I looked at the doctor.

"I'm not taking off my dress," I said.

"Then we have a problem," Dr. Keene said.

"We have a different one," I said. "You want something to happen in this room. I'll give you something, but it's going to be mine."

He tilted his head.

He looked interested, which was somehow worse than looking angry.

"Go on."

"The dress stays on. We do one minute. Eyes open, nobody speaks, and nobody touches anybody unless I say so."

"And if I say no?"

"Then you can explain to my mother why her treatment ended with me screaming through your door."

The office had thick walls and carpeted floors.

I had noticed that on the first day.

He thought about it for the length of one slow breath.

"Compromise is part of the process," he said at last. "One minute. Stand where you like."

Mitch turned around.

"Marin, you don't have to do this."

"I know."

I didn't say what I was thinking.

If I walked out, I would be doing exactly what my mother had arranged for me to do, which was nothing.

At least this was a choice.

"Come here," I said.

He looked at me for a long moment, and his jaw worked.

Then he crossed the carpet and stopped in front of me.

"Closer than that," I said.

"Marin."

"Arm's length. Not farther."

He stepped in until the toes of his shoes were an arm's length from mine.

It was closer than we had stood in months.

I could smell the cedar on his hands from the shop.

It was the smell I had walked past every morning on my way out the door.

"Begin," Dr. Keene said, and the pen scratched on his pad.

I looked up at Mitch, and he looked back.

His eyes were dark brown with a ring of gold in them, and I had lived in his house for six years without knowing that.

He did not blink.

I thought of ten reasons to look away.

I did not look away, and neither did he.

The air in the room felt thick, and the lamp hummed.

I heard the small sound of his breath catching, and it was not the sound of a man who was only angry.

"Thirty seconds," said Dr. Keene.

My hands wanted to move.

I kept them still at my sides, and my knees pressed together under the skirt.

Mitch's eyes dropped to my mouth and came back up.

It lasted less than a second.

It was the first time he had let me see it.

Something low in my stomach pulled tight, and I hated that Dr. Keene could probably see it too.

"Forty-five," said Dr. Keene.

Then the doctor spoke again, softer.

"Marin. Take his wrist."

"You said nobody touches unless I say so," Mitch said. His voice had gone rough.

"She said it," Dr. Keene said. "I'm asking whether she will."

I looked at Mitch.

He gave a short nod.

It was permission, and he had never given me anything like it before.

I lifted my hand and wrapped my fingers around his left wrist.

His skin was warm, and the tendons were taut under it.

His pulse hammered against my fingertips, fast and heavy.

It was not the pulse of a man who felt nothing.

He looked down at my hand, and his throat moved.

"Marin," he said, very low.

It was not a warning.

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