Held A New Adult Romance(53)

I nod. Yes. A better one. One I trusted. One I could talk to. I'm still mad at her.

"Okay," says Katrina. "Perhaps maybe we could start with some deep breathing..."

"No," I say, getting to my feet. "I don't think so."

"Amber?"

I have to get out of there. I mumble out a bunch of apologies and stagger to the door. The handle doesn't turn and I start to panic, my heart roaring in my ears. When the door opens I'm so close to screaming that I run, before I make a fool of myself. No, no, no. This is not working. This is wrong. This is all messed up.

Someone is going to come after me - I can feel it. I shut myself in the car and drive to the place I'm still learning to think of as home.

I rented the penthouse suite of an old Art Deco block on Sunset. It's large and I'm short of furniture, so that the tangle of crap I salvaged from my old bedroom looks like the possessions of a kid who's run away from home. I bought an air mattress for the floor - tomorrow I'll go and get a proper futon.

The ceilings are high and the paint is peeling here and there, but the first time I saw beyond the giant A-shaped windows I knew I had to take it. There's a roof terrace with a small, mosaic tiled swimming pool with raised sides - not that much bigger than a hot-tub really. It looks kind of shabby compared to those incredible infinity pools you see today, but once upon a time this was someone's fantasy - to live on top of Sunset Boulevard and swim in a rooftop pool shaped like the half of the moon.

One of the original 1920's mirrors has miraculously survived numerous earthquakes. I catch sight of myself in the old spotted glass and jump as if I've seen a stranger. My hair is clumsily pinned up under a bobbed brunette wig, my eyes hidden behind giant bug-eye shades. Everyone who is anyone in Hollywood has at least a couple of wigs for emergencies.

I stare at the phone a long while before I punch in her number.

"Good afternoon, Dr. Stahl's office. Renee speaking. How may I help you?"

She sounds so perky that I almost hang up. My Dad spends most of his life bitching about the relentless plastic cheerfulness of Angelenos - "Nobody is that fucking happy all the time," - but it never bothered me much. Until I was unhappy. Then it made me want to hurt someone.

But I don't hang up. Something - guilt, loneliness, good old-fashioned shame - keeps me on the line. I clear my throat. "I'm a patient of Dr. Stahl's," I say. "I need to see her."

"I see. Can I take your name, please?"

"I'm Amber Gillespie."

There's a brief, telling silence and then Renee says, "Would you mind holding the line for a moment, Amber?"

I wait. I could hang up now, I guess. But then I hear Dr. Stahl's voice. "Amber? Is everything okay?"

I don't know why, but it's such a relief to say it. "No." Everything is fucked - same as it ever was. Possibly even more fucked than it was before.

"Would you like me to come over?" she asks, and I start to cry, stupid as it is.

"I...I moved," I say. "I rented a place. On Sunset. I went out of the house..." I'm babbling, desperate for approval, desperate for someone to tell me I'm not a terrible person, but it's too late for that, isn't it?

"I'll be right over," she says.

I tear off my wig. Underneath it my hair is sweaty, unwashed. I didn't want to shower. I didn't want to wash his fingerprints away. It seems pathetic, given that I've probably ruined his life. That makes another one. How many is that now? Three? Four?

For some reason I expect Dr. Stahl to turn her nose up at my new living arrangements, but when she arrives she surprises me. "This is beautiful," she says, perhaps the only value judgment I've ever heard her make.

"You think so?"

"Oh yes. Real old Hollywood." She smiles up at the peeling paint and sits down on the folding chair I offer her. "How are you, Amber?"

I sit down opposite her. "I'm still mad at you," I say, clinging to the rags of my outrage.

"I'm sorry if I overstepped a boundary," she says. "But given your history..."

I sigh. "Well, you were right."

She inclines her head and waits. I can't stay mad now - she's someone familiar in a world that feels like the surface of Mars. "I know what you thought I'd do," I say. "You thought I'd throw myself at Jaime, imprint on him like a baby chicken and start the whole dumb, needy, codependent cycle again, right?"

Dr. Stahl's expression barely alters. "I was concerned," she said. "That a relationship would be detrimental to your mental health right now, yes."

"To-mah-to, tomato," I mutter, and inspect my fingernails. They're a mess - all scratched from the sand at Big Sur. "You were right," I say, into the bubble of neutral silence she projects around herself like a confessional. "I slept with him. And I probably lost him his job. I don't know whether I did or not because I don't even have a phone number for him. How fucked is that? I don't even know him well enough to phone him and I fucked him anyway."