Held A New Adult Romance(63)

"Madame Bovary," she says, breaking the silence. The book is sitting on top of my purse.

"Yeah. I read it in college. Didn't really get it then, but I figured I might have better luck second time around."

She sits there with that perfect, blank-yet-friendly expression. Waiting. I'm going to have to talk about last night. So I deflect. "Have you...read it?" I ask.

"Yes," she says. "A long time ago."

She doesn't elaborate. It's not her job to do so, after all. She's here to draw things out of me. "I thought the ending sucked," I say, sounding bratty to my own ears. But really – it’s one of those ‘broccoli’ books - the ones that are supposed to be so good for you that when you don't read them they leave you feeling like a snotty little kid who won't eat her vegetables.

"It's a sad ending," says Dr. Stahl. "But inevitable, I think. Why didn't you like it?"

"I don't know. Why couldn't she have gone off with Leon instead? Instead of sitting around being unhappy forever?"

"You think she would have been happy with Leon?" she asks. Oh, she's good. She knows how to get to the heart of the matter.

"I don't know," I say. "All I know is I wouldn't eat poison if it didn't work out. Sometimes you've just got to...I don't know...carry on. Keep breathing."

She says nothing. Her silence is a blank page, waiting for me to scrawl my dysfunction all over it. It's now or never, I guess.

"I talked to Jaime last night," I say.

"Okay," she says, folding her hands.

"I told him. About what happened."

"And you hadn't talked about this before?"

"No. I mean - we'd talked about Justin. But not about...you know. That." I did it. Everyone knows I did it. Why just I can't say it? "It's not much of an ice-breaker, is it? 'Hey, I just met you and this is crazy, but I killed my last boyfriend.'"

Dr. Stahl inclines her head slightly. "And how did that make you feel?"

"Not as bad as it should. Is it wrong that I'm sick of him?"

"Jaime?"

"No. God, no. Justin."

"Okay."

Oh God. She's giving me nothing. She sits there quietly waiting for me to blow - I know it's what she's supposed to do, but sometimes I hate it. I know it's for my own good but it's still another form of manipulation, and I don't respond well to having my buttons pushed. For obvious reasons.

"I hate him." It comes out like a reflex, like a sneeze. "I fucking hate him. I hate that he's still in my head. I hate that he's under my fucking skin - literally. This skin graft? Drives me nuts. Sometimes it itches and burns like Voldemort just walked into the goddamn room or something. He came into my life and he poisoned it, and now he's fucking dead and he's still poisoning me. He's still got a hold over me. I am never going to be the person I could have been - because of him, because he put me through hell - and please, please don't give me the talk about being a stronger person because of it, because fuck strength. Fuck scars. I don't want them. I just want to be free."

The tears come, hot and angry. "Last night was so hard. I wanted to talk. I wanted him to know everything, but it was like I had to keep holding myself back. I could have just...jumped him. Like before. I guess you figured out I slept with him, right?"

"I had, yes."

Her expression is infuriatingly bland. "You think I'm a slut?"

"No," she says. "I think you were in a position where sex was one of the few cards you still held. It was a negotiating technique - a distraction. It was the one power over Justin that he allowed you to have."

"Which I lost," I say, and it's hard. So hard. "When he raped me."

My face is streaming. She nods towards the Kleenex box and I grab the little paper tongue and pull. "Are you okay?" she asks.

I blow my nose and nod.

"You've never used that word before," she says.

I swallow. My eyes burn. "No," I say. "I know. But it was, wasn't it? I didn't consent to what he did, and he must have done it, because there was no-one else."

"Sex without informed consent is the legal definition of rape, yes. But when we've talked about this in the past you've always resisted that definition. And you resisted it at the time, as I recall."

I nod again. The air between us is calm, but strangely charged. Receptive.

"What do you think changed, Amber?" she asks.

"I don't know," I say, quietly. "I guess I didn't want to be a...victim. And don't give me that bullshit about 'survivors'. So they rebranded it - whatever. It's still rape, right? They can't soften that word."

"No. They can't."