“Yeah.” She reached up and swept her fingers through it.
My gaze dipped to her red glossy lips and then to her loose-fitting jeans with their rolled bottoms and back up to her tight Rolling Stones T-shirt. I remembered her matching bra and panty set from our weekend and forced the thought from my brain.
She stepped into the hallway and the raw energy buzzing between us was nearly deafening. I wanted to reach out and pull her against me, except she wasn’t mine and I wasn’t hers. But fuck, right then, I wanted her to be. Never in my life had such a firm and unyielding thought about a girl ever entered my brain.
“What are you doing here?” She looked at the flier on the wall I had been studying.
“I could ask you the same question,” I said, stalling for time.
“I still see a counselor from time to time . . .” she said, stepping closer. “About my dad.”
“Oh, right,” I said. The way she had talked about it on the bridge, I got the impression that therapy was a thing of the past, not something she continued to seek out.
“And . . . last weekend . . . brought up some things for me,” she said. “So I made an appointment.”
I knew that what she wasn’t saying was that spending the weekend with me had stirred some memories up for her—badly enough that she needed to seek out a counselor. I didn’t know how to take that information. Had being with me been too heavy for her as well?
God, what a mess.
“I’m sorry—” I started to say.
“No Nate, it wasn’t anything you did,” she said, reaching for my arm but then dropping it at the last minute. “Don’t take that on, too.”
I just stared at her, marveling at how well she got me sometimes.
“Is that what brought you here?” she asked in a low voice. I didn’t feel like I had to hide anything from her. She knew plenty was brought up for me over the weekend. Both when I saw my childhood home and then when I had those physical experiences with her.
As she adjusted the strap of her messenger bag higher on her shoulder, I tried to formulate an answer to her question.
“It’s easy, really,” she said. “All you do is walk in, say you want to schedule an appointment and they give you a sheet to fill out with your name, student number, and reason for visit.”
“See that’s the thing . . .” I said. “I don’t really know—the reason for my visit.”
She shook her head. “It’s not like you need to know exactly. You’ll figure that out as you go. Just say you’re dealing with a family trauma.”
“Family trauma?”
“Sure, that’s really what it is, right?” she said, looking into my eyes. “You had some experiences growing up and it . . . left a bruise on your heart.”
As she said this, she tapped two fingers to her chest to stress her point. I briefly closed my eyes. Holy shit. This girl.
“More like a black hole,” I mumbled.
“A black hole indicates that you possess such strong magnetism that everything gravitates toward you.” Her lips tilted up in a mischievous grin. “Don’t be so full of yourself, Square.”
Her kidding tone snapped me out of her spell and a burst of laughter erupted from my lips. She cleared her throat and then nudged me with her shoulder. “Go fill out the form, I’ll wait out here.”
She positioned herself near the wall and pulled out her phone to check her messages like this experience was the simplest thing in the world. I turned toward the door and then looked back at her, but she paid me no mind. I stepped over the threshold and then walked to the large front desk.
A middle-aged women with short brown hair smiled up at me. “Can I help you?”
“I . . . I’d like to make a counseling appointment.”
“Sure thing.” She reached down below and then pulled out a clipboard with a sheet attached. “Just take a seat and fill this out.”
My gaze darted to the couple of empty seats in the room. Some students looked up and the momentary shame I felt almost made me fly out the door. But then I realized they were here too, for their own troubles. Everyone had problems. Who knew what theirs were—maybe they were even worse.
I filled out the form, using Jessie’s trauma term, and then stood up to hand it back to the woman at the front desk. She looked it over and then scheduled me into a slot.
As I headed out the door, I felt almost buoyant. But the sheer fear inside me tempered it. I stepped outside and turned to find Jessie exactly where I’d left her.
“All good?” she said, straightening from the wall.
“Yep,” I said in a tight voice, still unsure of what the hell I had just gotten myself into. “I . . . I got an appointment. Thanks.”