Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(63)

“Evan?”

Bob and Melissa and the doctoral student, Lisa, all look at one another and grin.

“Um. He’s my occupational therapist?”

Melissa laughs. “Really? I’m actually supposed to call one, to help with ergonomics at the lab after my bike wreck. Can I call yours?”

“I’m sure you could, he works on campus at the medical center, and he’s really good, I think, if you I want, I could—”

“I’m kidding, Jenny. You know, because he’s hot.”

“Yeah?” I say, my neck burning. “I—”

“Oh, you’ve totally noticed,” this from Lisa.

I look at Bob. He looks at me, says, “I’m here for the Ohio-cured bacon.”

“He’s my OT. We have a professional relationship.”

Lisa pulls her cat’s-eye glasses down to the end of her nose and looks at me over them, like she’s a schoolmarm. “So fire him. There must be a kajillion OTs at the health-science campus.”

“I probably just have a crush because, you know. Whatchacallit.”

“Transference,” Bob supplies.

“Yeah, that.”

“Which, if he’s bringing you lunch, it’s also countertransference.” He digs into more bacon while Melissa and Lisa glare at him and I feel a little sick and too full of maple syrup.

“Dude,” Lisa says, “it’s probably not transference, there’s a whole bunch of criteria for that. Like, have you been really resistant to your exercises and things you’ve been learning in therapy?”

I feel a little queasier. “Yeah, kind of.”

Melissa interrupts, “But it’s not as if you’ve been going really deep into emotional stuff, either.”

I look at them, helpless.

Lisa sighs. “Well. Life is complicated. Also, Freud was a dick. Or dickless, I can’t remember.”

“Was the transference thing Freud’s? Or was it Jung’s? Or that Otto guy, maybe.” Bob wipes his mouth.

I close my eyes. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not a good idea. He really is professional, and this stuff hadn’t come to the surface until recently, and he keeps trying to talk about it. He came today, out of his office, to tell me I’m probably going to have to work with someone else.”

“What’d you say?” Melissa asks.

“It’s possible I said no?”

Melissa smiles, her funny dimple by her eye engaging. “You should probably figure out what you want, which, if I were in your shoes, would be really difficult, so I don’t blame you. I think, though, someone can be both a person who helps you, understands how to help you with their expertise, and someone who is simply a person you like, even really like, are even attracted to. It says something good about him that he would be honest with you about that and want to terminate the professional relationship no matter what happens, and honestly, you should probably listen to him.”

Oh. Yeah. Put that way, Melissa is right. I feel a little queasy again, for not being fair to Evan and that he obviously needed to feel okay with everything. I wonder if this was why he seemed so weird when he left today. “I’ll talk to him. I promise.”

“And you know,” this from Bob, who had pushed his plate away, “this kind of thing? It should happen more often. You were brought in not just because you’re a good scientist but because the lab thought you’d be a good fit. So, you know, start fitting.”

“Right,” I say. Because he is. I’d forgotten how right other people can be.

When I get home, I call my mom even though I actually want to call Evan and make things right. I tell her, right off, that I’m feeling better because maybe I am going to finally get somewhere in therapy. In everything.

“Were you not getting anywhere?” she asks.

“Not really,” I admit to her, and it feels so good to admit something to her, and it makes me realize that here is another thing I have lost, my easy honesty with my mother, my best friend, really, in all these months of trying to protect her. “I’ve been making it hard on myself, actually.”

“How hard?”

“The hardest. You know how I’ve always turned in all my homework, and signed up for all the class projects, and was the line leader?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I’ve been doing the opposite of that.”

“Tell me why, right now, I shouldn’t get on a plane.”

Then I say, “Because of Evan,” but then I talk mostly about me. About my breakthrough. I talk about how what I should get for Christmas is a small car with big side mirrors and indoor timers for all my lamps and a really good microphone for my computer.

I tell her about Bob and Lisa and Melissa.

“I’m going to do this, Mom,” is what I say. “It’s like a research question, just for me. I’m good at research. I’m a scientist. I’m going to use my scientist powers on this problem, and I’m going to work out if it even really is a problem, and I’m going to let people help me.”

“Is Evan single?” she asks, but I can tell she is laughing, too.

I’ll probably get some huge care package in the mail this week.

Then, I find myself thinking about C again, and how last night, the best part about it was that we had started to be friends.