The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(100)

“It’s possible,” Erik said, thinking of the cocaine left carelessly on David’s coffee table, “she was high when she slept with him.”

“Would you treat it as a reason or an excuse?”

Erik looked at her. “I don’t like to treat it at all.”

Diane gazed back, fingertips steepled beneath her chin. “I can’t speak to her experience, Erik. She’s not here. We’re talking about you and your experience. About what it was like, no matter the reason or excuse, to find her in bed with David. After everything you had been through together.”

“Everything I did,” he whispered. “Crawled through broken glass. Stared down the barrel of a gun. And it wasn’t enough. She made me feel useless.”

“Yes,” she murmured.

“And used.” His face twisted with the pain, eyes hot and throat tight. “It was almost like another shooting. Except she had the gun this time.” A swift rage filled him and he grabbed the tissue box and fired it against the far wall. “Fuck,” he said, sinking his face into his hand again. “Sorry. I’m not aiming at you.”

“I know,” she said calmly.

“She was… She had my life, Diane. She had my soul. She was like this.” Erik put his hands out, cupped together, open and receiving. “Like this. And I put myself there. Everything. Anything. No secrets. Stories about my father, memories of my father. I would put them in her hands and she would hold them. She understood me. And then it was ruined.”

“Was it?”

“You know how when they execute someone by firing squad, the captain takes the last shot. It has a name. It’s French, Daisy would know it.”

“The coup de grace,” Diane said.

“Yeah. The death blow. It killed me.”

“And you left.”

“I left. And I know why I haven’t gotten seriously involved with another woman since. Part of me never wants to hurt like that again. But God, this hurts even when I’m alone.” He glanced around but there was nothing to throw.

“It’s your heart,” Diane said, getting up herself and retrieving the tissue box. “Your heart is breaking.”

“It’s breaking now? I can’t do this again.”

“That would be a fair statement except you never did it the first time.” She set the box in his lap. “You can throw it again, just aim over my head.”

“I didn’t do it the first time?”

“Did you? Did you feel it at the time? You lost the love of your life. Did you take the time to feel all that grief and pain? Loss is trauma, same as a shooting incident or any act of violence. It’s emotional violence. You don’t forget. You simply suppress. And while you suppress, the grief gathers strength to come back at a later time. With more power to kill you. You may want to trust me on this one, Erik, because I see it a lot.”

He sighed, spinning the tissue box in his hands. “You think I have trust issues?”

“I think a Tibetan monk would have trust issues after your experiences. Who do you trust now, Erik?”

He gave up his most charming smile. “I trust you.”

“And I’m glad to hear it. But outside this office, who are the people closest to you? How many people do you let into your heart?”

“Not. Many.”

“I’m not surprised. You were eight and trusting in the world, and your father left. You were twenty-one and trusting in the world, and James came into the theater with a gun. Then you were trusting in your relationship with Daisy, and she slept with your friend. We have a lot going on here,” she said

Erik glared, thinking she sounding a little too pleased, as if he were a project. “I just want to stop hurting. I want to stop waking up in the morning and feeling like the day is already out to get me. Stop f*cking crying all the time. Jesus, it’s like I don’t even recognize myself anymore.”

“I don’t know if it will ever cease to be a painful subject, Erik. Possibly this is always going to matter to you. The goal now is to learn to open your heart and trust. Not so much trust in love or trust in people, but trust in yourself. So if you do get hurt—and that’s probably a when not an if—you will be able to survive. Because you have survived.”

“But I’m a wreck. I’m on meds, I’m in therapy. This f*cking woman ruined my life.”

“You’re alive. You’re here in this office taking it on. This is it, Erik, this is surviving. It’s not one event, it’s a process. And it’s not a linear process. You don’t start at point A and just get to point B and you’re fine again. It’s a matrix. It’s a three-dimensional scaffold you build around your life. You’ll find it’s cyclical. And seasonal. April might always be a tough month for you, it might be your haunted time of year. Or it might not. The point is you can lean into your weak moments the same way you can lean into joy. Pain makes joy sweeter. And joy helps you survive pain. You can’t have one without the other. If you open yourself to both, you are, by default, surviving.”

Erik nodded, his eyes far away, but his entire being listening to her.

“Do you feel all right about leaving it here, are you safe?”

“I think so.”

“If you get home and you’re not, you call me.”