Ricochet (Addicted #1.5)(41)

I shrug. “I don’t know. I was the quiet girl. No one bothered me unless I was pulled into Lo’s fights. Normally, no one ever really acknowledged me, except when there was a group project. I was kind of…just there.”

“Did you have any friends?”

“Yeah, Loren…my boyfriend. He, um, is in rehab.” I scratch my neck.

“It’s okay, Lily,” she says easily. “Rose explained your situation. We’re going to talk about him in time.”

I’m suddenly afraid she’s going to say that he’s the root of all of my problems. What if she tells me to never see him again? What if that’s the solution? My chest thrums with rapid anxiety that I end up blurting out, “I know that I have an unhealthy relationship with him, but there has to be a way that we can be together and work through our problems. Right?” Please say yes. Please don’t end this for me.

Dr. Banning inspects me for a long moment and tucks a piece of her bob behind her ear, but it pops back out, so thick and so much volume that it won’t stay in place. “For now, I want to concentrate on your addiction, Lily, and then we’ll talk about how your boyfriend plays into it. You don’t need to worry, okay? We’re going to try to work through this together to find the answers you want.”

I relax only a little and slide further back on the cushions to refrain from bolting out of the office. “Okay.”

“Okay,” she nods and glances at her notebook. “Let’s go back a little in time. I want you to tell me about your relationship with your parents. How did they fit into your life? And how do they fit into your life now?”

I squint, processing these relationships that I desperately tried not to quantify for the longest time. “When I was younger, my father was always busy. He still is. I’ve never hated him for it. His success has given me a lot of opportunities.” Hell, I wouldn’t have been accepted to Princeton or the University of Pennsylvania without my family’s prestige.

“You’ve never been upset that he couldn’t spend more time with you?”

I shrug. “Maybe when I was little and didn’t understand how his hard work paid for our house and our nice things. But now, I only wish he’d retire so he could have more time to himself.”

“And your mother? She doesn’t have a job, does she?”

“No,” I say. “My relationship with her is…” My brows furrow, trying to put to words how my mother used to treat me compared to the other girls. “…I’m not sure how it was. But now, she leaves me alone. We talk briefly here and there, but that’s about it. It’s probably mostly my fault. I just haven’t been around much.”

“Why is that?”

When I got to college, I started going to less and less of the weekly family luncheons. Then I just kind of stopped all together. It was really the only scheduled “family time” and I always found a way to bail. For sex.

I take a shallow breath before saying, “I didn’t find them all that important. Not compared to my own stuff, I guess.”

“Your own stuff being sex,” Dr. Banning clarifies for me, her tone clinical.

I nod once. “It sounds awful, doesn’t it?” I mutter, the shame slithering in like a virus.

“It sounds like you have a problem, and you’re seeking help for it. That’s a monumental step.”

“I just want it to stop,” I confess.

“Be more specific. What exactly do you want to stop? The sex?”

I shake my head. “Not all together. But my brain feels like it’s going to explode sometimes. Even if I’m not doing it, I’m thinking about it almost every minute of the day. It’s like I’m stuck on this loop and I don’t know how to get off it. It’s exhausting.”

“It’s normal for addicts to be consumed by their addiction, especially sex addicts where a large portion of the obsession is in terms of fantasizing. How have the fantasies changed since Lo left? Are they less frequent?”

I pause and think about this for a moment. “I think so,” I say with an unsure nod. “I spend more time missing him. So maybe, yeah.” Of course that might change if he returns to me. He’ll be home and I’ll have more energy to fantasize. God, I hope not. I just want my brain to stop.

I take another sip of water. “Are you going to ask me about sex?” So far, I feel like we’ve been beating around the topic. Aren’t therapists supposed to be direct?

Dr. Banning tilts her head a little, and I’m lost to her pretty brown eyes that remind me of Loren. Only, his have amber flecks that resemble his favorite alcohol. “Of course. Do you feel comfortable enough to talk about it? Rose says that the topic makes you nervous.”

She told her that? I wonder how transparent I am in front of my sister. “What do you want to know?” I ask.

“What does sex mean to you, Lily?”

I’ve never been questioned about sex before. Lo even dodged the topic in order to avoid the subject of alcohol in return. “It makes me feel good.”

“In your questionnaire, you wrote down that you like having sex in public places. Why are you okay with this, but you’re not comfortable with ménage or voyarism? Take your time to answer. I know you probably haven’t thought about this before.”