Sometimes I got mad, hating what she was doing to me. To us. Goddamn you! Call me. Stop doing this to me!
“You look like shit,” Arash said, eyeing me as I reviewed the contracts he’d placed on my desk. “You getting sick again?”
“I’m fine.”
“My man, you are anything but fine.”
I glared at him, shutting him up.
IT was nearly six and I was on my way to Dr. Petersen’s office when Eva finally reached out to me.
I love you, too.
The words wavered as my eyes stung. I typed back with shaking fingers, nearly dizzy with relief. I miss you so much. Can’t we talk, please? I need to see you.
She didn’t reply before I reached Dr. Petersen’s, which blackened my mood to the point of violence. She was punishing me in the worst possible way. I was as jittery as a junkie, desperate for a hit of her to function. To think.
“Gideon.” Dr. Petersen greeted me at the door to his office with a smile that quickly faded when he saw me. Concern drew his brows down. “You don’t look well.”
“I’m not,” I snapped.
He calmly gestured for me to take a seat. I remained standing, roiling inside, debating leaving and searching for my wife. I couldn’t stand around and wait anymore. It was too much to ask of me.
“Maybe we should walk again,” he said. “I could stand to stretch my legs.”
“Call Eva,” I ordered. “Tell her to come here. She’ll listen to you.”
He blinked at me. “You’re having trouble with Eva.”
Shrugging out of my suit jacket, I threw it on the couch. “She’s being irrational! She won’t see me … won’t talk to me. How the fuck are we supposed to work things out if we’re not even talking?”
“That’s a reasonable question.”
“Damn right! I’m a reasonable man. She, however, is out of her damn mind. She can’t keep doing this. You have to get her here. You have to make her talk to me.”
“All right. But first I need to understand what’s happened.” He sat in his chair. “I’m not going to be much use to you if I don’t know what’s going on.”
I pointed a finger at him. “Don’t play your head games with me, Doc. Not today.”
“I think I’m being as reasonable as you are,” he said smoothly. “I want you to work things out with Eva, too. I think you know that.”
Exhaling in a rush, I sank onto the edge of the sofa, then dropped my head into my hands. It was throbbing viciously, pounding front and back.
“You’re fighting with Eva,” he said.
“Yes.”
“When’s the last time you spoke with her?”
I swallowed hard. “Sunday.”
“What happened on Sunday?”
I told him. It came out in a rush that had him scribbling frantically on his tablet. The words spewed out in an angry purge, leaving me feeling wiped out and exhausted.
He continued to write for a few moments after I finished, and then his gaze lifted to my face. I saw compassion and it tightened my throat.
“You cost Eva her job,” he pointed out, “a job she’s told us both that she enjoys very much. You can see why she’d be upset with you, can’t you?”
“Yeah, I get it. But I had valid reasons. Reasons she understands. That’s what I don’t get. She understands and she’s still cutting me off.”
“I’m not sure I understand why you didn’t discuss this with Eva beforehand. Can you explain that to me?”
I rubbed at the back of my neck, where the tension felt like steel cables. “She would’ve stewed over it,” I muttered. “It would’ve taken her time to come around. In the meantime, I’m trying to manage a ton of other shit. We’re getting hit from all sides.”
“I saw the news about Corinne Giroux’s book about you.”