“Well, that sounds boring as shit.” He continues to roll his pen between his fingers.
“Tell me about it.” His timely, uncensored comment settles me enough to relax back into my chair. “How about you approve me for work and I won’t be so bored?”
“Let’s see how we go today.” He doesn’t reject the notion completely, so there’s still hope.
“Deal.” I nod, a little extra spring in my voice.
“Okay, how are we going to play it today, Sergeant? You want me to try and pry everything out or do you want to cut to the chase and get started?”
He starts the session the same way each time.
Same question. Same bluntness. Same result.
Trepidation trickles through me as I try to figure out which way is less painful.
I’ve done both ways, and to be honest, neither way is pretty.
“I don’t know. How about you start? I’ll try not to be a dick, and we’ll see how we go?” It’s all I can offer.
“Have you spoken to her?” He opens with the sucker punch.
Liberty.
He knows a little about her. It’s the one thing I’ve been reluctant to talk about; however, judging by his play, he’s about to tackle it today.
“Not yet.”
“Communication is key here, Liam. Not only with me but also when you leave here. For me to clear you for work, I need to know you’re talking not just in here, but out there too.”
“You don’t think I know this? Why do you think I’m here? I know I need to talk to her, but I don’t know how.”
“You answered your own problem. All you have to do is talk.”
“She’s going to be pissed.” I reveal a little more.
Do you blame her? You left in the middle of the night and haven’t been back since.
“Why is she going to be pissed?” He presses for more.
“Because I’ve shut her out.”
“And why have you shut her out?”
This is how he works, and maybe before now, his style of peppering me over and over with question upon question would have had me shutting down, but I can’t keep doing that. I need to be able to work through this. I need tools to deal.
“I don’t know why I left.”
“Oh, come on. Yes, you do. You need to be honest with yourself.”
“I don’t know,” I lie as my brow starts to sweat.
“Why have you shut her out, Liam?”
“Because I'm embarrassed.” I pause, waiting for three longer-than-normal beats, then another two before I realize he’s expecting more from me.
“By how I acted. By how unpredictable my grief is,” I blurt before I can censor myself. “One minute I’m fine, and life seems to be moving on, and the next, I’m in a fucking shower, breaking down in front of my woman.”
“You broke down in front of Liberty?” Fuck, there I go, getting carried away. I was hoping to keep that little tidbit of information to myself.
“I shared some things.” I don’t delve too much into it. For one, I’m unsure if what I shared was real or if somehow I made it all up. The night is an array of broken images. Sterling and Kota played a part, but most of it flashes to Liberty climbing into the shower, holding me while I burdened her with my shit.
“What did you share?”
“I don’t know. Things….”
“Okay, let’s leave it there for a minute and talk about your father.” He changes tactics. Hitting me with another question, equally as frustrating. “Tell me something you’ve never told anyone before.”
“Sometimes I dream about saving him.” The words spill out of my mouth before I can process them.
“How do you feel in those dreams? When you save him.”
“Happy. Relieved.”
“And do you talk to him after?”
“No, usually, it’s the end of the dream, and then I wake up.”
“And what do you feel after you wake up?”
“Anger.” I pause. “Then heaviness here.” I thump my hand over my heart and tap it twice. The dream is rare. Normally, it’s a replay of what did happen, rather than what I wish would happen.
“What did you tell Liberty that night?” I don’t see the ploy to get me to open up. My head is still in disarray with the dream talk.
“That I didn’t understand why he would do that to me. That I don’t know what people want from me anymore. That I don’t know how to act. How to be.”
Fuck.
“How do you think you should be?” He doesn’t give me a chance to be annoyed, hitting me with another tough question.
“Over it? Fuck, I don’t know.” I adjust my position in my chair, irritation surging through me.
“Do you think you’ll ever be over it?” His twirling of his pen stops, and the uncrossing of his leg alerts me to his change in observing me.
“Isn’t that why I’m here? To get over it?” I shrug while I pick at a hangnail on my thumb.
“I’m not asking you why you’re here. You know why you’re here. We both know there is a lot of pain underneath this fa?ade you have constructed. I’m asking you, do you think you will ever get over your father’s death—”