Not About Love

Chapter Ten

These four walls, the muted putty colored walls, held almost as many of my secrets as Malcolm's brain had. With every new therapist I saw, I made the same promise: no holding back. I wanted to know what was wrong with me, and I'd never figure it out if I held my tongue. Problem was, years of therapy hadn't gotten me any closer to the problem, never mind the solution.

Part of the problem with therapy is they won't give you the answer. A therapist isn't your own personal advice guru. Their purpose is to guide you to the answers to your questions. And bring up new ones, which often left me wanting to bang my head against the wall.

Doctor Edwards watched as I paced the floor, my bare feet sinking into the plush carpeting. It had been a week since Braden had spent the night, and there had been exactly one night since where we hadn't shared a bed. I wasn't quickly losing control. I'd already lost it. Somewhere around the third night I accepted it was inevitable, that we would have ended up in bed together. The attraction was too great.

"I know what you're going to say. You're going to ask me if I've talked to him, if I've gotten his take on the situation. And no, I haven't. For two reasons. One, because I don't want to be the girl who has to 'define the relationship', because I've never been that girl and I don't want to start now. Two, I already know. Asking him would be an exercise in futility."

The good doctor sighed and made an impatient gesture, indicating I should sit. "What do you already know?" She held up her hands when my mouth dropped open to protest. "Yes, you've told me before. I want to hear it again."

I stared at my hands, fingers twisted together in my lap. "He doesn't believe love exists. If you were to look up the word cynical in the dictionary, you'd see his picture. He thinks it's a pretty excuse people use to explain their initial attraction to each other and what holds them together after the attraction has faded is their own complacency. He thinks they're settling. They believe they will never be happier or do any better than they are right now, so they might as well stick with what they've got."

"Has he restated this recently?"

Had he? I chewed on my lower lip. It'd been a good six months since he'd said anything coming anywhere near his original declaration. "No," I said quietly. "But in all the time I've known him, he's never stayed with the same woman longer than a few months. It's like he enjoys their company, and when he feels the slightest inkling the girl's getting too attached, he drops her. In the entire three years we've known each other, he's never formed a deep, lasting connection with any woman he's dated. Sometimes I think he may be incapable of doing so."

"Yet you have a tough time reconciling his words with his behavior." The statement wasn't entirely unexpected. Doctor Edwards knew of my aversion to physical affection. She knew pretty much everything, and when I'd first started spending time with Braden, I'd poured out all the confusion I'd felt over his little touches and gestures, finally learning to accept them as they were - a casual display of affection for someone he considered a friend. I'd witnessed the same behavior between him and Jules, so I knew it wasn't anything special.

But I'd never had a chance to observe him interact with a woman he'd been dating, so I had no way of knowing if his current behavior was more par for the course. Part of me didn't want to know. I wanted to hold on to the illusion I was special. That I was unique, like he'd said.

It warred with the practical side, the side that said I was reading too much into it.

Whenever I wasn't around him this past week, I'd fought to keep my emotions from see-sawing, packing them into a box and slamming the lid shut. I was afraid the deeper I got, the harder it would be to walk away in the end.