Unexpected Love (BOYXBOY)

Chapter 16

"So what do you think your dream meant? What was your subconscious trying to tell you?" the doctor asked, leaning back in his chair and eyeing me thoughtfully.

"I really don't know," I sighed, already having answered this same question at least half a dozen times.

"Don't you want to figure that out?" he prodded.

"Yes, I need to know," I answered firmly. I just wished I could figure it out. That was the problem. If I had any clue what it had meant, I would have told him.

"Dreams can be a tricky thing," he continued. "Some people think they don't mean much of anything, while others think they unlock the door to our deepest fears and the feelings we can't acknowledge during ordinary waking hours. We can analyze what the symbols in your dream may have meant, but you'll have to decide on your own how you want to use that information to help in your healing process."

I just nodded absently. My healing process ...

It had been nearly a month after that dream, in which my dead mother had come back to life, kidnapped Toby, and tried to kill both of us. And here I was, sitting in my shrink's office. I had been to several therapists over the course of the month but hadn't liked any of them. We finally found Dr. Frazier, and for some reason I felt more comfortable opening up to him. I told him about my life with my mother, the beatings, meeting Ryan, the rape ... everything. It was the first time I had told my life story in its entirety to anyone, and just doing that felt like an enormous burden was lifted off my shoulders.

Dr. Frazier's office wasn't at all what I expected a psychiatrist's office to look like. For one, it was brightly lit, and there were no antique mahogany furniture, no walls lined with massive tomes on various psychological disorders, and no leather couch. Instead, I sat on a comfy, upholstered sofa, and Dr. Frazier -- who actually did look like the stereotypical psychiatrist, with long, unruly salt and pepper hair and a large beard -- sat in a chair opposite me, holding a legal pad which he used occasionally to take notes.

That night when I had woken up from the nightmare about my mother, screaming, crying, and shaking, I had ended up waking everyone in the house. It took some anxiety medication from Maggie, and both Ryan and Toby holding me tightly, to get me to calm down. But I wouldn't tell them what the dream was about. It was then that Maggie decided that getting me into therapy was a top priority.

It was now the end of February, and during the past month, I hadn't experienced the dream again, although what meaning it held continued to haunt me, and I found myself becoming more and more protective of Toby and clingy with him. I always insisted that he invite Cody to stay at our house rather than going to Cody's place (using the excuse that I wanted to hang out with my friend, too, which wasn't entirely untrue). I also spent a lot more time cuddling with Toby. Ryan never questioned me about it, and I hoped he just thought I was trying to be a good "brother."

Something else that I had recently noticed, but perhaps should have picked up on sooner, was that while I had been making a valiant effort to get to know Ryan's friends better, he seemed to be neglecting them a bit. Sure, he talked with everyone at lunch and hung out with them when it was all of us together, but it felt to me like he wasn't as close with his friends as before. I thought that was especially evident with Mikey, who before I came around had been Ryan's best friend. Other than when we'd gone to see Mikey after the "Van Epps Incident," Ryan and Mikey hardly ever talked or hung out together anymore.

I was a little surprised that I was worried about Ryan not spending enough time with his friends, because normally I would have been ecstatic that Ryan wanted to spend all of his time with just me. But for some reason, it didn't seem right that the rest of his friends had sort of been relegated to the back burner. I brought it up with Ryan once, but he brushed it aside, and no one else had complained, so I just decided to drop it.