Let It Be Me

Part 5

Eva pulled another tissue out of the box and handed it to me.

"Tell me again why you're torturing yourself?"

We were sitting on the floor at the foot of her bed drinking warm beer out of the can and eating cold pizza. My nose was so stuffed up from crying that I couldn't taste anything which was probably a good thing. I tossed the last few bites of crust back into the box and leaned back against the mattress.

"Because I'm an idiot", I admitted dejectedly.

"No seriously, I just want to understand this. So what part of what he said made you think running away was a better option than like...throwing him down on the bed and tearing his clothes off?" I blew my nose and looked over at her slowly.

"Did you not hear me? I said because I'm an idiot." We stared at each other silently for a second until the look on her face made me laugh. "Ugh, stop it" I said throwing the tissue in the almost full basket next to me. "I don't deserve to be laughing right now."

"So what do you deserve?" She asked pointedly. I thought about it for a second and then grabbed another tissue.

"Not him."

She slapped her hand down on the floor and looked at the ceiling with a groan. "Right. Because if a guy's not slapping you around and treating you like shit then he's too good for you, right?"

"I didn't say that" I muttered. She rolled her eyes at me and went to the back of her closet to grab another beer.

"You know what my therapist says about you?" She asked, throwing some shoes behind her to get to the case she'd hidden.

"WHY are you talking to your therapist about me?" I yelled back. Maybe it was the beer but I chuckled a little in spite of myself. She backed out of the closet and crawled back to me, passing a can my way and popping the top on another.

"What the hell else am I going to talk about? I don't have any problems."

Eva's mom had put her in therapy years ago when she started skipping classes. Which was fine with Eva. She thought her psychiatrist was hot.

"Fine" I conceded. "What did he say?" She held her hand up as though she was about to say something poetic.

"He said you view yourself through the lens of your father." I made a face.

"What kind of fortune cookie bullshit is that?"

"It's not bullshit" she said taking a swig of her beer. "Jonathan is a brilliant psychiatrist." I laughed and crushed my empty can, tossing it under the bed with the rest.

"Jonathan? You're on a first name basis with your shrink now?" She pulled her long black hair over her shoulder and started twisting a strand of it through her fingers.

"He said you stay with Danny because in some fucked up way he reminds you of your dad and the attention you get from him replaces the attention you're missing from your father."

I opened the fresh can she had handed me and furrowed my brow at her.

"Really?" She nodded. "And how much does your mom pay for this guy to psychoanalyze me?"

"And" she held up her finger, "you reject anyone who can offer you actual love because it's easier for you to believe that you're unlovable than it is to believe that your dad is a horrible asshole who deserves to eat shit and die." I took a second to absorb that because honestly, something about it stung. A lot. But I shook it off and drank down half the can in my hand rather than continue the train of thought.