Page 17 of Denim & Diamonds

February

“You’ve got to be kidding me…” The following afternoon, I stared down at the invitation I’d just opened. “What balls.”

The date printed was almost exactly a month from now. Which also happened to be the date of a board meeting. Great. Just great. Nothing like being beat up twice in one day.

“February?” I looked up to find Morgan standing at my door. “I thought you said you had therapy at one today?”

“I do.”

She pointed to the clock on my wall. “It’s five after.”

“Shoot.” I shuffled the mail strewn all over my bed into a pile. “I guess I lost track of time.”

“Is that all fan mail? God, you get almost as much as I do.”

“Not quite. These are all bills and other work stuff. I had my assistant send me my mail so I could keep up with things. ”

Her nose wrinkled. “Yuck.”

“Tell me about it.” I opened the nightstand and tucked the stack of envelopes inside. The wedding invitation was still on top of the pile as I slid the drawer closed. At the last second, I plucked it out. This should give me something to talk about today.

Morgan was still parked at my door. I wagged a finger at her as I passed. “No snooping. It’s just invoices and contracts.”

She held her hands up. “No worries. I don’t have any interest in bills.”

Trinity, my counselor, was already seated in her chair when I arrived at her office. I knocked lightly, though the door was open. “Sorry I’m late.”

She closed the notebook on her lap and smiled. “No worries. I was running a few minutes behind anyway, so it worked out well. Come on in, February.”

I took the seat on the couch across from her with the envelope in my hand.

“How are you today?” she asked.

I sighed. “I’ve been better.”

“What’s going on?”

I held out the offending mail. “I got this today. You’ve mentioned more than once that I don’t talk enough during our one-on-one sessions. Well, I have a lot to say about this.”

She opened the oversized envelope and slipped out the gaudy invitation. “Johnathan Augustus and Ilona Jones request the honor of your presence on May 14 to celebrate their joyful wedding vows.” Trinity looked up. “I take it this isn’t something you’re feeling joyful about?”

I shook my head. “Johnathan is my ex-husband. ”

“I didn’t realize you’d been married. When we talked about relationships, you mentioned you’d had one serious one, but it didn’t work out.”

I nodded. “Johnathan was my one serious relationship.”

Trinity opened her handy-dandy notebook and jotted something down before looking up again. “How long were you married?”

“Three years.”

“And how long ago did you divorce?”

“Everything was finalized a little more than three years ago.”

She nodded. “Can I ask what led to the divorce?”

“You can. But I’m not sure I’ll ever know the truth.

Johnathan and I dated for seven years before we got married.

He was my high school sweetheart. After the wedding, everything seemed to be going well, at least to me.

We never really fought or anything like that.

Then one night, he told me he didn’t love me the way a husband should love a wife.

At first, I blamed myself. My business had just started to take off, and I worked a lot.

I sometimes didn’t get home until eight or nine, and I went into the office on the weekends.

Johnathan put in a lot of hours, too, but not as many as me.

I suggested we go to counseling, but he didn’t want to try.

He basically gave me the ‘ it’s not you, it’s me ’ speech.

“After he moved out, I beat myself up over the things I should’ve done.

I could’ve come home to cook dinner once in a while, and I shouldn’t have stopped wearing pretty lingerie to bed like I’d done before we were married.

I thought I’d made my husband feel neglected.

” I stopped and stared out the window. “Then two months after our divorce was finalized, I had lunch with Ilona— my best friend . As soon as we sat down, she started to cry and told me she and Johnathan were seeing each other.”

Trinity blinked. “Your ex-husband is marrying your best friend?”

“My ex -best friend now. But yeah.” I took a deep breath in and blew it out. “Ilona and I had been best friends since elementary school. She swore up and down that nothing happened with Johnathan until after we were divorced. But I’ll never know the truth.”

“I’m very sorry that happened to you. It must’ve been a difficult time in your life.”

I shrugged. “It was. Thankfully, I had my work to keep me busy.”

“How did Johnathan leaving make you feel?”

I thought back, something I didn’t do often. “Alone, I guess. Abandoned. I remember one day I was looking at some old pictures of my mom. They were taken a few months after my dad left us for another woman. And I thought to myself—I feel like she looked at that time.”

“How old were you when your parents split up?”

“Twelve.”

Trinity opened her notebook and scribbled for a while.

I smiled sadly when she finally looked up. “You wrote an awful lot. Did you just figure out what Colonel Sanders put in his secret recipe for fried chicken?”

She smiled back. “Not quite. But I think we’ve gotten to the bottom of your commitment issues.”

“I didn’t realize I had commitment issues…”

“We’ve talked about a few men you’ve had flings with recently—Tobias, for example. But you haven’t dated anyone seriously since your divorce. ”

“My work keeps me extremely busy. I don’t have time for a relationship.”

“Do you think it’s possible that you use work to avoid getting too involved with men because you’ve been hurt by the important ones in your life?”

I sighed once again. “I don’t know. Maybe? I honestly try not to think about my dad or Johnathan.”

“That’s understandable. But there’s a difference between not having time to date and not making time to date. We’ve talked a lot about your job. If you wanted to, could you hire some sort of an operations manager to help shoulder some of the workload? Would that be financially possible?”

I had way more money than I had free time, so I nodded. “I could afford it. But it’s really difficult to find someone to trust to run a company you’ve built from the ground up.”

Trinity tilted her head. “Have you interviewed a lot of people for the position?”

Busted. She was a smart cookie, and I couldn’t help but smile. “Not a single damn one.”

Trinity chuckled. “Sometimes we tell ourselves we don’t have time to do the things we don’t want to do or that we’re scared to do. But it’s important to make time for the things that really matter in life. For example, our health, love, family, and personal development.”

I was quiet for a few moments. One thing I’d learned since arriving at Sierra was that the counselors often had a better perspective when looking at problems from a distance than the patients did close up. So I decided I might as well come clean on the rest of what was going on in my life.

“I started seeing someone recently. ”

“Do you mean Tobias?”

I shook my head. “No. Brock. He’s really great.”

She smiled. “Well, that’s exciting. Tell me about him. How did you two meet?”

I nibbled on my lip, not sure how to explain without getting myself in trouble. Trinity misread what was going on in my head.

“There’s no judgment here, February.”

“It’s not that… It’s—well, let me ask you something. Is everything I tell you in here confidential?”

“Of course.”

“So you can’t discuss what I tell you with the administration?”

Trinity shook her head. “You signed paperwork when you were admitted that says I can share private information with other members of the medical staff if it is critical to your care. Like, if we were changing one of your medications, I might need to discuss that with the nurses in charge of dispensing. But I don’t discuss what we talk about in here, if that’s what you’re worried about. ”

I still wasn’t positive I wasn’t going to screw myself by telling her the truth, but I needed to talk to someone about my feelings for Brock. So I decided to take the risk. “I’ve sort of been sneaking out at night and going to a local bar. I climb out the window in my room and go down a ladder.”

Trinity’s jaw fell open. I chuckled. “I told you about my best friend and my ex getting married and me having sex on a hot mic, and that’s the first time you’ve shown any real reaction.”

She smiled. “I’m sorry. I’m supposed to be trained to not show surprise or judgment, but the thought of you climbing down a ladder in the dark just caught me off guard.”

I smiled back. “It’s fine. I know it’s a little nutty.”

“So this man Brock, you met him at a local bar?”

“He owns it, yeah.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Well, he’s nothing like any man I’ve ever dated.”

“Do you mean physically or his personality?”

“Both. Physically, I usually date guys who look like my ex-husband or Tobias—tall, trim, clean-shaven, and well-dressed. Brock is tall, but that’s where the similarities end.

He’s burly, with broad shoulders and a beard, and he usually wears flannels and jeans.

But it’s more than that. Brock has a different set of priorities than any of the men I’ve been with.

He has five brothers, and he spends a lot of time with them.

He also prioritizes the people who live in his small town over the size of his apartment. ”

“Those all sound like pretty good qualities in a partner.”

My face fell. “That’s the problem. I don’t think I can be a partner to him.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one, I live in New York City, and he lives here. I like to shop and travel, and I barely see my sister once a year. Brock doesn’t like big cities and has deep roots here in Meadowbrook, and…I don’t want to get hurt if we can’t work it out.”

“Do you like him a lot? Think he could otherwise have long-term potential?”

I didn’t have to think about those answers. I nodded. “I’m crazy about him, and while it’s only been a couple of weeks, something in my gut tells me he could be something special in my life. ”