Page 6

Tuesday, April 2

Simon Lowry tries to swing his leg over the armrest of the padded chair but is stopped by a twinge of pain. The discomfort in his left groin reminds him that sooner or later he’s going to have to have that hip replaced, too, just as he did with his right one.

What kind of self-respecting rocker has two prosthetic hips? he wonders again. If Jeremy could see me now, he’d be kitty flipping in his grave.

Like Jeremy, his best friend and cofounder of their band, Simon was convinced they would both die young. Only one of them realized the self-prophecy. Then again, it wasn’t a fair comparison since Jeremy had taken his own life after he found his naked wife in Simon’s bed with her arms and legs bound to the bedposts and her face still flushed with arousal.

Pushing aside the uncomfortable memory, Simon sits up straighter and focuses on Dr. Danvers. She’s seated in the matching chair across from his, one leg crossed over the other and hands folded in her lap, as still as the aloe vera plant on her desk.

“Trust me, Dr. D, I’ve dropped a ton of acid in my day.” Simon chuckles. “Shit, being in the music industry all these years… there isn’t a drug I haven’t dabbled in. But I got to tell you that trip with MDMA and ketamine, now that was something!”

Dr. Danvers leans forward in her seat. “Something good or…?”

“Something amazing.”

“Elaborate, please.” Dr. Danvers shows him one of those cute closed-mouth half smiles, as she pushes her glasses back up her nose.

Simon loves that look. It reminds him of his sixth-grade teacher, Miss Mullen. How he used to crave that shy grin of hers, too. And the resemblance between the two women is uncanny—both lean and flat-chested, with narrow hips, mid-length dark hair, long angular faces, and soulful eyes that ooze sensuality behind their glasses. Before he even realized the world of BDSM existed, Simon used to fantasize about binding his teacher’s limbs with rope and taking her like that. On her desk. On his desk.

Simon has had similar thoughts about his therapist, too, but there’s nothing sexual in what he’s experiencing now. All he wants at the moment is Dr. Danvers’s approval. Maybe his second wife was right? Maybe his whole life has been spent trying to compensate for his perpetually detached and disapproving mother?

“I went places…” Simon struggles to put yesterday’s wild double psychedelic trip into words. “Like I saw and heard things. Plants that walked. Animals that talked. It’s so weird. Like it was so intense, but it was also so… peaceful.”

“A paradox?”

“Yes!” Simon snaps his fingers. “Exactly!”

“And how do you feel today?”

“In a word or three? Fan-fucking-tastic!”

“And the urges?”

“Nothing. Not a sniff.”

“Even right now? You’re not sexualizing me at all?”

“No.” He scoffs, but his cheeks heat.

At times, Simon wishes he hadn’t been so candid with Dr. Danvers. When he first came to her clinic, Simon claimed it was for treatment of his habitual cocaine use. But after a few sessions, he also confessed to his sexual addiction and compulsive fantasies. Without, of course, sharing everything.

“I’m telling you, Dr. D, ever since we—our tribe—started the ketamine, my urges have faded. All of them. And honestly, since yesterday, not one single filthy thought has crossed my mind.”

“You do understand, Simon, that some of what you’re feeling is probably due to a placebo effect?”

Simon bellowed with laughter. “I don’t care if you flushed me with salt water and gave me a sugar pill.”

“I didn’t give you any pills—”

“I know. I know. Those MDMA pills just fell off the back of some truck.” He chuckles. “Point is, Dr. D, I saw what I saw. And I felt what I felt.”

He’s rewarded with another one of the doctor’s small smiles.