I turned toward the desk.
“I didn’t touch him!His friend was there!Ask his friend!”
“What friend?”
“A blond boy.Tip was—we were talking, and that blond boy came up and started shouting.Screaming.I left.”
The blond boy, I thought.Jordan.Who had told me that he and Tip hadn’t seen each other the whole party.They’d split up.Which meant, Jordan had lied.
And which meant Tip had lied too, since Tip had told me the same fucking story.
I headed for the door.Without looking back, I said, “This is a nice house.If you’re smart, you’ll sell it and start taking vacations somewhere else.”
I managed to get out of the house without seeing my boy.Then I hurried down the road toward where I’d left the car.I turned over in my head possible answers, explanations.It wasn’t hard to guess why Jordan had lied about the party—a fight with his on-again-off-again boyfriend sounded like an excellent motive for what had happened to Tip.But what I didn’t understand was why Tip had lied too.Why Tip had been lying, for that matter, since the beginning.
I was so caught up in my thoughts that when my phone buzzed, I took it out of my pocket and checked it on autopilot.Then I had to read the message again.
It was from Darnell.
And it said,Where are you?We’re waiting for you.
22
I’d forgotten the appointment with the therapist, so I hauled ass back to Wahredua.My conscience made me stop once, at a Phillips 66, to squeeze out the load and clean myself up as best I could.As I sat on the cold toilet seat in the filthy little shitter, I thought it would have been funnier if it had been a Kum & Go.
The therapist Darnell had picked didn’t have one of those discreet offices tucked away in a sleek building.Instead, it was a clapboard house—and not even a nice one.The house was in a part of town that had slowly surrendered to strip malls and rezoning, and although there was a sign that clearly indicated that the house was now a business (nothing obvious, just Dell and Associates), it still looked like a family home, with its fading paint and dingy gutters and windows that probably should have been replaced thirty years ago.
The parking lot was in back, and Darnell’s car was already there, along with one of those little chode cars.Oh, and by parking lot, I mean the extended driveway.
It just got worse from there.The door with the open sign led into what had clearly originally been the mudroom.And then there was a waiting room.The furniture was mostly dark wood and leather.Throw pillows and a few accent pieces brought in pops of blue and yellow.A few paintings hung on the walls, and they were probably all supposed to look like vulvas.Okay, it wasn’t as bad as the outside had made me expect, but if I’d picked the therapist, there would have been aromatherapy shit and—I don’t know, candles.And the paintings definitely would have looked like dicks.
A door on the opposite side of the room opened, and a woman stepped out.She was solidly built, her hair almost totally white and in a sensible bob, and to judge by her skirt and top, she was a fiend for Kohl’s cash.
“May I help you?”she asked.
“Yeah, um.”I glanced around, but no help appeared.“I’m late.”
“Gray?”
I nodded.
She smiled.“I’m Pauline.Come in.Darnell’s already here.”
Of course he was.I was the one who’d been late.Darnell would have been on time.What had they been talking about while they waited?Me, obviously.How fucked up I was.How I’d fucked up Darnell’s entire life.That was just going to be the jumping off point, I figured.Gray, we need to talk about how you’re fucking up Darnell’s life.But in therapy talk.
The decor from the waiting room continued into the office—understated leather furniture, those little bright spots of color, more of the abstract paintings that would have made Georgia O’Keeffe splooge.Darnell was sitting on a large, tufted sofa.Pauline sat in a chair set at an angle.So that it wouldn’t feel confrontational.I’d done enough trainings on interviewing techniques to know that much.
“Sorry,” I mumbled as I sat next to Darnell.
He smiled at me and reached over to take my hand.
“All right,” Pauline said.“I understand this is the first time you’ve tried therapy as a couple.Is that right?”
“That’s right,” Darnell said.
Pauline waited a beat, like I might have something to add.When I didn’t, she continued, “Why don’t I talk a little about how I see this process, and you can let me know if you have any questions.”
Darnell said, “That sounds great.”
