Broken

A year before she wouldn’t have admitted that much. I offered a smile. “So then, what is it? You’re afraid to buy him something?”

“It’s so much pressure.” Elle shrugged and spun her spoon around in the cup. “And I think…I think he’s going to make this a big one.”

“More than flowers and candy, you mean.”

She nodded, her face shadowed. “Yeah. I think so.”

“We’ve talked about this.” I sipped my tea, watching her. “How relationships grow. It’s part of change.”

She laughed, ruefully. “I know. Dr. Danning, I know that.”

I knew she did. Elle had been with her boyfriend for over a year. She danced around the idea of marrying him and having children, of making what she called a real life. She had other issues, bigger ones, but it all came back to that in the end. Marriage and children, whether she could take what he offered her or not, whether the past had any right to influence her future any longer. She’d come a long way in the year she’d been seeing me, but sometimes it’s the sunshine that frightens us more than the big black shadows.

“It’s just hard.” She sounded ashamed. “It shouldn’t be. He makes it so easy. But it’s hard, anyway. Even when I fight with him, he just comes back with something so perfect I can’t chase him away.”

“Do you really want to?”

She sighed. “No. But do you know how hard it is to be with someone who’s perfect?”

“Nobody’s perfect, Elle.”

She gave me a look. “Some are more perfect than others, Dr. Danning.”

I laughed a bit. “Yes, that’s true.”

She stirred her cup as if she could dissolve her troubles the way she dissolved the sugar in the tea. “I keep thinking…”

“Yes?” I asked, when waiting for her to continue failed to prompt her into speaking.

“What if he’s the last man I’ll ever sleep with for the rest of my life?”

I fussed with my own tea to create distance from a question that hit too close to home. “Would that be so awful?”

Elle put her cup on the edge of my desk and rubbed the arms of her chair, her face angled away from mine. “No?”

“You don’t sound so sure.”

The look she gave me was pure, vintage Elle Kavanagh, stubborn and self-effacing with a hint of snark. “I anticipate the rest of my life being a very long time.”

“From your mouth to God’s ears,” I told her, and we both laughed.

“I don’t want to cheat on Dan. But I’m afraid I might. Just because.”

“Those things don’t happen by accident.”

She seemed chastened by my sterner than usual tone. “I know.”

I studied her before saying, “The offer still stands, if you want it.”

She looked up. “See both of us. I know.”

“Dan’s a wonderful man and he’s been good for you. You know putting the onus of your happiness on someone else isn’t healthy. But neither is refusing to allow someone to help you gain it.”

“I know, I know, I know!” She groaned, tipping back her head. She grimaced. “Bleah! I know! Stupid fucking Valentine’s Day!”

“Maybe you’re getting yourself too worked up. What are you doing for him?”

She straightened in her chair. “Heart-shaped meatloaf. With asparagus. And some sex.”

I meant to answer right away, but sudden immobility stifled my words. I filled my cup with tea. I didn’t want to cover the fact I couldn’t speak. The teapot rattled against the cup and I had to force my hands to steady.

I envied her. Fiercely. Suddenly. Horribly. I envied Elle for her meatloaf and plans for lovemaking to celebrate a holiday she hated. I envied her fear that she had something to lose.

“Dr. Danning?”

I put on the doctor mask. I owed her that. We might laugh and drink tea, and I might be privy to her deepest, darkest secrets, but we were not friends.

“It sounds lovely. I’m sure he’ll enjoy it.”

She nodded, slowly. “Yes. I think so.”

“And whatever happens after, Elle, remember that he’s doing it because he loves you. And it’s all right for you to love him back.”

It wasn’t the first time she’d cried in front of me, but this time her tears made my own throat close in sympathy. Or perhaps I wanted to weep for myself, and not with compassion for her. Either way, when I handed her the box of tissues, I took one for myself, too.

“When does it stop?” she asked, as though I had all the answers.

“I don’t know, Elle. I wish I did.”

It wasn’t the first time I didn’t give her the answer she was looking for, but it was the first time I felt I’d failed her.

When did it stop? That was the question of the day. When did the fear go away, when would I stop longing, when would I cease wanting something that was wrong?

It was easy for me to sit in my doctor’s chair and counsel Elle not to cheat on her lover, but what right did I have to be so smug? I could give my patients advice but couldn’t take it from myself. If I’d been in front of me, I’d have counseled myself to understand that my feelings were normal and natural. That my marriage had undergone tremendous strain and changes because of Adam’s disability. That wanting and missing sex was natural and normal, and the desire to be held, to make love…yes, even to fuck, that was normal, too.

I was normal.

But I also would have counseled myself to stop seeing Joe. That the emotional infidelity was as real as if I’d gone to bed with him, and perhaps worse because merely sating a physical need was one thing but the inevitability of what was happening was something else, entirely.

Just because Joe and I never touched didn’t mean we weren’t having an affair.

I knew it. I didn’t want to stop it. Frankly, I couldn’t stop it. The first Friday of every month, our lunches, his stories and the relief they gave me were a bright and shining thing in the otherwise gray palette of my existence.

It was wrong, and I didn’t want to let it go.

The ringing of my cell phone distracted me from my navel-gazing. I took the call at once, fearful as always it would be from one of Adam’s caregivers, telling me there was a problem.

“Sades, it’s me.”