Group Therapy, page 8
Great job, Lou. This won’t be a disaster at all.
Lou
MY EYES BEGIN TO water from the lemon-scented bleach fumes radiating off the table. I chose the booth in the front right corner of the bar because it’s secluded but still has a direct view of the door, but it must have taken fifteen Clorox wipes to get the tacky, adhesive layer of French fry grease and spilled appletinis off all that reclaimed barnwood. I assume that millionaires do not appreciate being physically stuck to the furniture they sit on, but that’s just a hunch. Other than my clients, I don’t actually know any millionaires.
“Ooh, somebody just pulled up in a Mercedes!” Mark whisper-shouts at me from his spot behind the host stand.
I sit up on my knees in the booth, peeking over the back so that I can watch the door. It has to be Thomas. Almost everybody else is here already.
I glance past Mark to the large, round table on the opposite side of the bar. Courtney is seated on one side of it with a poster board sign hanging over her head that says ANXIETY in big, sloppily written letters. Mark made it, bless his heart. Across from her, my four jitteriest clients sit, wringing their hands and shredding paper napkins.
Dee is standing behind the bar like she owns the place with another homemade poster board taped to the wall behind her. On the other side of the counter, my four saddest souls—plus Teen Angst Adelynn—sit with their backs hunched over from the weight of the world. Dee’s face is about as enthusiastic as their posture, causing a knot to form in my stomach. I hope it wasn’t a mistake, assigning her to the Depression group.
The sign affixed to the swinging door into the kitchen announces that Life Coaching is inside, which makes me want to take back my offer to let Beth bring her Twister mat. The floor in there is fucking disgusting. Luckily, when I checked on her a second ago, she and her four clients were all standing. Actually, she was marching back and forth in front of them like a drill sergeant while they stood at attention in a perfect line.
This was definitely a mistake.
The front door opens, and my heart leaps into my throat. My head swivels in that direction, but when a manicured hand holding a Chanel clutch comes into view, I exhale and slump over the back of the booth.
“Well, hello, gorgeous!” Mark beams. “Welcome to group therapy! We have five amazing healing experiences for you to choose from …”
Aggressive Celeste, the mug-thrower, stops in front of the host stand, eyeing Mark up and down, as if she’s afraid that his country-chic wardrobe might actually be contagious.
“Anxiety is at the round table,” he continues, and I swear he’s ratcheting up his accent just because of the snarky-ass look on her face. “Depression is at the bar. Life Coaching is in the kitchen. Anger Management is in the back with yours truly. And Creativity is over there with Dr. Sterling, but it’s totally full and you can’t choose that one.”
Celeste’s eyes cut over to me and then to the all-caps, hand-scrawled sign taped to the wall behind me that reads CREATIVITY CORNER. I swallow and give her a little wave.
Celeste looks back at Mark with a scowl. “Why can’t I see Dr. Sterling? There’s literally nobody over—”
“Totally full! Right this way,” Mark cries, steering her toward the back of the bar. “You look like you can do a mean down dog, am I right?” Mark tosses me a wink as he holds open a door marked ANGER MANAGEMENT and leads a volatile woman in a Gucci jumpsuit and red-bottomed heels into the stockroom of a dive bar, where a bed of used yoga mats awaits her.
Biggest. Mistake. Ever.
Before I can run to the stockroom to do damage control or at least find something that Mark can wear as protective headgear, I see—or rather, feel—the front door open.
My head turns, and I watch with nauseating anticipation as Thomas emerges from the night like a ghost or a vampire. Graceful. Timeless. Panic-inducing. With one sweep of his head from left to right, his eyes land on me, and I’m frozen. I should smile or wave him over, but I’m glued to the back of this booth, my forearms propped up on top, as I watch him approach in a state of paralysis.
Sit down, dumbass!
I slide down into a weird half-crouch just as Thomas appears at the end of the table. Thankfully, I wore Converse instead of heels tonight but only because I didn’t think he’d be able to see my feet.
He doesn’t sit.
Tell him to have a seat!
“When your secretary called and said we’d be meeting at The Yacht Club, I pictured something a little—”
“Less splintery?” I offer with a cringey smile.
“More maritime.” He smirks.
“There is a boat.” I point to the bar, where a seven-foot-long rowboat is suspended from the ceiling and a plastic skeleton—wearing a captain’s hat and navy-blue blazer—is holding the oars.
“Ah, it all makes sense now,” Thomas says dryly, glancing from me to the empty spot across from me.
“Please”—my hand shoots out—“have a seat.”
While Thomas effortlessly slides into his side of the booth, I try to wriggle into a normal sitting position and adjust my shirt as inconspicuously as possible.
“With you being America’s premier creativity specialist, I expected there to be a few more people in this group,” he says, the corner of his narrow mouth curling on one side.
“Huh. I guess everybody must be sick.” I shrug. “It is cold and flu season.”
That smirk broadens into a knowing smile, and I hate the way it makes me squirm. He’s looking at me like this is a date. Like he asked me out two days ago and I went and moved heaven and earth to make it happen. Like this is not a completely professional therapy group for one that just so happens to be in a cozy, secluded booth in the back of a bar at ten o’clock at night.
He is a human being. He needs your help. Sit up, lean forward, and for God’s sake, stop looking at his mouth! You’re his therapist!
I clear my throat. “Since you’re new here, I’d like to begin with an icebreaker. This will get us up and moving around, so everybody can meet each other.”
Thomas looks around at our invisible group members. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m going to ask you some questions,” I continue. “To answer them, you have to sit on one side of the booth or the other.”
I motion to the wall next to us. Under Mark’s beautiful CREATIVITY CORNER sign, I have two paper napkins taped to the wall. The one on Thomas’s side of the booth says NO—I borrowed Mark’s Magic Marker—and the one on my side says YES.
Thomas glances from the wall back to me. “I hardly see how this—”
“Have you ever...,” I interrupt, “ridden an elephant?”
Thomas pauses, caught off guard by my question, and his gaze slides slowly back over to the napkins on the wall. I focus on breathing and pumping blood and thinking thoughts at a totally nonchalant, non-hysterical pace while I wait for his response. When he doesn’t move, I scoot out of my side of the booth, casting my eyes down to avoid his skeptical stare, and slide over next to him, making sure to leave a solid, super-professional two feet of space between us.
“Me neither,” I exhale, finally meeting Thomas’s amused eyes.
Fuck. I can smell him again. That crisp, bright, oceanic scent that makes me feel like the sun is warming my sand-speckled skin. The urge to close my eyes, lean in, and sniff is almost as overwhelming as the particular smirk on his posh, pore-free face. You know the one … from his book cover.
An alarm in my head goes off, blaring, CLIENT, CLIENT, CLIENT, and immediately douses my inappropriate thoughts with a bucket of ice water. I tear my eyes away from the face on my bookcase and glance across the room, hoping to find something distraction worthy.
I succeed.
On the other side of the bar, Courtney smiles sweetly at a group of my most anxious clients. Then, she reaches out and knocks over a salt shaker in the middle of the table. She must have pre-loosened the cap because salt pours out all over the table. All four group members gasp and recoil.
“Oopsie.” Courtney’s former cheerleader voice really projects. “I just made a big ol’ mess, didn’t I?”
Norman, my client who has to breathe into a paper bag in the lobby if his session doesn’t start on time, makes a pained sound deep in his throat.
“I’ll bet that’s gon’ drive y’all crazy, isn’t it?” Courtney beams. “But you know what, guys? Life is messy …”
Next, Courtney knocks over the pepper shaker. Black and gray granules spill out, mixing with the white salt on the table.
“...And your job is to learn how to be okay with that. So, if y’all can sit here and stare at this mess without tryin’ to fix it for five whole minutes, you get a sucker.”
I think Nervous Nicole is sweating. It’s hard to tell from here, but I wouldn’t be surprised. This has got to be the longest she’s ever gone without talking.
“But if ya can’t …”
Courtney reaches for something under the table.
Oh no. No, no, no.
“You’re gonna meet my little friends...”—Court pulls out two water guns, one pink and one yellow—“Taylor Soak and Reese Witherspray.”
“Are those … water pistols?” Thomas asks, leaning toward me so that he can get a better glimpse of the semiautomatic Super Soakers in Courtney’s hands.
I blink and turn to face him again. “It’s fine. Courtney’s a behaviorist.”
Thomas raises his eyebrows and nods once, obviously unconvinced that it is actually fine.
That makes two of us.
“What kind of therapist is she?” Thomas asks, nodding toward the bar.
I hold my breath as I follow his gaze.
Despite only being here for twenty minutes, Dee is standing behind the bar with the posture of a Waffle House waitress on the tail end of a double shift. Her voice doesn’t project like Courtney’s, but she’s only about twenty feet away from my booth, and with Courtney’s group engaged in a silent salt-and-pepper stare-off and Beth’s and Mark’s groups in other rooms, Dee is the only one talking at the moment.
“So, what are y’all hoping to get out of this group? For real.”
Mack, the older gentleman who switched to my caseload after hearing Thomas accuse me of being a sadist, answers first. “Honestly, I just want to stop wishing I was dead.”
“Me too, brother,” Dan, the day trader sitting next to him, replies. He has three different cell phones scattered in front of him on the wooden bar.
“I want to stop crying in the shower every day,” Winnie the Wine Mom responds. She still comes to see me every week even though she thinks all of my holistic recommendations are an attempt to convert her to “the Nation of Islam.”
“You shower every day?” The woman to her right coughs out. Depressed Dixie. She smells like cigarette smoke and looks like she might have been an extra on The Dukes of Hazzard. “Hell, yesterday, I found a caterpillar in my hair. In the cocoon.”
I love her.
“Chrysalis,” Teen Angst Adelynn drones. “They call it a chrysalis now.”
Dee gives Adelynn the look until she answers the original question.
Adelynn sighs. “I just want my parents to think I’m getting better so they’ll let me see my boyfriend again, okay?”
Dee nods. “So, don’t kill yourself …” She sweeps a finger from Mack over to Winnie.
“Wash ya ass …” That was definitely directed at Dixie.
“And fake it till you get some booty.” Dee points at Adelynn.
“I can work with that.” She shrugs. Then, rummaging around under the bar, she asks, “Okay, next question: is everybody here an alcoholic?”
“Hmm?” I turn back toward Thomas. Which was a bad decision. He’s still far too pretty and pleasant-smelling to look at. “What was the question again?”
“Never mind.” He frowns, glancing over my shoulder at the bar, where I really hope Dee isn’t lining up tequila shots for everybody.
I shift in my seat to block his view. “Where were we? Oh yeah. Have you ever been arrested?”
Thomas thinks for a moment. Then, he scoots toward me, like he needs me to get up and let him move to the YES side of the booth, but as soon as he sees my eyes go wide, he smiles and returns to his spot.
I cough out a laugh. “I knew it.”
“I did get a parking ticket once,” Thomas says. “And I didn’t even pay it until the fourteenth day.”
“What happens on the fourteenth day?”
“In England, if you pay a parking ticket within the first two weeks, your fine is half the price.”
I snort out a laugh before quickly regaining my composure. I have got to steer this ship back toward creativity. Thomas is way too fucking charming for casual banter.
“Okay, let’s talk about art,” I say. “Have you ever created something that made you question your mental health?”
Even though it pains me, I slide out of Thomas’s side of the booth and head back over to the YES side.
A second later, Thomas follows. He sits on the end of my bench, leaving our unspoken two feet of space intact. His face is cautiously curious. Mine curves into a smile.
“Was it Nightmare Falls?” I whisper. It’s as if Fangirl Me thought Psychologist Me wouldn’t notice that she snuck in a question as long as she did it really quietly.
Thomas smiles and points to something over my shoulder. I turn and see the napkin taped to the wall next to our side of the booth.
“Yes,” he whispers back. His voice sounds so close.
I close my eyes and smile, picturing him leaning toward me while my head is turned.
A loud whack rings out from the direction of the kitchen, and my eyes immediately pop open again. I can only imagine what Beth is doing in there. I told her that the clients I was giving her are insecure and indecisive and need somebody to whip them into shape, but that sounded like an actual whip.
“Would you …” I turn back around to find Thomas already sliding out of the booth.
He sweeps a polite hand out, motioning for me to exit.
“Thanks.”
I run over to the kitchen door and push it open a few inches, just enough to peek inside and make sure that Beth is not in fact flogging my clients.
All four of the Life Coaching members are lined up against the stainless steel counter, eyes wide in terror, as Beth paces in front of them. Her back is to me, so I can’t see what’s in her hand until …
Whack!
The end of a rubber spatula comes down on the stainless steel counter next to sweet little Leonard, making him jump.
“Stand up straight!” Beth barks.
All four wallflowers snap to attention. Leonard’s glasses slide down his nose, but he waits to fix them until Beth’s back is turned again.
“I know your type,” she says, resuming her pacing. “You’re here because you’re sick and tired of life making you its bitch, am I right?”
No one answers.
Beth stops and slaps her palm with the spatula. “Am I right?”
“Yes, Coach Beth,” they mumble in fear.
“Course I’m right!” She continues marching. “Life is the bruiser in the prison showers with the teardrop tattoo, serving a double life sentence for straight murder, and you’re just the little asthmatic accountant who got locked up for tax fraud and keeps dropping the goddamn soap! Well, I’m here to give you the tools you need to make life your bitch once and for all. What do you say, team? Are you ready to give life a stick to bite down on and a safe word?”
Oh, Jesus Christ.
“Yes, Coach Beth.”
Beth hones in on Leonard, who didn’t answer out loud.
“What’s that, Four Eyes?” she barks. “I couldn’t hear you. Drop and give me twenty!”
I’m just about to run in and tell Leonard that he does not have to drop and give her anything, especially not on a floor covered in three decades’ worth of salmonella and roach poison, when I hear something—or a lot of somethings—crash in the storage room next door.
Shit.
I sprint around to the other side of the bar, giving Dee a warning look as I pass, and barge straight through the Employees Only door and into the stockroom, where the Anger Management folks are gathered.
It’s surprisingly Zen inside—other than the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man lying on his side against a shelf covered in knocked-over cans.
The storage room is tiny—fifteen, maybe twenty feet long at the most. A third of that is sectioned off by a floor-to-ceiling chain-link fence and padlocked gate to store the extra alcohol, and the rest serves triple-duty as an office, dry and canned goods storage, and a locker room/place where the employees go to make out and/or cry. What little open space there is has been carpeted with five overlapping yoga mats upon which Mark and four very irritable yuppies are bent into inverted Vs.
Well, three yuppies. Angry Bill must have lost his balance and fallen into the shelf next to him.
Mark is positioned at the front of the group, wearing a bandanna around his head, bicycle shorts, and a Garth Brooks T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. His downward-facing dog pose is so perfect that his face is almost touching his mat.
“Now, slowly swoop your booty down and bring that chest up into a big ol’ cobra pose,” Mark says as his hips meet the mat and he lifts his head with a snakelike hiss.
Angry Bill curses while he stacks the cans back on the shelf, but then he begrudgingly rolls over and shoves himself into something resembling Mark’s pose.
“Okay, now, bring it on back into child’s pose.” Mark drops his chest to the mat before pushing back into a fetal position with his arms outstretched over his head.
I can’t believe it, but the privileged rageaholics I entrusted him with are actually doing it. Even Celeste.
Mark sits up and gives me a little wink. “Good, y’all. Now, listen. We are here to perform a stress séance. An anger exorcism. We’re sweatin’ it out through our pores, and now, we’re gonna cast it out through a nice, cleansing, primal scream. Here we go …”
