Chasing the Tide
Page 59

The three of us with booze was probably a very bad combination. Nothing good ever came of us drinking together. We had been sloshed on moonshine when we had decided to try acid for the first time, and I had spent the night throwing up and thinking I was shrinking.
We had been drinking the night we had egged the principal’s house and gotten busted because Stu had wanted to piss in his pool.
I had asked Flynn if I could come over earlier today. I don’t know why. But I missed him. A lot.
He had said he hated me and to leave him alone.
It had hurt more than I wanted to admit.
Now I was trying to numb the hurt with booze and bad decisions.
“Maybe you want to go hang out with your friend the freak,” Stu sneered and Dania kept cackling. It hurt my head.
“What the fuck are you talking about, Stu?” I slurred.
“What’s his name? Flynn? I see you talking to him. I know you hang out with him,” Stu said, his voice deadly quiet. The look in his eyes worried me.
Dania sat up a little higher. “There’s no way, Stu. Ells hates that guy.”
Stu grabbed another beer and popped the top, taking a drink. “I don’t think she does. I think our Ellie is a pathetic freak lover. Maybe she’s a freak too. What do you think, D?”
Dania was looking at me like I had killed her cat. “What the fuck, Ellie?” she hissed.
“You’re on something,” I blustered. But they were looking at me like they knew.
“I don’t think I want to hang out with a fucking freak lover,” Stu said blandly, his eyes cold.
“Me either!” Dania exclaimed, the fucking traitor.
“I’m not a freak lover!” I shouted defensively. Stu kept drinking his beer and Dania glared at me like she hated me.
And then I got mad.
They didn’t want to be around me because of Flynn. And Flynn didn’t want to talk to me either. He had given me his friendship and then had taken it away. It didn’t matter that I had pulled away first. It was his fault I felt this way.
I hated him.
I grabbed the box of fireworks.
“You know, Freaky hates loud noises,” I mused, looking down at the colorful explosives.
“Yeah, so?” Stu asked.
I held up the box. “Wanna go make him wet himself?” I asked, grinning maliciously.
Stu laughed and Dania whooped. “Hell yeah!” she shouted.
We finished our beers before heading over to the Hendrick’s house.
It was time to prove that I wasn’t a freak lover.
That I hated him as much as everyone else did.
So why didn’t my heart believe me?
**
I did not want to go with Flynn to his therapy appointment.
I felt like stomping my foot and refusing to go.
When I was a kid, Julie would take me to counselor after counselor, hoping one of them would provide the magic fix to make me a happy and healthy little girl. I would be forced to sit in an office with a stranger staring at me as though I were under glass.
Some of them tried to play with me. Some of them asked tons of questions that I refused to answer.
Some of them had tried the tough love approach and went straight for the subject of my mother.
None of it had been successful.
I had come out of each and every session the same I had been before going in. Julie tried everything from play therapy to support groups. She had me evaluated and put on a meds. She was convinced I just needed the right combination of drugs and therapy to be all better.
But I would never allow my guard to drop long enough for any of it to work. Therapists and doctors had tried to get past my impenetrable wall but with no luck.
After a while Julie stopped making counseling a requirement on my service plan. And I swore I’d never walk into another shrink’s office ever again.
Yet here I was, getting ready to walk into the lion’s den all over again. Love made you do things you’d never consider doing on your own.
Fucking love.
I knew Flynn relied on his counselor for a lot. He used to talk about Kevin, his therapist in North Carolina, who he saw while he went to college. I knew that both Kevin and now Leonard worked with him on his social skills and how to react to stressors without losing his shit all over unsuspecting bystanders.
I saw firsthand that their efforts were working. Flynn, while still brutally honest, was learning that sometimes what he thought didn’t necessarily need to be said.
He was less likely to melt down over seemingly trivial things. His OCD was still obviously present but he was trying to be more flexible. Letting wash the clothes and sheets was a huge step for him.
But that didn’t mean that I was ready to sign up for my own head examination.
However, Flynn had asked me to come. I knew that being together required that I incorporate all facets of his life into mine. Otherwise we’d never work. I had just really hoped that wouldn’t include his therapy.
But we were too complicated. On our own, we were too problematic. And if Flynn was willing to go to New York, the least I could do was see his therapist and help him feel more comfortable with the plan.
Standing outside the brick office building I wanted to stomp my foot and cross my arms over my chest. Suddenly, I was ten years old again and I knew exactly what was coming. Lots of questions, lots of bullshit suggestions. I wanted none of it.
Flynn stood, not so patiently, just outside the door, frowning at me.
“My meeting is in ten minutes. I like to go inside and have a glass of water and read the new magazines. I always do that,” Flynn said, his hands jammed in his pockets and I knew it was so he wouldn’t rub them together. My attitude was clearly bugging him.