Back to You (11 page)

L
auren couldn’t concentrate to save her life.

She sat in the back of her Psychological Defense Mechanisms class, her pen poised on her notebook as if she was getting ready to write, but her mind was a million miles away.

Actually, her mind was just a few miles away, back at Adam’s office.

Earlier that afternoon, he had suggested a more aggressive stretching routine to counteract the core exercises she was now doing. Lauren had laid on her back as Adam took her leg and lifted it straight up, slowly but surely pushing it closer to her chest, all the while explaining to her how certain hamstring stretches actually release the lower back rather than the legs. As she grew more comfortable, he leaned over and pressed the front of his shoulder to the back of her leg, using some of his body weight to increase the intensity of the stretch.

And that was the moment Lauren’s mind kept going back to: looking up at him as he leaned over her.

With her leg propped up on his shoulder.

“…Can be found in chapter six of your textbooks. These two are most commonly confused, and can often exist simultaneously in a person’s psyche,” Lauren heard her professor say as he gestured toward the screen behind him, and she blinked quickly, snapping out of it as she sat up a bit straighter in an attempt to regain her focus.

Two words were projected on the large screen in the front of the lecture hall:
repression
and
suppression
.

“Both are Freudian concepts concerned with removing unwanted or unpleasant memories from one’s conscious, but the difference between the two is that suppression involves the cognizant desire to forget, whereas repression happens subconsciously.”

Lauren made a shorthand notation of that on her page as the professor continued, “Now, either one of these methods in moderation can be considered healthy. It’s only when they occur in extremes that they hinder a person’s emotional development and impede their ability to heal from traumatic events.”

She chewed on the corner of her lip, writing that down as her mind shifted away from Adam’s office and back to the place it usually did as she sat in these classes.

Right back to him. Always to him.

“Now, believe it or not, most of the time, it’s easier to work with someone who is suppressing painful thoughts rather than repressing them. Since repression is a subconscious method of protection, oftentimes the subject will not even be aware that the element being repressed even exists, which lends itself to denial. However, with suppression, the subject is well aware of the issue; he just chooses to avoid dealing with it.”

Lauren sighed softly.

It was just so classically Michael.

She’d never admitted it out loud to anyone—in fact, she’d never even officially admitted it to herself—but it was Michael who made her want to go into child psychology. She couldn’t help but feel like if he had been given the tools to deal with his emotional suffering when he was young, if he’d just had access to the necessary coping strategies, so much could have been different.

But instead, he fell back on what worked, on what was safest and easiest for him: he refused to deal with any of it. And it made an already miserable situation a hundred times worse. She hadn’t even been aware of how severely it all affected him until the very end.

Lauren pressed her lips together, looking down as she rolled her pen between her fingers.

Because she realized then that she was guilty of the same exact thing.

As much as she denied still caring about everything that happened between them, as much as she insisted to Jenn that it was years ago and that it was all in the past, the truth was, she’d never gotten over it.

Lauren would have never admitted that if he hadn’t come back into her life, she would have gone about her business, choosing to pretend she was unaffected by her past, and if she’d never seen him again, she probably would have been able to believe her own lie. But his reappearance had given her past a voice again.

And as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist anymore.

Lauren put her pen down, not even attempting to take notes anymore as she thought of her dinner with him the other day. The whole time she sat across from him, she had to focus intently on maintaining her carefully cultivated façade. She could feel how effortless it would have been to fall right back into things with him, how simple it would have been to pretend there were no missed years in between, to pretend that nothing had ever gone wrong between them.

But she fought to stay guarded, because allowing herself to be vulnerable with him again would have been a very dangerous—and stupid—thing for her to do.

So she sat across from him, battling her instincts to let him back in, yet refusing to address what was preventing her from doing it in the first place.

Lauren sighed and shook her head: here she was, a future psychologist, blatantly guilty of suppression.

And just like that, it hit her.

She wasn’t going to avoid it anymore.

She was doing the very thing that caused him so much additional suffering. She knew it wasn’t healthy for him, so what made her think it would be healthy for her?

She needed to talk to him.
Really
talk to him. She knew that now.

The only thing she didn’t know was why.

What did she hope to gain from talking it out with him? Did she want the answers Jenn claimed she was entitled to? Did she even need closure after all this time?

Or did she just want her friend back?

If it was about friendship, she knew she couldn’t have the latter without the former. They could never truly be friends again without her understanding what had gone wrong between them.

So if she was going to let him back into her life, then she would need answers. They would have to talk about what happened, regardless of how awkward or unpleasant it would be, so that she could move on and not just pretend that she had.

Maybe they could
both
move on.

A small smile curved Lauren’s lips at the realization that they could potentially rekindle their friendship.

She missed it.

She missed
him.

Even when she was pretending she wasn’t hurt, she never pretended not to miss him.

With newfound determination, Lauren picked up her pen and resumed taking notes off the front board.

She could just hear Jenn’s reaction to the idea of forming a friendship with Michael Delaney again, and she couldn’t help but smile.

Because if Jenn considered being an adult and moving on “selective amnesia,” well, then that would be
her
problem.

“Lauren Monroe?”

Lauren looked up from her seat in the waiting room, her brow already furrowed. It wasn’t the voice she’d been expecting.

“Hi, I’m Dr. Lawrence. I’ll be taking care of you today,” said an older gentleman with a polite smile. He wore light green scrubs, not Adam’s usual dark blue, and his graying hair and little potbelly were the embodiment of what Jenn had pictured when Lauren first told her she had a crush on her chiropractor.

“Oh,” Lauren said, clearly taken aback, and she hesitantly placed the magazine she’d been reading on the table in front of her as she stood.

“Right this way,” he said, turning and walking into one of the exam rooms behind them.

Lauren felt the slight anxiety begin in her chest as she followed this new doctor into the room.

“Um, is Dr. Wells out sick?” she asked with strained casualness.

“No, he transferred you this morning. You’ll be finishing up the remainder of your therapy with me.”

Lauren froze, and Dr. Lawrence must have noticed the look on her face.

“He didn’t mention this to you?”

She shook her head, silent.

“I apologize then. I thought he’d gone over the switch with you. Let me assure you though, I’ve thoroughly acquainted myself with your information and your therapy plan, and I’m well versed in all the procedures Dr. Wells has been using with you. I’m fully comfortable in going forward as long as you are.”

Lauren swallowed and nodded, too focused on her own insecurities to even acknowledge her anxiety over having another doctor work on her.

Had she done something wrong? She honestly thought the flirting had been mutual. Things had never gotten inappropriate; it had all been so harmless.

At least, she
thought
it had been harmless.

She laid down on the table, her mind so lost in her own self-doubt that she forgot to panic as the new doctor adjusted her.If you really want something, you shouldn, le

When Lauren left the office twenty minutes later, she was still in a fog of humiliation. She approached her car, mindlessly digging in her purse for her keys, and she found herself trying to come up with an excuse to discontinue her therapy there.

She didn’t want to chance facing him again now that he was clearly trying to avoid her.

“Lauren?”

She froze with her hand in her purse, and she closed her eyes and swallowed before she turned.

He was leaned up against a silver car, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. It was the first time she’d ever seen him outside of his scrubs.

“Hi,” she said, forcing a smile, and he pushed off the car and walked toward her.

“Listen, I switched you over to Dr. Lawrence’s care,” he said as he shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Yeah, he told me,” she said, the same contrived smile in place as she looked down and continued searching for her keys. She was so aware of herself, of her awkwardness as she tried to ensure that she wasn’t flirting, but at the same time, wasn’t showing her disappointment.

“He’s wonderful,” Adam said. “Taught me everything I know.”

Lauren smiled politely, glancing up as she finally pulled her keys out of her purse.

“You’re in good hands with him,” he assured her. “You only have about two weeks of therapy left anyway, so you’ll be fine.”

Lauren nodded. “Okay, well, thanks for everything,” she said before she turned and started walking toward her car.

Then she stopped.

No more avoiding unpleasant things
, she reminded herself, and she turned to see him still standing where she’d left him.

“Can I ask you something?” she asked, straightening her posture.

“Of course.”

“Why did you switch me?”

Adam took a deep breath, running his hand through his hair. “Well, I just thought it would be unprofessional if I asked out one of my patients.”