Consumed: A MMA Sports Romance (20 page)

“Now hold your tongue,”
mom chastises. “I have told you before that I will not be spoken to in this
manner, and I will have you know I am quite tempted to show myself out the door
right this minute!”

“You’re going to make a
public statement,” I tell her. “You’re going to tell everyone I wasn’t
involved.”

“Of course, dear,” she
says.

Thank goodness for that,
at least.

“None of our family was
involved in wrongdoing,” she says, looking past me with a glazed expression on
her face. I think she actually believes her own lies.

“Even if you get away
with the rest of it,” I tell her, “you’re still going down for the student
loans. The only way out of that is throwing me under the bus.”

“There are other ways,”
mom says. I get a chill that lasts until she follows the daunting statement
with a more characteristic, almost naïve, though no less jarring one, “If you
can produce the money that we took out in loans, less reasonable amounts to
account for tuition, books, and housing, it won’t even be an issue at trial. As
for the rest of it, John has assured us that all we’re looking at is the usual
witch hunt—you know, for as much as the people of this country love the rich,
they seem to enjoy our misery to a disproportionate degree.”

“I don’t know where you
think I’m going to come up with that kind of—how much exactly did you get in my
student loans?” I ask.

She looks down and away
from me, almost shielding her eyes with her hand. “It was a substantial
amount,” she answers.

“How much?” I ask.
“You’re trying to get me to cover for you with what I’m assuming would be some
sort of a money laundering scheme—which, by the way, we are not doing—and I
want to know how much you got using my name? In real student loans, I’ve gotten
a grand total of about twenty thousand dollars so far. I actually had to write
and sign a paper stating that I was completely financially independent and use
that to appeal the initial decision to reject any financial aid due to all the
cash the two of you have raked in over however long. How did you even get
approved?”

“Oh, it’s not difficult
when you have the proper paperwork and know what a bank is looking for in an
application,” she says. Ironically, it may be the most forthright thing I’ve ever
heard come out of her mouth.

“How much did you get?” I
ask.

“I don’t have the exact
figure,” mom says, looking away again. “Your father would know. He always knows
that sort of thing. I’ve never been good with numbers the way your father has.
You know, your father is really very sick over how this is going to affect
you.”

“I know what you’re
doing, mom,” I tell her. “Stop trying to pawn this all off on dad and just tell
me.”

She says the number and I
ask her to leave.

On her way out the door,
mom says, “I know you’ll do the right thing, dear.”

She’s asking me to take
the fall for them; maybe not on everything, but on a lot of it. If I hadn’t
immediately kicked her out of my apartment, I’m sure she would have gone on to
tell me how she and dad were going to make sure that I was taken care of with a
good lawyer.

They’ve had close brushes
with the law before, and this isn’t the first time one of them has come to me
with a similar request. That kind of stuff is why I don’t talk to my parents if
I can avoid it as it is.

Now, one way or another,
this is coming out and she’s put me in the position where any choice I make is
going to be a bad one. Either I can snitch on my parents and definitely send
two people to prison who would never make it past the first meal, or I do what
my mom wants and probably end up in prison myself.

It was an easy enough
choice to make. She says she knows I’ll make the right decision, meaning her
decision, but I’ve already made it. They did this to themselves and I’m not
going to go down for it.

How stupid do they think
I am?

I don’t even want to
think about that number.

Mason’s still in the
bedroom. I haven’t heard him at all, but there hasn’t been a moment where I
wasn’t very aware of the fact that he’s been right there in my room with the
door closed this whole time.

I open the door, saying,
“I know you must have some questions, and I’m sure you heard at least some of
the conversation—”

“All of it,” he says. “I
tried to stay as far away from the door as I could, but the two of you weren’t
exactly quiet.”

He’s just sitting there
on my bed, calmly looking up at me.

“Mason,” I start, but he interrupts.

He says, “I think I’m
ready to hear your explanation now.”

Now I get to explain why
I didn’t say anything after I got that phone call. Now I get to explain how I
knew upon seeing my mom that this sort of thing was going to happen.

Thanks, mom. Thanks, dad.

Oh, and thanks for the
nearly $1.5 million in student loans you took out through fraud and forgery.
$1.5 million with my name and information all over the paperwork...

Chapter Seventeen

Quagmire and Clarity

Mason

I’m sitting in the
waiting room of Dr. Sadler, Psy.D, going over what I want to talk about in my
head as I’m waiting for the session to begin.

I got here early. Despite
my general lack of respect for the profession, in all the years I went to
therapists as a kid, I don’t think I ever showed up late to a session. There’s
always been that part of me that holds onto some tiny piece of hope that I
might actually get some good advice.

I’m not going to hold my
breath, though.

Ash explained what I
didn’t already know from overhearing her and her mother that day. Being
brothers with someone like Chris, I can’t judge Ash for her parents’ mistakes.
What I’m not so happy with is that she never told me.

With everything I’ve been
through with Chris since Ash and I have been together, it doesn’t make sense
that she would withhold that sort of thing. We might have even been able to
bond over how screwed up our families are.

Now, though, the last few
times we’ve gotten together, neither one of us wants to say anything that might
upset the other. I know the last time we had a problem like this, it was
because of things I was doing. Maybe I’m just holding onto some sort of hope
that eventually, things won’t be the way they’ve always been. I don’t know.

Right now, though, that’s
little more than a pipe dream.

The door to the
therapist’s office opens and an older man walks out, carrying his hat in his
hands and waving to the receptionist as he goes. It’s a couple more minutes,
but finally, Dr. Sadler comes to her open office door and says, “Mason, you can
come on in.”

I’d like to say I had
some kind of sophisticated screening process when I was looking for a
therapist, but really, my insurance chose for me. Dr. Sadler is the only
psychiatrist in town I can afford to visit.

Walking into Dr. Sadler’s
office, I’m starting to think I’ve made a huge mistake. There are motivational
posters covering nearly every square inch of the walls, with the exception of
the space dedicated to her degrees.

They’re not even clever
ones, either. If I had to guess, I’d say the posters are homemade.

“Come on in and have a
seat,” Dr. Sadler says. “So, what brings you to my office today?”

“Well, I don’t really
know where to start,” I tell her.

“Oh, I can help with
that,” she says, scratching her forehead.

“What do you mean?” I
ask. “I know I filled out that intake form and everything, but…”

As Dr. Sadler is
scratching her forehead, her hair moves—I mean all of her hair. Underneath
what’s obviously a blonde wig, a little bit of red hair comes into view for
just a moment. She stops and smiles at me.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she
says, taking her wig off and setting it on her desk, revealing a full head of
short red hair. “It can be such a hassle getting ready in the morning. If
you’ll excuse me for just one moment…”

I sit and watch as she
opens the bottom drawer of her desk. Inside, I can see four different wigs atop
four different mannequin heads. She picks the mid-length black one and pulls it
out, setting it haphazardly onto her head before putting the blonde wig in the
black wig’s place.

“That’s better,” she
says. “Now, I think the biggest problem is that you’re not willing to simply
accept yourself and the people in your life for the unique challenges you and
they face. When we have faulty expectations, our whole world gets thrown off.”

“You got that from my
intake sheet?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “I got
that from your posture. Please, tell me what’s on your mind.”

I glance past the grainy,
nonsensical poster of a duck swimming in a lake with the caption, “Get to it!”
to the doctor’s credentials, but I can’t quite make out the schools she went to
from where I’m sitting.

“Where did you get your
degree?” I ask.

“I did my undergraduate
work at Harvard,” she says. “I got my doctorate from the University of Guam.”

“Guam?” I ask. “Why not
Harvard for your doctorate?”

“I had a falling out with
the dean,” she says. “That’s really not the issue here, though.”

“You know,” I say,
standing back up, “I think this was a mistake. I’m sure you’re a fine doctor,
but I just don’t think it’s going to—”

“How old were you when
your dad left?” she asks.

I stop, halfway between
standing and sitting and I look at her.

“I didn’t put anything
about my dad on the intake,” I tell her. “How did you—”

“Mom, she was around, at
least for the first part of your childhood, but she was never
really
there, was she?” the doctor asks.

I sit back down.

“Let me guess: you got
that from my posture, too?” I ask.

“No,” she smiles. “That,
I got from your eyes. Listen, Mason, I understand that you’re not the type to
easily trust people, and I’m sure all the time you spent visiting
court-appointed therapists has left you feeling like we just don’t know what
we’re talking about, isn’t that right?”

My mouth is gaping.
“Seriously, how are you—”

She smirks, saying, “
That
part I got from your intake sheet.”

“What do you think I
should do?” I ask.

“How should I know?” she
responds, reaching into her purse and pulling out a handful of unwrapped gummy
worms. She stuffs about half that handful into her mouth and continues. “You
haven’t told me anything yet. What’s on your mind?”

“Uh…” I say, trying to
remember why I came here in the first place.

“Girl trouble?” she asks.
“That one, I ask most men,” she whispers.

“I guess that’s there a
little bit,” I tell her, “but what made me decide to seek help happened a while
ago.”

I go on to explain my
involvement with underground MMA and the fight where everything just kind of
went away. She sits, listening, nodding. I keep trying to focus on her eyes,
but mine keep moving upward.

Finally, I come to the
argument Ash and I had where she basically laid down the ultimatum and the good
doctor is finally ready to offer her response.

“That sucks,” she says.

“How much am I paying you
per hour?” I ask.

“Not much, but if you
stay with me for about a year or so, I bet I can buy a new car off of what your
insurance throws at me,” she answers. I don’t know if she’s joking or not.
“Listen,” she says, “the troubles we tend to focus on are often not the problem
at all. They’re often the symptom.”

“I get that,” I tell her,
“but what’s the cause?”

“Keep talking,” she says.
“You’ve got a soothing voice. It’s doing killer work on this raging headache
I’ve got.”

“It’s too tight,” I tell
her.

“Excuse me?” she asks.

“Your, uh…” I motion
toward my own hair with my index finger and she lifts the front of the wig just
a little. “Huh,” she says. “I guess I can cancel that MRI. I thought I had some
sort of berry aneurism or something.”

I glance back toward the
medical degrees on her wall. “…and you’re a doctor?” I ask.

“You get so used to
things sometimes, you don’t even realize they’re what’s hurting you,” she says.

It’s strange, but I find
myself chuckling. “Did you really put on that wig just so you could make that
point and have it seem super insightful?” I ask.

She smiles at me, “While
being ‘super insightful’ is, indeed my goal, I’m really quite serious. What
things from your past do you still hold onto?” she asks. “Yours was a difficult
childhood from the sound of things. What haven’t you been able to let go?”

“Chris?” I ask. “I don’t
know. Am I just supposed to abandon my brother?”

“You didn’t mention a
brother,” she says. “Let’s talk about that.”

“That’s not why I’m
here,” I lie.

“From the sound of it,
it’s exactly why you’re here,” she says. “That fight you got into—the match
where you say you ‘lost your head,’ what happened during the week leading up to
that night?”

“I don’t know,” I tell
her. “I mean, Chris got arrested and everything, but that can’t be the only
thing that went into what happened. I’ve been expecting that my entire life.”

“Maybe you should go,”
she says out of nowhere. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe therapy isn’t something
that’s going to be a positive for you. Thanks for coming in,” she says. “I’m
sorry I couldn’t be more help.”

“What are you talking
about?” I almost yell. “We’re just starting to get into this and now you’re
telling me that therapy isn’t going to work? What kind of doctor are you?”

“I’m saying this won’t
work if you’re not going to be honest with me,” she says. “A lot of people
would be happy to have you waste their time. I suppose I can understand the
draw of sitting back and collecting a couple hundred dollars to hear someone
cover everything, but I got into this because I actually wanted to help people.
If you’re not ready to fit into that kind of category, there’s really nothing I
can do for you. The only ethical thing for me to do at this point is to say
‘thanks, but no thanks.’ If we can’t be honest with each other, it’s best that
you go.”

“In what way am I not
being honest?” I ask.

She shakes her head a
little, saying, “You’re not being honest with me, but you’re also not being
honest with yourself. You’re not here because you want to change. You’re here
because your girlfriend might break up with you if you weren’t. Isn’t that
true?”

“No,” I answer. “She laid
down the law, sure, but I’m here because I realized she was right. I
do
need something. What happened in that
fight—”

“So you’re here because
you want to be here?” she asks.

“I don’t know if ‘want’
is the right word right now, but yeah,” I answer.

She nods. “Okay,” she
says. “Continue, but this time, let’s focus on the feelings.”

“Oh god,” I groan.

“Hey, finally a real
reaction from you,” she says. “I thought the stuff with the wig was the only
bit of that I was going to see this hour.”

“Do you have some kind of
problem with me I don’t know about?” I ask. “Did I sleep with a relative of
yours and not call or something?”

“There’s no need to be
hostile,” Dr. Sadler says. “I’m just assessing your mental state.”

“My mental state?” I ask.
“What are you even talking about?”

“We’ll come back to
that,” she says. “Now, if you had to pick the top three emotions, the three
emotions that you felt more than anything else during those minutes or seconds
when you said you weren’t in control, what would they be?”

“I don’t know,” I tell
her. “I wasn’t feeling anything.”

“I don’t believe you,”
she says.

“You know,” I scoff, “at
this point, I don’t really care whether you believe me or not.”

Now, it’s just a matter
of waiting a moment for her to collect herself and kick me out of the office
and I can go back to Ash, telling her that I tried. I tried, it just didn’t
work.

“Good,” she says. “I’m
glad you’re finally recognizing your emotions instead of just reacting to them.
Now, if you could tell me the three emotions—”

“Annoyance, frustration
and irritation,” I tell her.

“Three near synonyms,”
she says. “Linguistically, that’s mildly impressive, but you’re not talking
about what you were feeling that night. You’re talking about how you’re feeling
right now.”

“Gee, how’d you guess?” I
ask sarcastically.

She actually bothers
answering, “You’ve said a couple of times in this conversation that you don’t
recall feeling any particular emotion immediately before or at any time during
the fight,” she says. “If you were talking about that, I doubt your emotions
would be quite so clear. That’s probably why you felt emotionally anesthetized.
Do you frequently feel anhedonic?”

I think a beat, but nope.
“I don’t know what that is,” I tell Dr. Sadler.

“Anhedonia is the
inability to experience pleasure,” she says.

“Oh, that’s not it then,”
I say quickly.

“So the things in your
life that used to bring you pleasure still do?” she asks.

I think about it for a
minute. “Well, I guess maybe not as much, but I still experience pleasure,” I
answer.

“Okay,” she says. “There
are many different ways in which a person’s body and mind can react to
depression. If you’d be willing, I’d like to try something that might help us
find out what the best—”

“I’m sorry,” I say,
stopping her. “I’m not depressed.”

“Okay,” she says.

I’m waiting for more, but
there doesn’t seem to be any.

“Okay?” I ask. “You just
sat there telling me that’s what’s going on. Are you really a doctor or do you
just like messing with people?”