Dating a Metro Man (2 page)

“Right,” Seth said, glad he hadn’t had to explain it himself. “The problem isn’t physical. It’s something else, but I don’t know exactly what it is.”

“Can you describe the problem to me?” Regina closed his file. She linked her fingers together and rested her hands on top of the folder to show her willingness to wait while Seth searched for words.

“Can I use her name?” Seth asked, not sure if it was some sort of violation or not since Regina knew Jenna.

“You need to say things in any manner that works for you. You can say absolutely anything in this room and it will go no further. I don’t even put the details in your file. I use codes in my notes that are known only to me and one other deeply trusted member of my staff. I take many precautions in protecting a clients’ privacy.” Regina stopped and waited to see what he would say next.

Seth nodded his head in acknowledgement, letting Regina know that he understood and believed her.

“My problem is with Jenna.” Seth looked away from Regina to a window that looked over the street in front of her building.

Regina could see Seth’s mind had gone somewhere far away as he was looking for a way to explain. She well knew how difficult it was to ask for help.

“Jenna thinks I don’t want her, and I can’t ever seem to change her mind. The night of Casey and Alexa’s engagement party I was alone with Jenna in her room. We started kissing. Things got heated between us very quickly, but I stopped because I hadn’t brought any protection with me. I would have helped—shit,” Seth blushed and swallowed, “I would have been happy to help her—this is incredibly hard to talk about with someone other than her.”

He leaned forward in the chair and rubbed his face.

Regina made a considering hum in her throat. “Let me see if I can fill in the blanks and help you a bit. You and Jenna were making out, but you stopped because you didn’t want to have unprotected intercourse with her. You were willing to do other things, but I take it Jenna had a bad reaction to that.”

“I didn’t even get to suggest it. She wouldn’t even hear me out about why I’d stopped. She was already mad when I showed up, but after that she was angry and cold. I could tell that she completely shut out the possibility of being with me in any manner. I don’t get what I did wrong. I thought stopping was the right thing to do; the thing a nice guy would do. I tried to ask what was wrong, but all I got was more anger. Seems like anger is the strongest feeling she has toward me,” Seth finished.

“Have there been other exchanges since then?” Regina asked.

“Nothing worth mentioning,” Seth said sadly. “I embarrassed her at Casey and Alexa’s wedding reception. Fortunately, I walked away before anything really bad happened.”

“Okay. This is the part where I have to ask some really personal questions. You dated Jenna for quite some time. Did you ever have intercourse with Jenna?” Regina looked at the grim set of his jaw and knew the answer before he replied.

“No.”

“Did you express your sexuality with her other ways, such as heavy petting or oral gratification?” Regina took out a pen and pretended to make a note on her chart while Seth struggled with the pained expression on his face.

“No.”

“So it sounds like you were abstaining. Was abstinence from sex a mutual decision, or did one of you have a moral or religious prohibition?” Regina looked up when Seth laughed.

“No,” Seth shook his head, “neither of us had any moral or religious prohibitions. Or at least not that I knew.”

“So abstaining was a mutual decision then?” Regina asked, pen poised above the file.

Seth studied his hands again. “I guess it was my call more than Jenna’s. At least, that’s what she says about it.”

“Okay. Jenna didn’t want to abstain. Why did you want to? You were together for several months in what appeared to be a serious dating relationship,” Regina recounted.

“When I met Jenna, I thought she was the most incredibly hot woman I had ever met in my life, but I also thought it was terrible timing for me for that kind of relationship. I know how intense that first rush of passion is and how all-consuming it can be. I was busy all the time with my business. I got phone calls from several different time zones at all hours of the day and night.”

Seth looked toward the window again as he tried to find a way to describe the situation that was fair to both him and Jenna.

“Jenna would get really upset when I wasn’t paying a hundred percent attention to her. I guess while we were dating I was trying to have just a friendly relationship with Jenna until I had the time to give myself freely to a more passionate one. I have always wanted to marry her. I’ve known that since the moment we met.” Seth leaned back in the chair and sighed at finally getting to say it out loud, even if it was just to a doctor.

“Did Jenna return your passionate interest?” Regina asked, knowing this answer already, but wondering if Seth did.

“Yes.” Seth didn’t hesitate. “She still wants me, but she doesn’t want to want me. I finally believe her. She’s seeing other men and trying to get over me, but I don’t think she’s slept with any of them yet. At least, she hadn’t up to the night of Lauren’s product party. She accidentally told me.”

Regina looked thoughtful as she tapped the end of the pen on her chin. “Okay. Here’s my next question. While you were still actively dating Jenna, what did you do with the passion you felt, but that neither of you were exercising within your relationship? Even priests have a lot of trouble turning off sexual arousal, and they have elaborate ways to handle it. Most normal people merely subjugate the sexual urge by channeling it to another less risky person, to self-gratification, or to substitute activities such as overeating. You look healthy and fit, so I’m going to guess that you don’t overeat.”

Seth flushed to the roots of his hair, closed his eyes, and groaned in embarrassment. “Do you have to know the specific information?”

When he opened his eyes again, Regina nodded in sympathy but was firm in her reply. “Yes. I do. I think it’s important to this discussion.”

“Self-gratification,” Seth said, mortified.

“How frequently?” Regina returned her attention to the file, wrote a couple of codes, and saw Seth moving restlessly in the chair. She looked up to see his flaming red face.

“Seth, there’s nothing wrong with self-gratification. I’d be a remarkably rich woman if I had a nickel for each time I’ve had to explain this. The alternative to sex that you chose was a testament to your feelings for Jenna. You could have taken that passion to another person. Many, many people do that. Some of us would think that self-gratification was a more honorable choice. It is the one I recommend to people most frequently in situations where one or the other partner cannot be sexual for some extended period of time. So tell me how often and how consistently. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think I truly needed to know.”

Regina watched his high color fade a bit as he looked toward the window and sighed. Facing truths about sexual feelings was hard for everyone.

“Four or five times a week, sometimes more. I guess it’s been every week since I met her.” Seth leaned his head back in the chair and closed his eyes.

“Perfectly reasonable,” Regina said, smiling a little at her folder. “Do you know what Jenna did to handle it?”

Seth’s head came up and his eyes locked on Regina’s. “What do you mean?”

“Well, if Jenna returned your passionate interest, then it’s reasonable to assume she would need to find an outlet as well if neither of you were helping the other achieve sexual release,” Regina said, trying to make her voice a balance of logic and kindness.

Seth frowned, remembering the power of Jenna’s desperate kiss in the bedroom the day of the party and recalling how she had turned off her response as soon as he put on the brakes. What did that mean?

“I guess never thought about it. I don’t know what Jenna did. I guess I thought she did nothing. Women seem to handle sexual frustration better than men, don’t they?” Seth asked.

Regina shook her head from side to side and sighed at the lack of true understanding in his response. She saw this all the time.

“Well, let me set you straight and tell you that your thinking is completely wrong. First, single women without regular sexual partners self-gratify as much as men. If you don’t think I’m right, check out the sales of vibrators. That’s not even counting the women who don’t use them. Secondly, let’s talk about sexual arousal for a woman Jenna’s age. Her sexual arousal when she is turned on is probably five times stronger than your arousal at your age. If she’s not doing anything to seek relief from the sexual tension she has around you, then she’s probably been in the world’s worst mood for a very, very long time.” Regina laughed as Seth processed the information.

“Shit,” Seth said, as the errors in his thinking were becoming clear. “You’re saying Jenna’s perpetually mad at me because I get her wound up and never follow through?”

“Mad is probably the mildest word you could use to describe her frustration level. If I were you, I would avoid being alone with Jenna in rooms with large throwable objects, sharp knives, or ball bats.” Regina smiled as understanding finally dawned in Seth’s eyes.

“When I followed her to the bedroom, she was throwing her shoes against the wall. I thought she was just having a temper tantrum. You’re telling me it could have been more than that?” Seth asked, still trying to take it all in.

Regina shrugged, “Possibly. Since I don’t have Jenna’s side of the story, I can’t confirm.”

“She said she was done with me. My God, she’s dating other guys. She’s trying to take her passion to another person because I—oh shit, Regina. What the hell am I going to do? How am I going to fix this?” Seth looked at her desperately.

Regina got up and walked to a shelf with a fish bowl full of small colorful foil packets. She scooped a handful out, walked to Seth, and dropped them into his hands.

“Here. Never be without at least one of these in your pocket. If you’re not willing to take any risks, and then at least be prepared at all times to follow through.” Regina laughed as Seth looked surprised at the various colors and textures.

Seth closed his hands around the packets of condoms and nodded. “I feel like I’m in a high school sex education course. I can’t believe I have to be told something so simple at age thirty.”

Regina laughed. “That’s because you currently have little or no sympathy for what Jenna is suffering. We need to change that, make you not just sympathetic but empathetic. As often as you’ve been achieving sexual release on your own, you’ve literally forgotten how bad it can be to be churned up and not have an outlet. So I want you to completely stop self-gratification for the next week, and then come back and see me. And I want you to not approach Jenna again until you see me.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Seth couldn’t believe what he was hearing, couldn’t believe what she was asking of him.

“Do you want to fix this or not?” Regina asked quietly, smiling at his shock.

“Well yes. I’m willing to do as you ask, but I don’t see how that’s going to make a difference,” Seth said.

Regina laughed and wondered just how bad off Seth would be in a week and how soon it would take him to figure it out. She’d almost said two weeks, but experience and instinct told her Seth Carter would never make it two weeks.

“Seth, you’re going to want to put away anything around your house that is valuable and that you don’t want broken. Getting back in touch with your sexual tension will be a bit like going through the worst parts of puberty again. When you start getting frustrated in a few days, your mood is going to shift dramatically. You may have trouble sleeping. You may be irritable with people around you. Some men have told me that they destroyed things.”

Seth snorted. “I don’t think it’s going to get that bad in a week.”

“Think of it this way,” Regina said, eyes twinkling, “an average single man self-gratifies once or twice a week. You’re above the average. This means your sexual frustration will be proportional and likely start the first day you abstain. I could be wrong, but I’m rarely wrong. I’ve asked lots of men to do this. It is torturous, but effective one hundred percent of the time.”

She wrote something on a form and handed it to Seth. “Tell the front office I said to schedule you in the morning exactly a week from today. If you have any questions before then, call me.”

Seth nodded. “What if Jenna sleeps with someone before the week is up? She’s still dating Stedman.”

“I don’t know. Only you can answer that question, Seth.” Regina said softly.

Seth nodded and walked out the door. Regina sighed and laid her head back in her chair.

Lord, what people did to each other, she thought.

The simplicity of her relationship with Ben never failed to bring a rush of gratitude to her. All the years she had spent looking had been validated the day Ben Kaiser walked into her life. The right person simply made all the difference. She found herself wondering if Seth was going to prove to be the right person for Jenna and vice versa.

Even with her skills, Regina knew all she could do was tell the truth and hope her clients were smart enough to figure it out. She sighed again and rose to go see the next one.

“Are you okay?” Casey asked, searching Seth’s face for signs of illness. He was standing in the kitchen of Seth’s condo, setting out the Chinese food he’d brought for their dinner.

“Of course. Why?” Seth asked, frowning. He stuck his hands in his pockets only to remove them quickly.

“Well, you’ve walked to the patio door and back about fifty times in the last ten minutes. It’s not like you to pace. You keep putting your hands in your pockets and pulling them out. You seem nervous or something. Talk to me. I’ve been helping you solve problems for a long time now, remember?” Casey watched Seth stop walking and run a hand over his face. Seth looked like he wanted to say something, but didn’t.

“I need a beer. Want one?” Seth asked, walking to the refrigerator. He didn’t know how to answer Casey’s question or even if he wanted to confide what was going on.