Illusions Complete Series (14 page)

“Here, Alexis, drink this glass of water before you go.”

“I don’t want water.” But she drank it anyway. Ryan nodded to Daniel, who was standing in the doorway. Within 10 minutes, Alexis was passed out on the couch. Ryan and Daniel picked her up and put her into the Escalade.

“Thanks, man,” Ryan told Daniel.

“Of course. We have to stop meeting this way.”

“Don’t forget to bring her back to her car when she sobers up.”

He nodded. “I know the drill by now.”

“You’re a lifesaver, buddy.”

Daniel nodded and drove off, with Alexis passed out in the passenger’s seat. I wondered what kind of drug Ryan gave her to make her pass out like that, when she was so wired before. Must’ve been something pretty potent.

I looked back at Ryan, who looked shocked and shaken. He was literally shaking, too.

Now you’re both in the closet. What the fuck?

I was scared to ask. “What was that about?”

“Excuse me.” He took his phone into the other room. “Yes, Dr. Halder? Thanks for answering the phone so late. No, no, I’m ok. Do you have an afternoon open sometime this week? As soon as possible? I need about three hours of your time, if possible.” He stood, silently, on the phone for about five minutes. “Wednesday. Anything sooner?” Then “Yes, yes, I understand. Thanks for clearing your schedule for me on Wednesday.”

He came out. “Uh, what are you doing on Wednesday at 1?”

“Well, let’s see,” I said, looking at my iPhone. Ryan bought that for me as a gift the first week that I moved in. “You need to be better organized,” he explained when he bought it. I couldn’t argue with that. “Uh, I have a couple of new intakes. I could always reschedule them.” I was a little bit upset about getting into the rescheduling business again. I was trying to be more responsible. I couldn’t lose my practice now, because then I would be a total loser. Ryan wouldn’t want an unemployed loser living with him.

“I normally wouldn’t ask you to do that, but this is important.”

“You want me to go to your therapist with you.” That was a statement, not a question, because I knew the answer.

“Yes. Please.”

“Ok.”

Then I was on the phone with Melinda. She wasn’t happy. “You’re rescheduling again? You were getting so much better.”

“Yeah, I know, but this is an emergency.”

“Ok,” she grumbled.

“Thanks.”

I turned to Ryan. “Done.”

He took a deep breath. “Ok, now you have to promise me something.”

“What’s that?”

“You won’t ask me a single question about what Alexis said, or what you heard Alexis saying, until we can sit in Dr. Halder’s office together.”

Shit, that was in three more days!. My curiosity, and, I admit, panic, was killing me.
“Deal,” I said, faking a smile.

He let out a deep breath. “God, I love you.” Then he was back on the phone. “Yes, Dr. Halder. It’s Ryan again.” Pause. “Yes, I hope that is ok if I bring my fiancee in as well on Wednesday.” Pause. “Thanks for accommodating us.”

I looked at him.
Fiancee?

I suddenly felt terrified for some odd reason.

Chapter Fourteen

The three days that I had to wait to see Ryan’s therapist was sheer hell. Over and over again I heard Alexis’ words “Now you’re both in the closet,” and I couldn’t stop obsessing about who Nick was. Now I knew that Nick was a man, and…
No, no, stop that. It isn’t that
. I was sorry that I ever agreed to Ryan’s condition that I not talk to him about what Alexis had said before Wednesday.

It wasn’t exactly fun being around Ryan, either. There was an elephant in the room that neither of us could address just yet. My mind was going 1,000 miles an hour, considering all the possibilities. While Alexis chose not to reveal Ryan’s secret to me that night, she did plenty of damage without coming right out and telling me what’s going on. Perhaps that was her objective.

She played her hand perfectly.

I realized that one of her main goals was to get Ryan back any way she possibly could. Yes, she wanted material possessions, but it had always been clear to me that for her, he was the ultimate prize.
You screwed up lady, now your trash is my treasure.
Not that Ryan could, or should, be considered to be anybody’s “trash.” So, who knows? Perhaps she was just putting something out there that wasn’t true at all in an attempt to put doubt in my brain about Ryan. With me out of the picture, she could worm her way back into this good graces, perhaps.

These were all the thoughts which were going through my mind as I tried to concentrate on work. Such concentration was impossible. Unfortunately, I had a custody hearing on Tuesday, the day before the fateful trip to the therapist. My head was not in the game, and my client, the mother, wasn’t the most reasonable woman in the world.

I blew the hearing. I barely had looked at the file, and did not review the depositions, so my cross-examination of the sleazy father on the stand left much to be desired. The hearing went down in defeat, as I knew that it would, and the mother stormed out of the room.

“I’m sorry, but, you know, these cases are hard to win.” Which was true. The mother was seeking a temporary custody order restricting visitation, and these cases are really difficult to win, because the judges are so inclined to give liberal visitation to each parent. The burden of proof was really high.

“That’s ok, I understand.”

Of course, it turns out that she didn’t understand. Upon alighting in my office, Melinda let me have it with both barrels. “Rachel called and she wants her money back.”

I rolled my eyes. “She’s not getting it.”

“She’s really pissed and wants to go to the bar. She says that you committed legal malpractice on the stand.”

She does have a point.
“Here’s an accounting of my hours. She actually owes me money.”

“I’m telling you, she’s going to be trouble. She says that you were not prepared at all.”

“Whatever.”

“She needs the money back so that she can hire another attorney.”

“She’s not getting anything, and that’s that.”

“Listen, you spent the entire day on the computer in your office, surfing the Internet instead of reading her file. You owe her an explanation, and I think that you should give back the money.”

I did spend the day on the Internet, looking at crazy cats and reading message boards for trashy television, that was true. I didn’t review the file, also true.
Guilty as charged.
But I’m the one who is supposed to be giving orders to Melinda, not the other way around. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hit her with the fact that she, herself, spends too much time on the Internet, because that just wasn’t true. She was a hard, diligent worker, and I never once caught her surfing when she was supposed to be working. I had no defense to the charges.

“I’ll think about it.” I was realizing, anew, how burned out I was on the whole practice of law. I just wasn’t very good anymore. I never did have much passion for it. The law never burned inside of me. It was simply a means to an end.
So, what’s the worst that could happen? I get my wrist slapped for not diligently representing a client. Happens every day.

But my performance in the courtroom nagged at me. I did suck in there. But I couldn’t afford to repay her retainer. I was still living hand to mouth, although things were admittedly better since moving in with Ryan. He wasn’t charging me anything to live there with him. He owned the house outright, so there wasn’t a mortgage, and he wouldn’t take money from me anyways. I no longer had to worry about rent or utilities.

I worried anew about my future prospects. Ryan was crazy about me, but I currently have a somewhat respectable position. He wouldn’t be too embarrassed to introduce me to his board members or his high society friends. However, if I decided to walk away from the practice of law to work at Whole Foods, then that would be a different story. Plus, Alexis, for all her craziness, was a highly respected attorney herself. She was a partner at a large firm, and she was educated at Yale. That’s who he should be with – a beautiful law firm partner. But, he had chosen to be with me, so I had to bring something to the table. I just had to suck it up.

It was very discouraging. I was dealing with the reality of my burnout, at the same time that I was anticipating a major bombshell from the therapist.

I wasn’t having a good day.

I came home, and Ryan was waiting for me. A huge bouquet of roses was on the table. There was also candle light, and I could smell dinner waiting for me. He opened a bottle of his wine.

“Love, I know that you’re stressed out. I’m so very sorry about all of this. I’m sorry to make you wait to find out what’s going on. I wish that there was something I could do. I know that dinner and roses won’t take away your anxiety, but I just wanted to make the gesture.”

I had to admit, he was sweet. I hoped that what was revealed would not be a deal-breaker, although I was very nervous about it.

Dinner was delicious, as usual. He made one of my favorite meals – potato gnocchi with sage butter, goat cheese and walnuts. It was savory and produced an orgasm in my mouth. He served it with a simple Caesar Salad with homemade croutons and homemade dressing. Dessert was Zabaglione with fresh raspberries. We went through a bottle of some of the finest wine from his winery.

After that meal, I was feeling better.

He led me up to the master bathroom. This was a magnificent bathroom with a sunken tub. We took off our clothes and climbed into the tub. He had run the bath to just the right temperature, and made sure that there were lots of bubbles. He lined up some of my favorite songs on the iTunes collection, and they were piping through the speakers in the bathroom. We drank wine and relaxed in the enormous tub.

He gently massaged my shoulders with massage oil while he sat behind me in the tub. He shampooed my hair, giving me a gentle scalp massage. I leaned forward a bit, and he started to rub my back with the oil. His hands massaged my back, then my shoulders, then my neck.

“Ooh, you are so tense,” he said, his hands gripping my shoulders, trying to work out the knots. Yes, I was tense, but the tension was gradually starting to get better with every grip of his strong hands. We relaxed in the bathtub for a couple of hours, as I raised my feet out of the bath from time to time to keep from pruning too much. The water never got cold, as the tub had a built-in heating unit, similar to a hot tub.

After the bath, I lay down on our bed, while Ryan massaged my back with the oil, and the back of my legs. He massaged my calves and my feet, spending a good deal of time on each body part. I felt that I was having a professional massage. That was how good it felt. Then I lay on my back, and he massaged my thighs and my arms. I was starting to completely relax when he started kissing me passionately. He made love to me, tenderly, slowly, like we were on the first night. I didn’t want it to end. We ended up making love for hours, tenderly, passionately, slowly. We were comfortable together, more comfortable than that first night, and we were starting to find out what each other enjoyed. He had hinted, more than once, that he loved the butt play that I gave him that first night, so I made it a point to do that on a regular basis. So, I fingered him slowly while he moved inside of me.

He groaned. “Stop, I’m close. I want to make this last longer.” I stopped. “I’m sorry. I just want to last inside of you. That turns me on so much that I can’t control myself.” That was fine.

After we had made love for hours on the bed, and in front of the fireplace in the bedroom, laying a rug down in front of the fireplace, I fell asleep in his arms. I hoped that this would not be the last night for us. We had made love that night like it could be our last night together, and the thought absolutely terrified me.

I whispered to him “I love you.”

Unfortunately, he was already asleep.

He didn’t get to hear the words that he was so desperate to hear from me since that first date.

Chapter Fifteen

The D-Day had finally arrived. I met Ryan at Dr. Halder’s office, getting there slightly early and waiting in the waiting room for Ryan to arrive. He arrived shortly after me. We sat in the waiting room in silence, me flipping through a
People
magazine. He just stared into space. I could hear his breathing. I could even hear his heart pounding.

“Are you nervous?” I asked.

“Deathly,” he said.

“Me too.”

“Iris, I just have to get this out. I hope that you can handle what is going to be said in here. I pray that you can. If you leave me, I don’t know what I will do.”

I patted his hand lightly. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.”

“I hope you’re right about that.”

“Oh, I’m quite sure.”

Dr. Halder called us in. “Iris, Ryan?”

Ryan greeted him with “Hello, Dr. Halder. This is my, uh…”

“Fiancee?” Dr. Halder asked, looking at me.

Ryan looked at me. My expression was skeptical.
Why is he going to lie about that?

“Uh, actually, she is not my fiancee yet.” He looked at me. “Yet,” he repeated.

Whatever.

“Come on in, sit down.”

There was a love seat in the enormous office. The office was overlooking a bluff, and had a very nice view of the city. The windows were huge, and the ceilings were high, about 14 feet tall. I had to admit that this was a very relaxing office, with a little waterfall in the middle of the room. Ryan and I took our place on the love seat.

“Now, Ryan, first for the preliminaries. We discussed what you want to do on the phone. I need you to sign your waivers of confidentiality.” Ryan nodded, taking the papers in hand, reading them carefully. Meanwhile, I sat there, literally shaking. I made eye contact with Dr. Halder. He smiled.

“Nice day out there,” he said.

“Yes.”

“The trees are finally turning.”

“Yes, this is my favorite time of the year.” And it was. I have always loved autumn in the Midwest. I loved Halloween, and the way that the air was so crisp during the month of October. I loved that the Christmas season was right around the corner, which was my second favorite time of year. I loved that it got dark so early.