But I can handle them better now.

The doors open with a soft metallic moan and I step inside the mirrored elevator in the Lexington Avenue office building. The lift shoots me up six floors to my shrink’s office.

Dr. Michele Milo.

I head into the lobby. It’s empty and that’s good because I’d rather not see who else is fucked in the head or the heart. I walk to her office and tap on the door.

“Good afternoon, Trey,” she says in the calm voice I’m used to. I’m pretty sure shrinks don’t have any other voices. It must be part of shrink training – how to speak in a serenely modulated tone all the time. Never waver. Never vary. I wonder if shrinks are all peaceful and even on the inside too. Unflappable, never bothered by the shit life serves up.

I can’t even imagine what that would be like.

Like living inside a Valium, maybe.

“Hey.”

I flop down on her couch. She’s been my shrink for six months, and granted, she’s totally my type – maybe a little young since I think she’s in her late twenties – but I’ve never had a single dirty thought about her. Not one. Maybe that means I’m getting better. Maybe I’m not so hooked on older women. Maybe I’m breaking my addiction.

“So,” she begins, clasping her hands together. “How is everything going for you this week?”

I shrug. “It’s fine. The school year is almost over.”

“And your plans for the summer? No Regrets full time?”

I nod.

“How are your parents about that?”

I roll my eyes. My parents. My perfectly plastic, perfectly put together, perfectly empty parents. They wish I were going to school to be a doctor. Yeah, like that’ll ever happen. “Guess how they are with that,” I say sarcastically. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Whatever you want to talk about, Trey. This is your time.”

I look away, at the plants on her windowsill, at the books on her shelves. Books with names like Real Choices, It’s Not Love–It’s Addiction, Healthier Lives. All the shit I need to be. I stare at her walls and the framed abstract art. Red squares, yellow brushstrokes, blue lines all mixed together. I’m glad she doesn’t have those stupid inspirational pictures I’m tired of seeing at SLAA.

She waits for me to speak.

“Harley,” I say in a low voice. I always want to talk about her.

“You want to talk about Harley.” It’s not a question; it’s a statement.

“Sure,” I offer in the most casual, offhand way I can muster.

“Harley, the girl you spent one night with and have now become best friends through a love and sex addicts support group,” she states, but there’s no judgement in her voice.

I cross my arms. “You think it’s dangerous that I’m friends with her.”

Michele shakes her head. “No. I think it’s worth exploring how and why you’re actively focused on recovering from your addictive behavior and you spend most of your time with someone who also has that goal in mind. And yet she also happens to be a young woman with whom you’ve been intimate.”

“You think we can’t be friends because we almost slept together?”

She shakes her head. “No. I think you can be friends. I also think the situation is complicated and unusual, Trey. Because you’ve gone from feeling as if your life was spiraling out of control and deciding to go to SLAA, to meeting Harley, to becoming close friends and sharing both the details of your past and your recovery with her. Is that a correct assessment of the last six months?”

“Yeah,” I say tentatively, and I have the feeling of being subtly cross-examined even though I know that’s not Michele’s style.

“And yet, you and your parents don’t talk about what brought you to SLAA. You don’t share it with friends. You don’t share it anywhere but here and with Harley.”

My jaw tightens and my shoulders tense. “I feel like you’re calling me out on something.”

“I’m not. But I want you to think about why you’re able to be this way with her. Why you go all over the city with her, and she meets you after work, and you hang out in between classes, and you know all about these memoirs she’s being forced to write, and you, by your own admission, are not a terribly open person. So why her?”

I picture Harley. Her blond hair. Her brown eyes. Her banging body. But then I shift away from the physical, and I flash onto all the other parts and honestly it comes down to pretty much one thing.

“I can talk to her about just about anything,” I say.

“You can,” Michele nods. “Except one thing. The why behind all of this.”

I run my palm over the tattoo on my shoulder, underneath my shirt. The why of all of this.


Harley

As soon as I open the door, the familiar greeting pours forth.

“You look so pretty,” my mom says in this incredibly reflective air. As if this is the first time ever, in my whole life, I’ve looked so pretty. I’m wearing a short skirt, a t-shirt, and my Mary Janes. I look like I do every day. Still, no matter what, without fail, you can set your ever-loving clock to it, You look so pretty is always the first thing my mom says to me.

I wish I hated it.

I wish I didn’t need to hear it.

But I ache without it. It’s become as necessary as air and sun.

It’s my confirmation that all is right in the world. She raised me to be pretty. She trained me to be pretty. She is pretty too.

The difference is she never used her pretty to win things in life. She earned all her accolades, all her praise, all her awards. She doesn’t even hang them on the walls or frame them. She’s so humble, brushing them off as if they’re nothing when people praise her. But they’re not nothing. She’s won national awards from every journalistic association in the world, it seems. She’s earned the most prestigious prizes in her field since she’s a top-notch investigative reporter on “Here and Now,” the venerated show that has exposed government secrets about the wars, not to mention high-profile politician shenanigans. My mom uncovered the Sexting Senator, the congressman who hired young male escorts to give him blow jobs on Uncle Sam’s dollar, and a child prostitution ring run by an ex New York City Mayor.

Barbara Coleman.

Her name even sounds like a kickass reporter who takes no prisoners.

She is the most feared whistleblower in America, and her two non-fiction books have topped the bestseller lists. She’s been called The Cleaner and I’m told that politicians shudder and quake in their boots when she starts investigating them. She’s been relentless in her pursuit ever since my father took off when I was in first grade. She kicked him out after several affairs. Then, with the help of her editor, who plucked her from the assignment desk, mentored her, and fed her reporting opportunities, she refashioned herself into some sort of avenging angel, a righteous doer of good, exposing all the evils behind closed doors.

She is one of the most admired women in America.

And she has a slut for a daughter.

She stands tall and regal at the stove, stirring a pot with a long wooden spoon. She wears a flowy magenta blouse, the color so blazingly rich she looks like royalty. She’s paired her top with trim black slacks and suede pumps, and her raven-colored hair is pulled back in a comb. She’s beautiful and she is ready for a new man.

“Hi Barb.” I leave my purse by the door as I head into the kitchen.

“I’m making Moroccan stew tonight in honor of you being nearly done with your second year of college,” she says coyly. I’m not sure why she says it coyly, but perhaps she’s flirting with the stew.

“But of course. British lit originated in Morocco,” I say, since English is my major. I love to write, but not the kind of writing she does. And not the kind of writing Miranda makes me do. I like to make up fantastical tales of talking animals, magical doorways, portals to other worlds. Only I don’t really have the time to do that kind of writing anymore. I used to have notebooks and journals full of tales, until Miranda subverted my love of words with her twisted debt.

But I don’t like thinking about Miranda when I’m here.

My mom winks at me, loving our sisterly banter and jokes. That’s what we are. Sisters.

“Who’s coming over tonight?”

She screws up her forehead. Maybe she can’t remember. Or maybe…no…not this…not now. Her eyes go glassy, and her lower lip quivers. “Not Phil,” she chokes out, dropping the spoon and covering her eyes.

I pull her to me, wrap an arm around her. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” I reassure, even though I wish she’d never met Phil, her last boyfriend. Tears leak onto my shirt as she heaves out several thick sobs.

“I miss him,” she moans. “I don’t know why he left.”

I do. I know why he left. I won’t tell her though. “Because he’s a jerk and you deserve better, Barb,” I say, because she doesn’t like me to call her mom.

She nods against my chest and sucks in her breath. There. She’s pulling herself together. One hug from me, one firm but loving reminder, and that’s the magic formula to make Barb Coleman happy again. “Forget about Phil, okay? Get that dick out of your head and your heart for once and for all. Now tell me about this new guy.”

She pulls back, exhales, brushes a hand across her cheek to wipe away the streaks of her sadness.

“His name is Neil. And he has a son who’s just as good-looking,” she says, and winks at me knowingly.

She picks up her dropped spoon and resumes stirring. “I want you to meet him. I think he might be perfect for you.”

I cringe inside and a new knot of nerves takes hold. I hate being set up. But I don’t know how to tell her this. Not when she’s given me everything. Not when she’s the only one who’s been here for me since my dad is quite simply gone. Off in Europe with his new bride, or so I hear. I don’t talk to him and he doesn’t talk to me. I haven’t seen his parents either – my grandparents – since they split, and we used to visit them often. Some days, when I am feeling hollow and empty, I miss those visits even more. They don’t even write or call, not even on my birthday, and they promised they would. They promised they’d tell me stories of the times I spent with them. But when my parent split, I was excised from everyone. All I have is Barb.

“It would make me happy. You know I love playing matchmaker,” she adds.

That’s what I want. The desire to take away her sadness fuels me every day.“What’s his son’s name?”

“Connor. Lovely name, don’t you think?”

No. It’s just a name. It’s neither here nor there. It tells me nothing about him.

“Yes. Great name.” I press my fingernails into my palm so I can feel the flesh starting to pierce. The prospect of one of her set-ups makes me desperately want to return to Cam, the man who made me Layla, the man I miss. I dig harder. I need the visceral reminder to stay strong, to keep on course. I will not bend. I will not break. I will not go back to the way I was. Layla is gone. Layla has been put out to pasture, and I am my mother’s daughter – good, honest, righteous.

I picture my red ribbon tattoo. My reminder of how much I love my mom. Of all the good times we had. Our mother-daughter bonds. All the tests she helped me study for, all the times she took my temperature when I was sick, all the nights she tucked me into bed, the only parent there for me. Every single night.

How I will do anything for her. Including protect her from the truth about me, and my call girl days with Cam.

I try to practice all the mantras SLAA has taught me.

This too shall pass. The three-second rule. Let the past be the past.

There. Better. I won’t think of Cam, and his baby blues, his sandpaper stubble, his faith in Layla to reel them in. We were partners in crime. Partners in secrets. Partners in power.

I miss my partner terribly.

My mom stirs her concoction. “One of my sources sent me this recipe. She knows I love to cook. It calls for peanuts and carrots and sausages…”

“Gotta love a sausage fest,” I say with a smile.

“Harley.” She pretends to shoot me a chiding look. But she loves that I’m one of her girlfriends.

“Want me to set the table?”

“That would be divine. And don’t forget wine glasses,” she says, then wags a finger at me. “But none for you.”

“Of course not, Barb. I’m underage. I don’t drink.”

She gives me a soft peck on the forehead. “You are such a good girl.”