Page 121 of Slapshot Baby

She fits me in that afternoon.

The office is plain. It has window overlooking the practice rink and two chairs facing each other; no couch, no framed degrees doing the heavy lifting of credibility. Dr. Carla is mid-forties with frameless glasses.

"Walk me through what's been happening. Tell me about the dreams."

"They started a few weeks ago,” I say, then tell her about the dream.

She removes her glasses and folds them on her knee.

“How vivid is the dream?”

“It keeps getting clearer each time. They were mild at first, but now they’re more detailed and come almost every night.”

"And the content is always sexual?"

"Always."

She's quiet for a moment. When she speaks again, it seems she’s deliberately choosing her words.

"Based on everything you've described, you’re experiencing a real memory your brain has walled off. It’s surfacing through sleep because the emotional charge attached to it is too strong to stay fully suppressed.”

"But I got everything else back. Why would my brain hand all of that over and hold back this one thing?"

"Your brain doesn't hide things it considers safe." She leans forward slightly. "If these specific memories remain sealed while every other gap has closed, the most likely explanation is that there's associated emotional content your mind is treating as a threat."

"A threat to what?"

"To you or to your sense of the relationship."

"What kind of threat?"

"I can't tell you that. Only the full memory can. But I can tell you that selective retention like this almost always involves pain. Something happened connected to this woman that your subconscious considers damaging enough to protect you from, even at the cost of leaving a gap in your recovery."

I leave her office and walk to the parking garage. My car is parked in the far corner, away from the exits. I sit in it for a long time, hands on the steering wheel.

I had sex with Ava before the accident, but my brain refuses to remember because something about that night hurt one of us.

I don't believe I'm the kind of man who harms a woman physically. Nothing in my character, recovered or otherwise, suggests that.

But there are other ways to hurt someone.

A promise broken. The kind of casual cruelty that doesn't register as cruelty until you see its effect months later in the eyes of a woman who likes you, wants you, sleeps beside you, and still won't call you hers.

Ava flinches from commitment the way a player flinches from the boards after a bad hit.

What if the man I was before the accident did something to this woman that I can't remember but she can't forget?

I start the car and drive home.

Over the next few days, I take her out.

Tacos in Silver Lake, where she steals from my plate and acts offended when I retaliate.

A sunset walk along the Venice canals, where Biscuit launches herself into the water twice, paddles in hysterical circles, and emerges looking profoundly satisfied.

An evening at my apartment where I attempt pasta and Ava quietly takes over at the stove, bumping me aside with her hip and telling me my technique has "the confidence of a man who has never been corrected."

I watch her on every date.