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Chapter 1
The waiting room door swung open, and I nearly dropped the magazine I’d been pretending to read. A spark of panic churned my stomach for a second until I convinced myself I was in no immediate danger. Damn, my startle reflex was intense. It didn’t help that the waiting room had no music to give me something else to focus on. It made for a quiet and nervous wait as if I wasn’t already anxious. Every time this happened, I ended up feeling ashamed of myself, but after all these years, I still had no idea how to stop the reaction. It was part of who I was, and I continued to tell myself to get over it, knowing it would never help.
Even though the entire point of therapy was to change myself. Why did I have to be the slow student in class?
“Shawn Jones?” A man in a suit read the name off of a clipboard.
Chewing at my lip, I glanced across the waiting room, not quite looking at his face. He wasn’t my therapist. I had a woman. Besides, my appointment wasn’t for another five or ten minutes, anyway.
The guy, Shawn Johnson or whatever, stood and walked to the door. The counselor paused for a second before closing the door, but I still didn’t try to see if he’d looked at me. He probably hadn’t, not that I wanted him to. People tended to look past me. There were times when it was like I was invisible. Like a ghost trudging through life, unaware that I was dead and simply going through the motions. They could’ve made a movie about me. Then again, it wouldn’t have been a very good movie. More like some sad psychological flop. Even cashiers at stores tended to barely give me notice.
I was more than okay with being invisible.
I glanced at his face just in time for the therapist to flick his eyes back to me. I nearly shrank into my chair. There was a moment of, I didn’t know. Recognition, maybe?
The door closed before I could analyze the guy’s expression and figure out what it meant. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen that doctor before, but my glance had been so fleeting that I couldn’t even reconstruct his face in my mind. If I passed him on the street in an hour I probably wouldn’t even realize it was him.
A woman beside me cleared her throat, startling me from my thoughts. Again, I almost jumped at the sound but managed to control my fight-or-flight response. I tended to lean toward flight. No, not tended to. I might as well have been a fucking bird. The lady smiled at me apologetically and went back to scrolling on her phone. Suppressing another sigh, I picked my magazine up and stared at the page blankly.
I was jumpy. Anxious. More so than usual because my entire routine had been thrown off by the damn Savannah Memorial Day festival downtown. I’d totally forgotten about it, and it’d caused me to be late. I hated being late.
As soon as I stepped out of my grubby little apartment and saw the chaos from the setup of the festival, my anxiety exploded. People everywhere, setting up and blocking off the streets. The whole thing sent me into an emotional tailspin. Not wanting to miss my session, I’d called to change my appointment. Luckily, my therapist had a slot open an hour later, and I took it. The extra time gave me a chance to go the long way and skirt the madness of the festival. I now regretted that.
Usually, there were only one or two other people in the waiting room, but today was much busier than usual. Almost every chair was full, and my anxiety bubbled up my stomach into my sternum area. I wasn’t what they called a people person. In my experience, people, by and large, tended to be pieces of shit. I’d spent most of my life avoiding other humans. No matter how many times I’d tried to put myself out there and bond with someone, everything ended up going badly.
I closed the magazine and took a deep, calming breath. My mind raced a million miles an hour. I needed to calm down. A glance at my watch showed I should be called back at any minute. That was good. Although the new appointment time meant I’d have to hurry home to get ready for work. Yet another thing that had me on edge. God, I hated when my routine changed.
Added to my worries, I’d need to work more hours at the diner if I was going to afford rent next month.
My fucking landlord had sent me a text saying he was raising rates by three hundred dollars a month. No explanation given on my lease renewal. Thanks, jackass.
“How are you doing today?” The voice beside me was whisper quiet, and I flinched in surprise.
A man in his fifties or so smiled at me, and though it was a polite and good-natured grin, my skin crawled. I glanced at the tattoos on his arms. A knot of fear bunched up inside my guts.
“Have you been a patient long?” he asked, not seeming to notice how uncomfortable I was.
“A while,” I mumbled, and reopened the magazine, hoping he’d take the message.
“I’m getting a lot out of it. Has it helped you?” I didn’t look at him again but could imagine the expression on his face.
A trembling sigh fluttered out of me. I gave him a sidelong glance and my gaze immediately went to the tattoos on his arm again. A memory, unbidden, clawed up out of the sludge of my subconscious. An arm covered in black twisting symbols, the sound of grunting, sweaty flesh, pain, disgust, and shame.
“Dahlia Belrose?”
Dropping the magazine, I leaped to my feet. My counselor, a genial older lady, smiled as I walked toward her. I was probably imagining it, but I couldn’t help but feel the tattooed man’s gaze on me as I hurried to get out of the waiting room.
“How are we today, Dahlia?” she asked once we were comfortable in her office.
Mustering a smile, I managed to look halfway normal. “Great, thanks, Dr. Pope.”
She peered at me over her glasses. The look she gave was probing. I’d been coming long enough that she could read through my bullshit answers. I hadn’t been so normal after all, damn it.
“I noticed you in the waiting room. You looked like you were on the verge of a panic attack. Do you want to talk about it?”
As if the air had gone out of me, I sagged into the chair. “Not really.”
She placed her notepad aside and interlaced her fingers on top of her desk. “This is your hour. We can do whatever you’d like, but aren’t we here to try and help you get over some of your fear and anxiety?”
