Chapter 8
Julian and Grace helped Selena close down her stand and get to her Jeep before they headed home through Friday evening traffic.
"You've been quiet," Grace said as she stopped for a red light.
She watched the way his gaze followed the path of the other cars on the road. He looked so lost, like someone caught between dreams and reality.
"I don't know what to say," he responded after a brief pause.
"Tell me how you feel."
"About what?"
Grace laughed. "You are definitely a man," she said. "You know, the guys give me the hardest time during my sessions. They come in, spend one hundred and twenty-five dollars an hour to basically say nothing. I'll never figure it out."
His gaze dropped to his lap and she saw the way he rubbed his general's ring idly with his thumb. "You said you were a sex therapist. What exactly is that?"
She started back into traffic. "You and I are sort of in the same business. I help people who have relationship troubles. Women who are afraid to be intimate with men, or women who love men a little too zealously."
"Nymphomaniacs?"
She nodded.
"I've known a few of those," he said with a sigh.
"I bet you have."
"And the men?" he asked.
"They're not so easy. Like I said, they don't talk as much. I have a few cases of men who have performance anxiety-"
"What's that?"
"Something I'm sure you'll never have," she said, thinking of the arrogant way he constantly pursued her.
Clearing her throat, she explained. "They're men who are afraid their partners will laugh at them while they're in bed."
"Oh."
"I also have a couple who are verbally abusive to their spouses and girlfriends. A couple who want to have their sex changed-"
"Can they do that?" Julian asked in a shocked tone.
"Oh, yeah," she said with a wave of her hand. "You'd be amazed what the doctors today are capable of."
She turned toward her house.
Julian was quiet for so long that she was about to show him the radio when all of a sudden he asked, "Why do you want to help these people?"
"I don't know," she answered honestly. "I guess it goes back to my childhood when I was very insecure. My parents loved me, but I didn't know how to relate to other kids. My father was a history professor, and my mother a housewife-"
"She married a house?"
Grace laughed. "No, she just stayed at home and did mom things. They never treated me like a child, really, and so when I got around other children I didn't know what to do. What to say. I would get so scared, I would tremble. Finally, my father started taking me to counseling and after a while, I got a lot better."
"Except around men."
"That's a whole 'nother story," she said with a sigh. "I was an awkward teenager and the guys in my school never came around unless they wanted to mock me."
"Mock you how?"
Grace shrugged nonchalantly. At least now, those old memories had ceased to bother her. She'd come to terms with it long ago. "Because I have no boobs. My ears stand out, and I have freckles all over me."
"Boobs?"
"Breasts."
She swore she could feel his hot, prolonged stare on her chest.
Glancing sideways, she was able to confirm it. In fact, he looked at her as if he had her shirt off and was in the midst of-
"You have very nice breasts."
"Thanks," she said awkwardly, and yet somehow the unorthodox compliment warmed her. "What about you?"
"I have no breasts."
He said it in such a serious deadpan tone that she burst out laughing. "That's not what I mean, and you know it. What were you like as a teenager?"
"I already told you."
She gave him a menacing glance. "Seriously."
"Seriously, I fought, ate, drank, had sex, and bathed. Usually in that order."
"We're still having this whole intimacy issue, aren't we?" she asked rhetorically.
Then, falling into her role as a counselor, she moved on to something that was hopefully a little easier for him to talk about. "Why don't you tell me how you felt the first time you went into battle."
"I felt nothing."
"You weren't scared?"
"Of what?"
"Of dying or being maimed?"
"No."
The sincerity of that single word baffled her. "How could you not be afraid?"
"You can't fear dying when you have no reason to live."
Haunted by his words, Grace pulled into her driveway.
Deciding it was best to leave off so serious a discussion for the time being, she left the car and opened the trunk. Julian gathered the bags before following her into the house.
They went upstairs and Grace reached into her top dresser drawer to get her comfortable jeans. Then, she made room for his clothes in her chest of drawers.
"So," she said, grabbing the empty bags and tossing them into the wicker trash can by her closet. "It's Friday night. What would you like to do? Quiet night in or would you like to go out on the town?"