Beautiful Illusions (27 page)

But I needed to be a grownup.

He kissed me passionately, hungrily, urgently. He was leaning into me, his erection evident through his jeans. I wondered what harm it would do to make love.

I soon found out.

We made love with the usual passionate abandon. We acted like we had never been with each other before. It was animalistic and passionate, with his lips all over my body and my lips all over his
.
So much for my being a grown up here.

I was feeling guilty, so the punishment that was to come that night I felt was justified.

What happened was that, during the third time that we made love, Ryan suddenly started shaking and quivering. I was on top of him, when suddenly he violently threw me off of him.

“Stop! Stop! Stop! Leave me the fuck alone!” His face was contorted with rage. I was stunned. I didn’t really know what to do, as Ryan was shaking violently. He was also hyperventilating. He apparently didn’t see me. He looked at me, but it was like he was looking right through me. I knew that this was what Dr. Silver meant by his having a flashback, but I wondered what, exactly, it was that triggered it
. He was sweating and shaking, and still breathing really heavily. I sat there, quietly, hoping that he would come back to reality soon.

However, it took the better part of an hour for that to happen
. I could tell by the way that he looked at me, without seeing me, that he was in another world, and that he was right back at Rochelle’s house, being forced into having sex.

Finally, Ryan stopped shaking and sweating. He looked at me like he knew who I was. This was a good sign.

“God, I’m so sorry, beautiful. I, I…I don’t know what just happened.”

“I do. Dr. Silver would not be very happy about what I did tonight.”

“What did you do? As I recall, there were two of us making love.”

“Yes, but I’m supposed to look after you. I was supposed to make sure that I’m only interested in your best interests. I failed miserably.”

I had dressed already. Ryan was still naked. He came over to me, putting his arms around me. “You’re not failing me. We just have to be more careful. And I hope that I can get to a point where I can make love to you like before, without, uh, this happening.”

I nodded. This was going to be touchy for awhile.

I felt like crying.

He noticed the look on my face. “Hey, come on. Don’t feel bad. Now we know that making love right now is not such a good idea. We can still cuddle.”

“What triggered this flashback, exactly? After all, we made love twice tonight before this flashback happened. Maybe if we can figure that out, then we can prevent this from happening again.”

“I’m not sure. All of a sudden, you weren’t you. You were her
. I don’t really know exactly what was the trigger for it, though.”

I felt discouraged. If there was a certain move that I made that precipitated it, then I might be able to prevent myself from doing that in the future, and this wouldn’t happen again.

It wasn’t going to be that easy, alas.

Nothing in life worth having is ever easy.

He got dressed in some boxer shorts and a tank top. He always took my breath away with his beauty, and it was no different now. He made those boxer shorts and tank top look amazing. At the same time, it was going to be strange for us to sleep with pajamas on. Typically we slept in the nude with each other, because we always made love before falling asleep together.

Adjustments, adjustments
. There was going to be hell to pay if Dr. Silver got wind of this.

We got into bed. I lay in his arms, him stroking my hair. It felt so familiar, yet so alien at the same time. I wondered if this was the new normal for us – me being afraid to be physical with him, him wanting to still seduce me
. I hoped that we could survive this and come up with a way to negotiate these new circumstances.

He spoke. “I’m so sorry for scaring you like that
. I feel awful.”

“No, please don’t
. You can’t help it if you have these flashbacks.”

We slept in the bed that night, him clinging to me tightly again. Although the bed was king-sized, our actual bodies only occupied a very small po
rtion of it.

The next morning, I took a shower while Ryan slept. Ryan was soon awake, and he joined me in the shower. He soaped me up, and tenderly washed my hair. He took a brush and scrubbed my back with it. It felt amazing, the brush exfoliating my skin. I returned the favor, soaping him up, washing his hair and scrubbing his back
. I also shaved his face, which is a ritual that we enjoy doing to each other. I gently lathered his face with shaving cream, then stroked his chin, upper lip and face with a razor. He reared his head back while I was doing this. It was obviously giving him great pleasure. Usually, after our shower rituals, I would end up playing with him and blowing him in the shower and, if there was time, we would make love. However, this time, there couldn’t be any of that.

I felt a keen sense of frustration
.

After we showered, it was somewhat awkward. I felt selfish for wanting him, for wanting our lives back, our normal sex life. Making love had become such a part of our daily routine, and I hoped, once more, that we could get past this and either move into a new normal, where our physical life took a backseat, or, preferably, enter a phase where we could slowly get our sex life back on track
.

After the shower, it was another full day in LA
. We hiked Laurel Canyon and explored the city.

That evening we went to dinner at a Greek restaurant around the corner from the hotel.

Over falafels and gyros, we talked.

“So, what’s on the agenda for tomorrow?”

“More of the same. I’m still trying to recover more memories so that I can deal with them properly.”

I nodded. A part of me, though, wondered if this was the best course of action, making him relive all that stuff. Of course, it was better than it being buried. At least this way he can feel the emotion and handle it as best as he could.

“Have you given anymore thought to how you are going to handle Alexis?”

He looked at me, taking a deep breath. “Uh, there is something that I haven’t told you about Alexis. It is, uh, the reason why I have to treat her with kid gloves.”

I waited, knowing that he was finally going to tell me about the blackmail.

“As you know, Alexis knows all the dirt about my past and about Benjamin. She knows it because I have told her the stories and she knows it because she saved me from Rochelle.”

It just then occurred to me that Alexis knew about Rochelle all along. Why didn’t she tell him about it? He had repressed the memories about Rochelle until recently.

I asked him this.

Ryan explained “Alexis didn’t talk about Rochelle to me, because she knew that I had intentionally forgotten about it, that I was repressing it, and she didn’t want to remind me. She figured that if I was repressing it, it was for a good reason. But I did have memories of my father and what he did to me, and this is what Alexis and I had talked about while we were together. Alexis didn’t know exactly what Rochelle had done to me, however, until just recently.”

He went on. “Anyhow, Alexis and I are doing well, together, working on becoming friends
. Because she has been there, all along, and she knows, first-hand, what I went through, she has become a good ally to me. That said, she’s still unstable. She always has been. It’s the nature of her illness.”

I nodded.

He said “I’ve come to terms with what happened between her and I, and I really understand why she was sleeping around on me. I literally don’t think that she could help herself.” He took a bite of his gyro. “Anyhow, that’s neither here nor there.”

He now looked pensive. “Alexis can do some damage. She has threatened to in the past. She has told me that she will go to the press about Benjamin, and tell the press all that she knows about what he did to myself, my sister and, uh, her.”

Her?

He looked embarrassed now. “Benjamin raped her several times. I’m not proud of it, that I brought her around, knowing that was what he wanted from her. I was pretty mixed up back then, though, always doing what I could to minimize what was happening to me. I guess it’s the survival instinct.” He looked away, ashamed. “Anyhow, if she goes to the press, it’ll absolutely devastate Benjamin. But, I’m thinking of myself, here, too. I really don’t want this getting out. Even though I’ve had enough counseling in my lifetime to know that what happened to me was not my fault, I, uh, still feel very ashamed about everything.”

That makes sense.
I squeezed his hand. I really felt for him at that moment, as I could see the vulnerability, the shame, the bewilderment.

Taking a deep breath, Ryan said “So, cutting Alexis out isn’t going to be easy. It might throw her off the deep end, again, and this would put her back into blackmail mode. As I said before, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Alexis is a special case, however, because she can be considered either a friend or an enemy. It literally depends on the day.”

I didn’t know her all that well, yet I could see his point. She was rather, should we say, volatile?

“I agree,” I said.
“About Alexis, I mean. The last thing that you need when you're trying to get better is to, uh, deal with her and her volatility.”

He shook his head. “You don’t know the half of it.”

That was true. I didn’t know how she might be on any given day. He did. He had known her for over half his life. Off and on, I guessed.

“Anyhow….” He smiled
.

I smiled back. I had drunk iced tea at dinner, and I was feeling the familiar caffeine buzz. Caffeine did not always agree with me
. Sometimes it made me depressed, which is a strange reaction. Sometimes it made me feel kinda high, which is another strange reaction. I usually tried to stay away from it, and I thought that the iced tea wouldn’t have much caffeine, but I was wrong, apparently. And I found myself feeling nauseated, depressed and a little paranoid. I thought that maybe it was the combination of the caffeine plus all that was happening so soon. I had known this guy less than six months, and I was already involved in more drama than I had previously experienced in my lifetime. The whole thing made my head swim a little.

Again, he seemed to read my mind.
Scary.
“Uh, Iris, I kinda wanted to apologize to you.”

I looked quizzical. “Apologize for what?”

“For sucking you into all of this. You’re so normal, and it occurred to me that you belong with somebody, uh, a little less fucked up.”

I didn’t disagree
. I just looked at him.

Finally, I spoke. “Well, you do certainly have some drama in your life. Who doesn’t?” I tried to sound carefree.

“True, but I think that I might be more drama than you can handle.”

I shook my head
. “Hey, as you said, my life, uh, is pretty normal. That means that your drama is the only drama in my life. Which means that I can devote my energies to you. And, hey, my life would be pretty boring without the drama.” Again, I was trying to make light of everything.

He looked sheepish. “How much is my life’s soap opera going to affect you and your life?”

I thought about my practice back home. About how much was no doubt blowing up, and piling up. If you are a solo practitioner, there is nobody to catch you when you are less than 100%. There is nobody to say “hey, don’t worry about it, take some time off. It's handled.” Nope, it was just me, and I knew that, when I got back, Ryan was going to have to take a backseat for a little while as I tried to untangle all the messes.

I smiled. “Let’s not talk about that. It’s not important. What is important is you getting better.”

“Yeah, but I feel that I'm going to have to help you get your life back on track. I know that this trip had derailed you.”

“Please don’t concern yourself. I can handle myself. I’ve been doing it all my life.”

Again, he looked hurt. “When are you going to let me in?”

I honestly didn’t know the answer to that question.

Later on that night, I was unable to sleep because Ryan was wrapped tightly around me like usual. As I lay there, I thought about everything. Specifically, I thought about the “let me in” comment. I was still keeping him at arm’s length, and it wasn’t for the reason that I originally thought. Yes, he was beautiful. Yes, he was rich. Yes, he was generous. Yes, he was stratospheres out of my league. But, somehow, his problems made him more human to me, so all of that “out of my league” business seemed less so. By now, he was simply Ryan, the sweet guy who walked through fire through much of his life, and was still dealing with it today. The guy who, for some reason, fell in love with me at first sight. I had no doubt of his feelings for me, and I was starting to not question why he felt them.

Yet, I
was
still keeping him at arm’s length.

It wasn’t fair
. He shouldn’t have to pay for the bad relationships and bad men that came before him. He shouldn’t have to pay for the sins of others. The ones who cheated and lied. The ones who verbally abused. The ones who just didn’t care, and that would encompass all of the men in college. I had been single for so long that I was starting to get jaded, to believe that all men have a fatal flaw of some sort, a defect that would preclude them from ever being the recipient of my heart. The scary part was that, for the most part, these fatal flaws did not manifest in all their glory until I had gotten to know them, and been with them for awhile.