Unbidden Love (Book Five of the Bidden Series) (8 page)

"Thank you for squeezing me in today, Doctor Brown," Natalie greeted as she slipped into the therapist's midcentury modern office space.

"You sounded quite upset when we spoke this morning, Natalie. What's going on?"

Natalie sat down in the seat she occupied on her first visit to the therapist's office, and took a calming breath. “I have been having this recurring dream. Only last night it changed and I am sure it is probably my brain convincing me I
need
to be in therapy.”

"Tell me about it." Doctor Brown said with a small laugh as she sat across from Natalie, folio pad and pen in hand.

Natalie inhaled deeply as she recalled the dream as though it were a memory. It had recurred enough to almost be one.

"The dream usually starts off with Audra and me. We come home from hiking and take a shower together. Things start to get... intimate." She glanced up at and then away from Doctor Brown, willing herself to keep going in spite of her own embarrassment. "She asks me to tell her that I love her, which I do, and then the dream changes and it's not Audra, it is James, and he is telling me that he loves me, too; that he never stopped loving me. The sex changes too, from oral to penetrative, and just as I am about to climax I wake up."

"But that is not the version of the dream you had last night?"

Natalie shook her head. "No. Last night it started with James instead of Audra. We come home from hiking, things get intimate in the shower, and after I tell him I love him he-" It was a struggle to willingly recall that part of the dream, let alone speak it aloud. It felt wrong on every level. A violation, even. "He turned into Celine."

"Celine?"

"James' ex-wife. Audra's sister."

Doctor Brown tucked her chin into her hand, the pen speared between her index and middle fingers. “James appeared in Audra's usual role, and then his ex-wife appeared in his usual role?”

“Pretty much.”

"Did she say anything to you in the dream?"

"She basically called me a slut, that I have slept with everyone she has slept with and that it must kill me knowing that both James and Joe chose her over me."

The therapist's brows squeezed the skin at the junction between her eyes and nose. "Who is Joe?"

Natalie eyed the unused pen, knowing it would not go unused for too much longer. "My business partner. Celine's ex. The father of her daughter, whom James believed was his for years."

As suspected, the pen went to work straight away, jotting down notes into the folio resting on the doctor's lap. "Okay," she mumbled to herself as she worked. “James is the ex-boyfriend; Audra, your current girlfriend. Celine is James' ex-wife and Audra’s sister. Joe is your business parter and Celine's ex. They have a daughter together. And of course there’s Quinn.” She recited the names as though she were ticking them off a list.

"Let me just give you the Cliff's Notes version," Natalie offered. She took a deep breath and began. "Quinn introduced me to the auction, which is where I met and spent the night with James. Five months later I randomly met him again and found out he was married to Celine. Shortly thereafter I met Audra and found out she was his sister-in-law.

"I met Joe at work when he transferred from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Turned out that he had been Celine's boyfriend when she met James, with whom she cheated on Joe. Years later Celine cheated again, only this time
with
Joe
on
James, and the product of that was her daughter Frankie, who - up until recently - James believed was
his
daughter.

"That reveal was what prompted the divorce, during which time I was with James. But come to find out, in that five month period between the auction and seeing James again, he had slept with Celine and she got pregnant. Only this time, he did not believe the child was his. I discovered then that I was pregnant, and decided that I needed a break from James and all of this
drama
. I got fired from my job and started up a new agency with Joe. Weeks later I miscarried and an amniocentesis revealed that Celine was indeed carrying James' child."

Natalie forced herself to stop there, just as her eyes began to warm and tingle with the sensation of fresh tears threatening to fall.

"It was a very confusing and painful time for me," she continued, intent on fighting through any tears that threatened to fall. "Audra was there when I needed someone. She and I became closer, and at some point we were something more than friends. But then I slept with Joe. It did not mean anything to either one of us. It just-“ she shrugged as she found the right words, “-sort of happened. At the same time James was trying to win me back. He bought this enormous house in Montecito. He told me he was planning on asking me to marry him and we ended up sleeping together shortly thereafter. When James discovered that I had been with both Audra and Joe, he took off for New York, and I have not seen him since. Celine gave birth to their son, and they are planning on moving into the house in Montecito. As a family.”
And oh yeah, there was one other important fact
, she thought to herself. “They are probably on a plane flying out here right now.”

Doctor Brown tapped the cap-side of the pen against her chin, her eyes fixed on Natalie. Finally, after an extended moment, she said, “Why don’t we focus on the individual parts first before we tackle the whole?”

Natalie let out a shaky breath and nodded her head. “Okay. That is probably for the best.” She felt exposed, raw. Having the entirety of her romantic world and all of its extensions bundled up in her mind felt like a pressured weight on her heart. Perhaps the doctor could help alleviate some of that pressure, or at least enough to keep Natalie's subconscious at bay from her dreams.

“We will work our way to Celine. You talked about your relationship with James the last time you were in. Let’s talk about Audra.”

Audra’s poised smile came to mind almost immediately, a bright spot amongst a lot of darkness. “Like I said, she was there for me when I needed someone. I felt like she was the only person in the world who was uniquely qualified to understand where I was in that point of my life.”

“Because?”

“Because of James. He and Audra have this amazing relationship completely free of the typical man-woman drama. Or at least, they did.”

She was tempted to make the joke again that she was the Yoko Ono of the duo, but decided against it. She was there for help, not to try her hand at self-deprecating standup.

“What changed your mind about Audra? At what point did your relationship shift from one of friendship to one of romance?”

Natalie bit the inside of her bottom lip as she flipped back through her memory. “I would not say we were ever really friends. She was essentially my boss, and I always thought of her as being kind of aloof. She is the type of woman who seems like she has got it all together, while you feel like you’re still in puberty. She has this innate sense of class and poise.” Did that make her sound as if she was jealous of Audra? Or that she placed Audra on some kind of pedestal above herself?
Why
was she so quick to make herself the punchline of her own joke? She knew for a fact that if Audra heard her talking that way, she would have words with her.

“I had no idea she felt about me the way she did,” Natalie added quietly.

“So your relationship was once more formal?”

Natalie nodded her head. “Yes. I don’t know if it was the miscarriage or the paternity results that more or less ended things for good between James and me, but they ended. It hurt too much to be around him, to even talk to him.” She did not want to admit to anyone, least of all herself, that it hurt just as bad to
not
be around him. “One night he sent me a text message saying he would always love me, and I went to his hotel to…” she drifted off. She still was not sure what her intentions had been that night. To reconcile? To just see his face and hear his voice? “I lost my nerve in the lobby and made a detour to the bar. I don’t even remember if I drank anything or not. I just remember feeling incredibly torn. Of all the people to find me in that state it was Audra. She treated me so differently than she ever had before. She has this very nurturing, almost maternal side to her that I did not even know existed.”

“Maternal. That is interesting,” the doctor noted aloud.

“Why, because she is a lesbian?”

Doctor Brown looked taken aback by the comment. “No. Because you described her as being aloof.”

“Oh,” Natalie muttered to herself. “Sorry, I didn't mean to imply anything.”

“It’s fine,” Doctor Brown said, kindly dismissing the slight tone of accusation in Natalie’s outburst. “Do you still find Audra to be aloof?”

“Sometimes. I think what I ascribed as being aloof back then was really just her being guarded. She still is, but I feel as though she has let me in to see
what
she is protecting. I kind of get the impression she has not been that way with too many people in her life - romantic or otherwise. Doesn’t that say a lot about her feelings for me?”

“Quite possibly. What do you think she’s guarding?” Doctor Brown asked.

Natalie knew the answer, but considered the question anyway. “The same thing anyone else in a relationship is guarding. Her heart.”

“Are you guarding yours with her?”

Natalie took a moment to really think about the question. Was she guarding her heart with Audra? By her own admission she should have been, but the answer felt too easy.

“That’s just the thing. James was the first person I ever fell in love with, and had things not escalated so quickly, I think we would probably still be together. But things
did
escalate. Maybe it was the nature of our relationship, but I found I just could not handle so much at once. He overwhelmed me. Audra doesn’t overwhelm me. There is not this urgency with her, and I feel like our relationship can be a slow burn rather than an immediate, all-consuming love. I feel love for her, but a lot of my heart still belongs to James.”

There was a long moment of silence as the words hung in the air between them. Natalie was not sure if therapy with the doctor was helping. Granted it had only been two sessions, but she had hoped for at least some modicum of clarity, and they had not even really gotten to the recurring dream yet. There was, however, the faintest breath of relief at taking so much of what had previously been internalized and speaking it aloud. What did she want more of? Clarity or relief?

“Natalie before we say goodbye today I want to quickly touch on what Celine said to you in the dream. Now, you are a smart, educated woman, and you seem to have a fairly rational perspective on what is obviously a very complicated and interconnected relationship.”

Natalie was not sure if she should thank the doctor, or agree with her.

“So I do not believe you will take offense when I tell you that your dream does not need decoding or explication. Your brain is already figuring out for you what your heart is feeling. That you love both James and Audra, and you do not want to hurt either one of them. Hence their interchanging roles.”

“And Celine calling me a slut?”

“She is only a version of Celine as you perceive her. The choice of word indicates to me a conflict, or an indictment of your character. You are projecting the fear that what your heart feels for two people is somehow wrong, that you can only give your heart to one person. There is never truly a right or wrong answer when it comes to those we love. You say that the love you felt with James was overwhelming, so it would stand to reason that that love would linger, or possibly never dissipate. Likewise with Audra, you have been building different kinds of relationships with her, from professional, to personal, and now romantic. Any reasonable person might find it difficult to reconcile their feelings for one person when their feelings for another still persist. ”

“So…” Natalie began uncertainly, “You think this is all because I am conflicted?”

“And understandably so. You are looking for an answer to a question you haven’t quite figured out how to ask yet. Or, alternately, a question you might be too afraid to ask yourself.”

Outside of the protective confines of Doctor Brown’s office, Natalie wasn’t sure she felt much better after all as she headed home. Sure, there was a catharsis to talking about the dream and her relationships with James and Audra, but what could Doctor Brown offer her that her own best friend could not? At least Quinn didn’t subscribe to the school of
And How Does That Make You Feel?
Maybe an objective outsider was not the best person to help Natalie. Quinn was never so ambiguous with her help or advice, and she would certainly never imply that Natalie had some sort of internalized misogyny or self-hatred about her sexual proclivities. She did not care so much that Celine called her a slut - even if it was just a dream - as much as she was disturbed that Celine showed up in the dream at all.

Back at the home-slash-office, things were pretty quiet. Amelia was glued to her laptop at the dining table with Joe and Quinn, while Shane was camped out with his laptop on the couch with a small handful of interns.

“Hey Nat,” Joe called out. “You are just in time. Come take a look at what I found for office space possibilities.”

Since being hired by Audra and James to manage all of the Fitson accounts, Natalie and Joe have watched their business grow from a tiny start-up to a proper agency, albeit a cramped one. Where the high-rise condominium once served as the perfect space to act as both home and base of operations, the addition of several employees and nearly twice as many interns had made the home office feel anything but welcoming.

A few weeks earlier Joe pitched Natalie the idea of moving their base of operations to a proper office building. She got the sense that with it came a friendly eviction as well. Not that she blamed him - sharing a living space between them and Quinn had its moments, but more and more it was becoming evident that Joe wanted things to change, especially since his relationship with Frankie was improving. Now with Frankie moving back to California permanently, he would have a chance to see her far more often. She could not blame him for wanting to create a welcoming space that didn’t involve makeshift desks and hipster interns.