The Good Listener

by B. M. Hardin

  I never made the same mistake twice, and Summer was absolutely a mistake.

  As for Joel, every time that I spoke to him, I wished death on him so he was giving me plenty of distance.

  We were in the same house, but he was staying out of my way.

  “How did it make you feel?”

  I looked at Blake.

  “To find out that your husband was just like everyone else. To find out that your marriage wasn’t the exception to the rule and that it was just as screwed up as everyone else’s. How did it make you feel to find out that the love that you thought that you had wasn’t real?”

  I stood up and walked over to the window.

  I felt hurt.

  I felt betrayed.

  But I wasn’t going to tell him that.

  “As you can imagine I wasn’t at all happy about the discovery. But things happen. People make mistakes. He’s human.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Bullshit,” Blake repeated and walked over and stood beside of me in front of the window.

  “You felt betrayed. You felt unloved. And I’m sure that you felt stupid. You wondered how you’d missed it. But that’s what people do, they miss it. Those little things. Those little signs that’s always there. Love causes you to miss them,” Blake concluded.

  This was his therapy session…not mine!

  “People that say that they love you will be the first to betray you every single time. Because they know that you won’t be expecting it and chances are they just might get away with it.”

  I looked at him.

  Blake was the smartest, and the craziest man that I’d ever known.

  He might even make a decent psychologist if he didn’t have so many problems of his own.

  I stared at him.

  He didn’t make eye contact with me, but I knew that he knew that I was watching him.

  For the first time, I looked at him in a different light.

  Not so much as my patient.

  But as a man.

  Of course I always admired his clothing, and briefly noticed how attractive he was.

  But I never allowed myself to actually take it all in.

  He scared me half to death, so his beauty had become invisible; but at the moment, beauty was all that I saw.

  Blake’s physique was alluring; exquisite.

  The fine Italian suit that he was wearing complimented his body from head to toe.

  I guess if he was going to pretend to be somebody, he had might as well play the part.

  And that he did very well.

  My eyes shifted from his clothing and his body to his face.

  Blake actually had a lot of nice features; from his daring and unstable brown eyes to his white, stainless teeth, and even his wickedly charming smile.

  In an irrational, deranged way…he was perfect.

  Finally, he faced me.

  I wasn’t sure what I was feeling but whatever it was made me nervous.

  He was a killer.

  He was a liar.

  He was even five levels of psychotic.

  But why didn’t any of that seem to matter at the moment?

  I touched his arm, but he flinched.

  He stared at me, and I could tell that he was trying to tame those crazy thoughts of his, but I wasn’t sure what I was doing.

  I walked closer to him.

  But he backed away.

  I didn’t say anything, and neither did he.

  I walked closer to him again but this time, he turned his back to me and headed back to the couch to take a seat.

  I exhaled loudly.

  Right.

  Hannah, what are you doing?

  Crossing the line with a patient, a killer patient at that was a no-no.

  That could never happen; especially not with Blake.

  “Okay. So, let’s get started.”

  “My time is coming to an end here. Not just the sessions, but here in this city and state. I’ve been here too long already. I’m surprised that I have stayed here as long as I have. I guess I just got caught up in my fabricated life for a moment. But it’s about time for me to go.”

  “Where are you going to go?”

  “I don’t know. I never know. I just go.”

  “But you have established some kind of life and career here.”

  “This isn’t the first time. Blake might have been the best identity that I have stolen, or the most successful, but this isn’t my first time at the rodeo. Normally I don’t keep the identities that long, but I actually enjoyed being Blake and I know that I can’t take Blake with me when I go. I’ll have to start over.”

  “Not really. You can continue to be Blake and just leave. That way you won’t have to kill anyone else.”

  Blake didn’t say anything.

  “So, just go. Leave whoever your next victim is alone and just go.”

  “It doesn’t work that way. I still have the urge to kill her. I still dream about killing her. And the only way to stop the dreams is to do it. Well, unless you can change all of that. Coming to talk to you has helped keep her alive, but you haven’t done your job yet. You haven’t taken the urges away. You haven’t fixed me yet. And if you don’t fix me, you don’t save her. And you are running out of time.”

  “Well, give me something. Give me something that I can really use. Give me something that I can use to help you.”

  “I’ve given you plenty already.”

  I’d read my notes on him a thousand times.

  I was well aware of everything that he’d said and everything that he’d told me, but it wasn’t enough.

  “How long do I have?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a month or two. Could be more. Or maybe less.”

  “That’s not long enough. I need more time. I need more time to talk to you and meet with you. We only meet once a week, and that’s not enough. If I find more time, will you find more time to come?”

  “I guess I could.”

  “Okay. Okay, I’ll work on it. So, tell me about this woman. Is she pretty?”

  “I don’t look at her that way.”

  “Does she remind you of someone? Does she trigger a bad memory?”

  “I guess maybe in a way she does.”

  “Who or what? What does she remind you of?”

  “Pain.”

  “So you kill her, then what? The pain goes away?”

  “For the moment. But if you don’t fix me, I’m sure that it will come back again.”

  “If it does, will you kill again?”

  “I always do. Whether its years apart, I always end up doing it again. That’s why I’m here. The truth is, if you can’t fix me, no one can.”

  Nothing but pressure.

  “Why did you choose her?”

  “You already asked me that.”

  “I’m asking you again.”

  “I didn’t choose her, she chose me. Everyone that I have ever hurt, in some way, chose me. Either they made the mistake of letting me get too close. Or maybe they accepted me, and I turned out to be something that they never imagined that I was. I turned out to be their worst nightmare. I’ve always been good at pretending. I was taught to do that at a young age. So as an adult, I saw that it just made more sense to pretend. I’ve always pretended to be happy even when I was sad. I’ve always pretended to be normal when I knew that I was different. I’m pretending to be some dead person every single day. I pretend to want the same things that most people want when I really don’t want it at all. But it’s just easier to blend in. It’s easier to pretend.”

  I hated how he talked in circles and in riddles as though he wanted my mind to work twice as hard just to even somewhat guess what he meant by his comments.

  “But I guess I got it honestly. My mother pretended to love me, but she beat me. My father pretended to love me, but he left me. My foster families pretended to want me, but they only wanted the extra funds and resources that came with me. And the list g
oes on. Every person in my life has always pretended to either benefit themselves or to fool the next fool that was too busy pretending too.”

  “So what was she doing? Or what did she do? I’m referring to your next victim. Was she nice to you? Did she befriend you? Was she pretending to like you?”

  He took a deep breath.

  “She accepted me.”

  “But everyone wants to be accepted.”

  “Everyone but me. And once the urges came back, I could only see her face. But instead of acting on them, I came to see you.”

  “So do you want to kill her because you feel some kind of way about her? Or just because a part of you wants anyone that is connected to you or that even gets somewhat close to you to die?”

  “Possibly.”

  “So you kill people to keep from loving or liking them?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But not everyone will hurt you.”

  “Everyone has always hurt me.”

  “So, your next victim has a way of making you feel like you could change who you are and you are afraid. You are afraid to be different. You are afraid of change, and you’re afraid of love.”

  “Love should be afraid of me. When people that love you hurt you, you’ll never be the same again. You forgive, but you never forget. Joel said that he loved you. He stood before you, a church full of family members and confessed his love for you and promised to love you forever. But in the same breath, he did something to hurt you. That could destroy you. Something that could have ruined you. Someone is always ruined by love. Whether it’s from their own love or someone else’s, someone, always, suffers because of love gone wrong. Always remember that,” he said.

  I found when he said to remember something that maybe it held some type of value.

  Maybe it was something that he knew would be helpful when it came to figuring out how to make him better.

  We stared at each other for a while.

  Not because I didn’t have anything to ask him, but because I just wanted to study him in silence.

  He allowed me to observe him for a while and then he finally spoke.

  “You wore your favorite color today. You look good in blue,” he said.

  If he mentioned the color blue one more time!

  ******************************************

  Chapter SIX

  “What do you want me to do Hannah?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “We have to figure out the next steps in our marriage.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “Whatever you say, Joel.”

  “I’m sorry. I was just in a bad place. It meant nothing. She meant nothing.”

  “Bullshit.”

  My profanity shocked him, but that was a word that Blake used regularly and the only word that could be used to describe what Joel had just said.

  “I love you, Hannah. I really do. But you have to admit that I wasn’t exactly feeling the love from you.”

  “That’s an excuse. Saying that you slept with another woman because you didn’t feel like I loved you or because I wasn’t ready to start a family is ridiculous, and you know it! You can’t use that on me. That isn’t good enough. I’m a psychologist remember?”

  “Of course, I remember. How could I forget? That’s all you care about. Work and those damn patients! That’s it. They are all you have ever cared about.”

  “That is not true!”

  “You may not have meant to, but you have always chosen work over me, Hannah.”

  “I am a psychologist. I was pursuing my career when you met me. You knew this. You accepted it. And you were okay with it. Sure, work has had its long hours but so has your job in the past. But my job is what kept us afloat for almost a year when you didn’t have a job.”

  “And you reminded me of it every day.”

  “That isn’t true. I never threw anything in your face about my job or about money. I never said anything.”

  “You didn’t have to say it, Hannah. Actions speak louder than words.”

  “How? I never complained.”

  “Wash this. Fold this. Cook while I’m at work. Don’t forget to clean this. Like I was some kind of maid or something because you went to work every day,” he said.

  “You were.”

  “What?”

  “You were my maid and my husband. So what?”

  Okay, that was a low blow, and I knew that it was going to hurt his feelings, which is why I said it.

  But it wasn’t fair that he was finding fault with me when all I tried to do was make sure that we were okay.

  It was fine for him to help out around the house while I worked.

  Nothing was wrong with a little teamwork.

  The roles were reversed for a little while, so what?

  But that doesn’t give him a pass to sleep around, and with someone that I considered a friend.

  How could he do that to me?

  “What?”

  He questioned my comment, but I walked away from him and left him to think about it.

  For some reason, Blake’s words were ringing in my ears.

  His words on love, trust, lies and loyalty.

  Call me silly but I swear that he seemed like some kind of test that was sent to me on purpose.

  I was supposed to be helping him, but sometimes he actually ended up helping me.

  It was as though he’d forced me to always think outside of the box and it seemed as though he was really there to see if I was as good as a psychologist as I thought I was.

  But he’d let me know on plenty occasions that I wasn’t.

  Maybe he really was a murderer.

  But it seemed as though he was bent on making me a better psychologist in the process.

  I heard Joel slam the front door, and I grabbed my laptop and plugged it into my flash drive.

  It’s amazing how he was the one that had done wrong, but he wanted to play the victim.

  He had no right to give the most intimate part of himself to another woman.

  How would he like it if I’d given myself to another man?

  I thought briefly about our wedding day.

  It was the happiest day of my life.

  He was smiling as I walked down the aisle towards him as I cried with excitement, knowing that I’d found my king.

  He told me during his vows that I was the best thing that had ever happened to him and that he was going to do everything that he could to make me happy.

  For a while, he’d done just that, but now none of that really mattered.

  Shaking away my thoughts of Joel, I focused on the files in front of me on my computer screen.

  If Blake wasn’t bluffing, I needed to find something.

  I needed to find something that was going to change not only his mind but also his heart.

  He had so much built up hurt, pain, and torment that had been piling up for decades.

  Most of the time it took years of counseling to tear down the barriers and the walls around an icy cold heart, but I didn’t have years.

  And I didn’t have long at all.

  So, my issues with my husband and my marriage had to take the backseat.

  Joel might be right about work, but despite what he’d said, now wasn’t the time for me to try to prove him wrong.

  Blake needed me and his soon to be victim needed me more.

  I opened his folder, and I prepared to read every single note that I had on him again, starting at the very beginning.

  Hopefully, Joel would decide not to come back home that night.

  I needed to have a peace of mind and with his absence, I would really be able to get a lot of work and evaluating done in peace.

  With time winding down, more than ever before, I needed to put all of my degrees, years of studying and intellect to use and do what I was born to do.

  Save lives.

  And that was exactly what I was going to do.

  And then I would fo
cus on saving my own.

  ~***~

  I found the patient that was the least in need of my help, if there was such a thing, and told them that I had to cut their sessions down to just one day a week, until further notice.

  I gave them the one day, the one-hour slot that belonged to Blake, which it always went over an hour anyway, and I gave Blake their three days a week.

  It had to be done.

  I had to have more time with him so that I could pick his brain and try my best to find a solution.

  I could do this.

  I was going to do this.

  No matter what I had to do and how I had to do it.

  I’d made up my mind.

  I didn’t care if I had to lie, fabricate or whatever, I was going to do whatever it took to fix him.

  As for Joel and I, we were back to pretending as though we were strangers again, in the same house but I was fine with that this time.

  I’d concluded that I still wanted my husband and that I was probably going to forgive him for his transgression.

  I wasn’t happy about my decision, but I knew that we could get through it.

  But he was going to have to work for it.

  And he was also going to have to learn to respect me for the hardworking, loving, loyal wife that I was and that I had always been to him.

  As for Summer, I didn’t have anything to say to her.

  She’d betrayed me in the worst way, and if I didn’t see her for the rest of my life, even that wouldn’t be long enough.

  I should have listened to China about her a long time ago, but it was a lessoned learned.

  And with China dead and Summer out of the picture, the best friend position in my life was unavailable indefinitely.

  I would never put myself in the position to be betrayed or hurt like that again.

  But nevertheless, Joel and I had to stay on the rocks until I was done with Blake.

  And then I would have a clear head to deal with us.

  If I failed Blake, I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to counsel again.

  And with the way that I was already feeling about it, I was sure that I wouldn’t.

  “I see you made this happen,” Blake said.