She touched her lips and tried not to giggle. She’d actually liked the kiss. She’d never been kissed before, and she liked it. She hadn’t known before just how the kiss would feel. She had imagined that she’d be repulsed, but like Dr. Nelson had said, imagination and reality were two different things. The kiss had made her warm all over while her stomach did somersaults.
She pushed herself from the door, walked into the living room, and found Nadine waiting up for her.
“Mother Hen, why are you not in the bed?” Max asked with her hands on her hips.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Nadine said, grinning.
“Nosey heifer.”
“Guilty as charged,” Nadine admitted. “However, I’m a woman of my word. All I will ask is if you had a good time and if you’re OK?”
“Yes, I had a good time, and, yes, I’m OK,” Max said.
“Fine. Goodnight, Maxey,”
“Goodnight, Deeney,” Max smirked as she watched her sister walk into her bedroom and shut the door.
Max walked into her bedroom and shut the door before falling back on the bed. She’d kissed Matthew Ferguson and liked it. Well, wonders never ceased, and the biggest wonder was that he seemed to like it too. He had been nice to her and held her hand. She now knew that he liked her despite his declaration to Eric that he didn’t like black girls. He liked her all right, and she knew that all that talk about not liking black chicks was a bunch of malarkey. He wouldn’t have done all that if he hadn’t liked her would he? After all, he didn’t have to kiss her. He had wanted to kiss her.
She thought about his arousal. She’d felt his hardness press against her belly, and she didn’t like that at all, but she wasn’t freaked out either. Still, he wasn’t aggressive and had backed off immediately once he sensed her discomfort. She smiled to herself. Maybe this dating thing wouldn’t be so bad after all, as long as she only kissed and nothing else. But then again, what guy only wanted to kiss?
She pushed the thought from her mind. One step at a time, Maxine.
She quickly undressed, put on her pajamas, and climbed into bed feeling happy and excited at the progress she had made by kissing Matthew. She’d kissed him and hadn’t regurgitated her evening meal. She closed her eyes hoping to have sweet dreams about her date.
CHAPTER 7
How much better to get wisdom than gold! And to get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver. Proverbs 16:16
Max tried to calm herself as she sat in the waiting area of Dr. Nelson’s office. She couldn’t stop thinking about the pretend date and the kiss and doubted if she could keep the information from Dr. Nelson once she started her session. “Come in, Maxine,”
Dr. Nelson’s voice startled her from her thoughts. Today the doctor had on a long broomstick skirt and a peasant blouse with sandals. Max still found her bright red lipstick somewhat distracting, but maybe that was a part of the good doctor’s plan.
She got up, walked into the office, sat in the chair that allowed her to put her feet up. She heard the door shut and put her hands in her lap, bracing herself.
“Did you have a good week, Maxine?” Dr. Nelson asked with a smile as she sat down across from her. “It’s been a couple of weeks since our last visit.”
“Yes, thank you,” Max replied.
“Good, I’m glad to hear that.”
Max watched as she slipped on her glasses that hung from a chain around her neck. The doctor folded her hands in her lap, her eyes searching.
“A few weeks ago you were a bit hesitant about interacting with men. Has there been any change?”
Max squirmed in her seat a little. “Well, I feel better about being around them, but I wouldn’t say I was totally comfortable yet.”
Dr. Nelson smiled. “Maxine, I promised you that we’d take things slowly. Now that you’ve been living with your brother-in-law over a year and you’ve had company for dinner, do you feel more at ease around men?”
Max felt her face get hot under Dr. Nelson’s curious stare. She remembered how she had reacted when Eric moved in and she had seen his hairy chest. The apartment had been hot that day due to the air conditioning being broken and she had experienced a flashback of sorts causing her to cry out when he came into her personal space. “I guess I did freak out a little bit with Eric back then,” she admitted laughing nervously. “However, his hair doesn’t bother me that much now.
“You are aware that I’m a sex therapist, but do you know what I do?”
Max looked over at the clock. She’d only been there five minutes. She looked at the doctor and then down back at her hands.
“You try to make people have sex and feel good about it, I guess,” she said, picking at the invisible lint on her skirt.
“Well, you have part of that correct. However, I won’t ever try to make you have sex. Hopefully, I will guide you to a place where you can make that decision on your own. Do you know my specialty?”
“Not really,” she sighed.
Dr. Nelson sat back in her chair, and Max tried to relax and do the same. Maybe the good doctor would do all the talking today.
“There are several reasons people come to see me. Sometimes people come because they have been morally repressed. Others come because they actually don’t know what to do. Some patients have seen something sexual and been frightened. Others have been physically traumatized. My specialty is physical trauma.”
“OK, I think I understand,” Max replied. “I know that I’d experienced trauma. I remember when I was sixteen and came to see you that you asked me if I liked the beach. I told you that I loved the beach and that it is my favorite place to relax and vacation. You then asked me what I liked about it, and I told you that I liked the breeze and the sound of the ocean and the seagulls. Then you asked me if I’d ever seen that movie Jaws.”
“Why do you think I asked you that?”
“Well, because Jaws is about the beach, but it’s about a shark that was attacking and killing people, and it had this creepy music that played just before the shark attacked someone. I remember that you told me that my sexual experience was like Jaws and that normal sexual experiences were like my experiences about the beach. It helped me understand my situation better. I’m like Jaws now, but I remember thinking that one day I wanted to be like a nice day on the beach.”
Dr. Nelson smiled at her. “Tell me what your least favorite smell is.”
Max had to think. “Uh, I don’t know. I mean, there are a lot of bad smells like dirty bathrooms and the overflowing garbage on a hot day.”
“Well, you see, my least favorite smell is lamb,” Dr. Nelson replied. “I get physically ill every time I smell it. I can’t even go into a restaurant that serves it, all because when I was a little girl I had a neighbor who used to boil it. She was a nice lady and was really sweet. One day after school I noticed her apartment door was open and she had been boiling lamb. She didn’t answer when I called her name. When I went into the kitchen she was on the floor. She’d had a stroke and died. The smell of lamb reminds me of her death to this day.”
“Oh my!”
“We respond to smells based on our experiences with the smell.”
“But I don’t have any smell problems like that,” Max said. “I told you before that I don’t associate smells with what happened to me.”
“Let me try it this way. What is your favorite smell? Is it baking bread because every time you went to your grandmothers’ house that’s what it smelled like? Or maybe freshly cut grass because it reminds you of summer camp?”
Max laughed. “Oh that’s easy, books in the library. I love the smell of books. It’s very calming to me. I used to go there in college, high school too. The library was my sanctuary. I loved the quiet.” Max’s face grew grim for a moment. “It was the only thing that was the same after what happened to me. I spent a lot of time in library before my attack. I loved to read and smell the books. It smelled the same way after my attack, and I found that comforting.”
“
What did your attacker smell like?”
Max felt her heart beating hard in her chest. She looked at her hands in her lap and saw them trembling. She closed her eyes remembering what had happened to her, trying to remember the smells.
“Maxine?”
“He was dirty and sweaty and hairy. He took his shirt off, and he had all this hair. Hair on his chest! Hair on his arms! Hair on his back! I’d never seen a man with so much hair,” Max whispered.
“That’s interesting. Yet you work in a gym around hairy men every day. How is that different? Doesn’t it smell like sweat? Aren’t there some hairy men that go to work out? Doesn’t that bother you?”
Max realized she didn’t think about James Rogers when she was at the gym, but she could see the doctor’s point. She thought about the reason seeing Eric shirtless had upset her that day. He had smelled, but the room had been extremely hot because the air had been broken. When Rogers had taken her to that motel, the air had been broken there also, and the room had been extremely warm. The gym was always kept cool because people were working out. She had never put the two things together until that moment and now realized why she had freaked out with Eric that day. The heat combined with his being close to her with all that hair had triggered her episode.
Max knew that the gym was different. Even though it was sweaty with men all around, there was always adequate ventilation. She didn’t have to get up close and personal with the men, and she always looked into their faces when they talked to her and not at their bodies. She didn’t feel threatened at all at the gym because it really didn’t remind her of Rogers.
Excited about her revelation, she related her findings to Dr. Nelson, who smiled at her. “Now that you know one of your triggers, you’ll be able to face it. When it’s warm in your home, ask your brother-in-law to take off his shirt for a few seconds. The more you face it, the less impact it will have on you over time.”
Max nodded in agreement with a smile. “I’m so happy we figured that out. I didn’t understand why Eric affected me that way before.”
Dr. Nelson took a deep breath. “Did you do anything social since we last met?”
Max remembered that Dr. Nelson had asked her to try to interact socially at the end of their last session. She’d told her that the dinner with Matthew had gone well. How much should she tell her about the pretend date? She looked down at her lap and played with the hem of her skirt.
“I went out on a date, not a real one. It was only a pretend date for me to practice my social skills,” she admitted quietly.
“A pretend date? How did you wind up on a pretend date?”
Max laughed nervously and glanced at the clock again. Thirty more minutes.
“Ah well, you see, my sister and Eric had this bright idea that since I saved Matthew’s butt that he owed me. They suggested a pretend date, and I was surprised that he went along with it.”
“I have to admit that I’m surprised too. What made you go along with it?”
“I don’t know really,” Max sighed. “I guess I just figured that it would be therapy and help me get used to being around men without the stress of a real date.”
“How was it different from a real date?”
“Well, I mean, it’s pretend. We were supposed to just go through the motions. I mean, you know, no pressure.” Max glanced at her and then looked back down at her hands.
“What did you do?”
Max looked up with wide eyes. “What do you mean? We were supposed to go Dutch, and I picked the movie and he picked the restaurant. It was just a friendly date with no expectations from either of us.”
“What movie did you see?”
“It was a comedy, you know, the new one with Vince Vaughan. I thought I’d keep things light.” Max glanced at the clock, which didn’t appear to be moving at all now.
“Did Matthew like your choice?”
Max smiled. “Yes, he said that he loved Vince Vaughan and couldn’t believe that I didn’t pick a romance or some other chick flick. I told him that I loved comedies and action movies. He said that he did too.”
“Sounds like the two of you have a few things in common,” Dr. Nelson said, smiling. “Where did he take you to eat?”
“We went to Mario’s, you know, that expensive Italian restaurant everyone is raving about. I guess he picked it because we were going Dutch, but then I forgot my debit card, and he insisted on paying for the whole meal.”
“Wait a second; he picked an expensive restaurant because you were going to pay for your own meal?”
“I don’t know why he picked that one. I mean, I was surprised at first, but I thought he did it because he was only paying for his half. I’d ordered the movie tickets online, and he gave me the money for his ticket, but then I didn’t have my half for the food.”
Dr. Nelson stared at her a moment as if in deep thought. She sighed and leaned back in her chair.
“Okay, I think it’s time to come out on the porch,” Dr. Nelson said.
“What?”
“We used the porch to see things from a different perspective. Remember?”
“Oh yeah,” Max said, thinking back to their previous sessions.
“OK, let’s see about this Matthew and his choice of restaurants. If this were a pretend date, why didn’t he pick something like Chili’s? Why would he want to spend all that money just on himself?”
“I don’t know, maybe he likes the place.”
Dr. Nelson smiled. “OK, you keep mentioning that you didn’t have your debit card, so he paid. Did he get angry about that?”
Max cleared her throat. “No. I thought that he would, but he was happy to pay. Go figure. Anyway, I guess he wanted to recover and impress me after one of his jump-offs came over to our table and spoke to him. She told me that he was boring in bed and hoped that I had better luck than she did. She said that he was and I quote, ‘a missionary position’ type of guy. God, I’ve never seen him so red in my life! If looks could kill!”
Max could barely contain her snickers at Matthew’s expense. She knew that he’d been furious with the woman, and her first thought had been that if he was such a poor lover that maybe he would be too embarrassed to approach her for sex—that was, until that kiss!
“That doesn’t explain why he would want to pay your half, though. When most men get embarrassed they are usually defensive afterwards. It sounds like he actually wanted to pay for dinner,” Dr. Nelson pointed out.
“I guess he wanted to pay me back for helping him out. At least, that’s what he said.” Max shrugged.
“So you can’t see any other reason that he wanted to compensate you for either what you had experienced or what you did for him? That sounds an awful lot like this pretend date was really a business meeting.”
Max looked up her in irritation. “It was not a business meeting. It wasn’t like that at all,” she insisted. “We had a nice time. He was nice to me, and he even held my hand when we left the movies and the restaurant. He didn’t have to do that.”
“No, he didn’t,” Dr. Nelson agreed, nodding. “He held your hand, you say? That doesn’t sound pretend to me.”
“Well, he said that he wanted to give me the best pretend date ever so that I’d have something to measure my future dates by. He was just being nice!”
“Max, is Matthew stupid?”
“What? Of course he’s not stupid. He’s very smart.”
“Oh, because you’ve been doing a lot of thinking for him. You guess he picked Mario’s because you were paying your share, and you figured he paid for your half because he was paying you back for being nice to him. So what did he think when you date was over?”
Max blinked several times. Dr. Nelson smirked at her, and Max felt her face go warm.
“Well, I mean, I went to shake his hand at the end of the date and he insisted on a kiss, uh, since I’d never kissed a guy before, and uh, so I said OK, and then he kissed me, and it was, uh, nice. I mean, I don’t know. I know you’re going to
say that if he didn’t like me, why did he kiss me? And I’m wondering the same thing. I mean, he kissed me, and then I kissed him back, and I liked it until, um, I don’t know, he started getting a little excited, and I, um, got scared and ran into the house.”
Max jumped up. “This is crazy! I wasn’t expecting it to end that way. I wasn’t expecting that kiss! Now I can’t stop thinking about him and that kiss. I mean, it was supposed to be pretend!”
“Well, you saved me quite a bit of thinking there. Thanks.” Dr. Nelson chuckled. “You’ve never been kissed, and he kissed you. You liked it. He got excited. What do you mean by excited?”
Max stared at her a moment and then at the clock on the wall.
“Answer the question, Maxine.”
“Uh, I could feel him against my belly. You know, his, uh, manhood. So I broke off the kiss and ran into the house.” Her words tumbled out of her mouth, and she sat back down.
“What frightened you?” Dr. Nelson asked.
“I guess, I thought about what it wanted, and I got scared. I mean, what if he wanted more? I couldn’t wait around to find out.”
“’It’? Do you mean his penis?”
Max felt more heat from her neck to her face. She glanced at the clock. Fifteen more minutes.
“Yes.”
“I’ve heard of men thinking with their penises, but a woman thinking for one, that’s a new one. What exactly was ‘it’ going to do to you?”
Max refused to meet her stare. Why was she asking her these stupid questions? She finally looked back up at the doctor, who was waiting patiently for her to answer.
“It will hurt me like Rogers did. He hurt me and then laughed while I cried.”
“Do you think that Matthew would hurt you?”
Max glanced at the doctor, finding her expression stoic.
“I mean, he has a penis, and it will hurt. Men want sex, and, uh, I don’t know! I mean, my sister likes it, I just don’t understand how she can like it when it hurts, but then again, maybe I’m the problem.”
Broken: The sequel to THE PREACHER'S SON Page 9
