Beautiful Illusions

by Annie Jocoby

  Now he was insisting on buying me a wet suit. Well, I guess a wet suit is minor compared to everything else he was buying me. Still, I was feeling kept, which I didn’t exactly like, because I was always independent.

  I was broke, but independent.

  I put on the wetsuit, and, when I emerged, Ryan smiled. “You look cute. You look like a little surfer girl.”

  I smiled back. “Uh, thanks for the wet suit.”

  We spread a blanket on the beach. Ryan opted not to get into the water at all, so a wet suit was not necessary for him. We put an umbrella up to keep out the sun.

  I played in the water for about a half hour, glad that Ryan was looking after me, again, when he made sure that I had a wet suit. The water was absolutely freezing, and I could feel it on my feet and face.

  After about an hour, I realized that the undertow had taken me far down the beach. Getting out the water, I had a hard time finding Ryan again. After about 20 minutes of looking, I finally found him. A woman was over where he was, talking to him. The woman was the typical gorgeous woman who always came onto him – long hair, large rack, rocking a bikini. I sighed.

  This was another thing that I have had to get used to – women glomming onto him like he had some kind of magnet attached to him. They pretty much didn’t care that I was around. They would slip him their phone number, right there in front of me. I guessed that they figured that they could take me. Ryan never gave them the time of day, of course, and a less secure woman would have been constantly jealous of the female attention. I, however, was philosophical about it all. I knew that Ryan was crazy about me, and I trusted him implicitly. I was maybe naïve about it, but I chose to trust him.

  He saw me approach, and waved at me easily. I looked at the woman, and she glared back. “Charlotte, this is my girlfriend, Iris.”

  She smiled fakely. “Hello, it is good to meet you.”

  I nodded.

  She looked back at Ryan. “Call me.” And she sauntered off.

  I made a face at her as she walked away.

  Ryan was smiling. “How was the water?”

  “Freezing, just like you said.”

  “You hungry?”

  “Famished, actually.” I didn’t eat breakfast that morning, because I was so excited about the day that I wasn’t hungry. Now it was early afternoon, and I was starving.

  I was looking over the menu. I looked up and Ryan was studying me. “You know, Iris, I’m so happy that you’re here. These past few weeks have been hell for me, but you’ve made everything so much brighter.”

  “I’m happy to be here.”

  We both ordered lunch. I looked at him. Was he in the mood to talk more about what was going on?

  What he said next surprised me somewhat. “When we get back to Kansas City, I want you to meet Nick.”

  I sighed. It had to happen, sooner or later. I kinda wanted to put it off as long as possible, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen. “Sure, I’m looking forward to it.”

  Ryan said “Well, you’re the most important thing in my life, and I really think that you will be permanent. He’s also a permanent part of my life. So, it’s important to me that you meet him and hopefully you will get along.”

  I smiled tightly. I still wasn’t entirely ok with any of it, but, at the same time, I knew that I really couldn’t dictate his life. I was all for giving Ryan the freedom to pursue his interests, and one of his interests just happened to be Nick.

  I wondered if I was being a little too laid-back about it all, though.

  Ryan noticed that I wasn’t entirely happy. “Honey, I have the feeling that you’re nervous about meeting him.”

  “Well, of course. Uh, it is kinda strange meeting my boyfriend’s, uh, boyfriend.”

  “That’s one way to put it.” His face was still friendly and soft, so I knew that he wasn’t too upset about my not-so-crazy reaction to the deal. “But it means the world to me that you meet him. As I said, if you are not ok with my relationship with him, then I can make it strictly platonic.”

  “Well, I had some time to think about it all while I was at my mom’s house. I’ve done research on it, and I realize that it is not entirely abnormal to be sexually attracted to the same sex. So, I guess it’ll be ok.”

  “Not exactly a ringing endorsement.”

  “It’ll take some getting used to. But I really don’t object to meeting him.”

  “That’s all that I’m asking.”

  We spent the rest of the day at the zoo and going to Rodeo Drive to shop. We ended up back at my hotel room at 10 PM.

  Once in the room, I felt uncomfortable and so did he. We really didn’t know how to be alone with each other and abstain. Yet, abstaining was exactly what was in order.

  I had a suggestion. “Why don’t we get into our swimming suits and sit in the hot tub?” I was referring to the hot tub which was bubbling in the middle of the room, as opposed to the two tubs which were located in the bathrooms.

  He sighed. “That’s a good idea, but – “

  I knew what he wanted. I wanted it as well. Dr. Silver’s warning was ringing in my ears – “You need to think of him and his recovery, and not yourself. You need to be a grown up here.”

  I took a deep breath. “Uh, Ryan, maybe being here alone is not such a good idea.”

  He nodded, as he came up to me, putting his hands on my shoulders, kissing the back of my neck. I took a deep breath, trying not to feel the burning sensation in my groin. It had been so long for us, over a month. We wanted each other, that was for sure.

  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.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  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 portion 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 a
ll 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.”