Lust

by Leddy Harper

  I threw the clothes into the washing machine and headed to my bedroom across the house, stark naked. Being naked didn’t bother me. It never had. I actually felt more comfortable without clothes on than I did in them. It came in handy in my practice, when I had to be naked in front of a client. It also helped the other person feel more comfortable. Observing me acting confident had a way of easing their worries.

  I’m sure women have looked at me and thought I was arrogant, but that’s not the case. I can look into a mirror like anyone else, and I see exactly what they do. I see what everyone else sees when they look at me. A tall, tan man. A muscular build from sports and working out. Lines and definition running along my body and disappearing below the waistband of my pants. A smooth chest with a dark trail of hair running a line from just below my belly button to the short, trimmed hair around my dick. My short, dark hair that sometimes looks messy depending on how many times my fingers ran through it, and my eyes so dark they almost look black. I see what they see. And I’m smart enough to know I’m good looking. Especially when I’ve been told that my entire life. So if that makes me arrogant, then so be it. But I didn’t look at myself and depict anything special. There was nothing exceptional about my image. Trust me, there was nothing special about what was behind it, either. Only what I allowed others see.

  Putting on a pair of basketball shorts and nothing else, I went into the kitchen to pour a shot of whiskey. I downed the first one with a hiss and then started to pour another when thoughts of Ivy once again flooded my brain. I tried to shake them since dropping her off at home, but I couldn’t. So I placed the bottle back on the granite countertop and headed over to my computer on the kitchen table.

  I searched her name in social media sites. It was harder than I thought; I wasn’t expecting to find that many people with the name Ivy Jaymes. I had thought it to be an original name before the rows of Ivy Jaymes had popped up. I found one and knew it was her. The only reason I knew it was her was because under occupation, she had it listed as “blogger.”

  Her page was filled with posts of books. The last post was a five-star review for a book titled Between Friends by the author Amanda Cowen. I read her review and then clicked on the Amazon link she added to it. A page was opened up right to the book. It was only ninety-nine cents, so I decided to buy it. Little did I know, I would have to own something to read it on. E-books were quite foreign to me. I didn’t really know of their existence or how they worked. I had to spend a little time doing research about them and how to buy one. Turns out, it’s rather simple.

  So I grabbed my iPad and downloaded the Kindle app. Within seconds of setting it up, the book I had purchased was right there in front of me. If I were more of a reader, I would probably have enjoyed the instantaneousness of it. Maybe Ivy would make me read more. Who knew?

  But instead of calling Alyssa, instead of drinking more whiskey, I sat down on the couch and began to read the book that had Ivy raving in great detail of the emotions it pulled from her. I read exactly two paragraphs before I felt the hair on the back on my neck stand on end. But I couldn’t stop there. I didn’t stop until I reached the end of the first chapter.

  Who the hell was Ivy? I had no clue. I had read an entire chapter about a girl, and a boy named Ben. I read about how he sorted M&Ms and made her eat a brown and red one to taste the difference. I read about how much this girl and Ben had in common, all the way down to their love of spicy food. The chapter went on to their conversation of sex, and their decision to flip a coin to determine if they would fuck each other.

  What. The. Fuck. Just. Happened?

  My head was spinning as I came to the forgone conclusion.

  She had made the whole thing up. There was no real Ben. No real party. No real flip of a coin.

  I started to wonder what I had gotten myself into by agreeing to take her on as a client, but the more my thoughts wandered, the more intrigued I became. She lied for a reason. And it wasn’t just a lie. She told me about people, friends of hers that only existed in a fictional book. It wasn’t as if she made up these people. No. Someone else had. Someone else created these characters and wrote their lives out in a book. And Ivy adopted it.

  What would make someone do that? Had she done this before?

  I wondered if maybe she had a mental illness. That was the only thing I could come up with. But in any regards, I would have to wait until seven o’clock the next day to figure it out. I wouldn’t be able to come up with anything alone.

  I should have called Alyssa. I needed a good fuck, but I couldn’t with Ivy on my mind. I wanted to drink more, if only to lessen the obsessive thoughts that ran rampant through my head. But that would only do more harm than good—I knew that from personal experience. So instead of letting myself go by immersing in whiskey or pussy, I carried my iPad to bed with me and finished reading the book. I figured that way, if she tried spinning any more tales of Ben, I would know if they came from the book or not. I also thought about going through her list of reviews and checking those books out as well. If she used this one, I wouldn’t doubt that she’d use others, too. But I didn’t have the time to read all of the books she had reviewed. There were a shitload of them.

  *****

  The next day went by slowly. It dragged. All I wanted was for it to be seven so I could talk with Ivy. I needed to know why she had lied. I had to find out why she came to me in the first place. If she had a mental illness, I wouldn’t be able to help her. And that was something I needed to know before we continued with our sessions the way I planned.

  Luckily, I didn’t have too many patients on the calendar. Most of my day was filled with personal things. I had lunch with my cousin, which happened once a month. It wasn’t something I looked forward to, but she insisted on it. She said I needed it. Except, I didn’t. She just refused to acknowledge that part.

  I was thirty-four years old. I didn’t need my cousin to sit down with me for an hour every month and watch me eat. Because that’s pretty much what she did. She’d ask me questions about my life and I gave her the least amount of information that I could between hurried bites of food. It annoyed her, I know. But it didn’t stop her from scheduling lunch once again for the following month.

  After lunch, I had an appointment with my own psychologist. It wasn’t that I necessarily needed to go, but I started years ago and never stopped going. Most of the time, we talked about work. I found it easy to talk to someone that knew kind of what it was that I did for a living. He never openly admitted that he disagreed with my line of work, but I could read between the lines. He believed anyone could work through any problem by sitting on a couch and discussing it. I didn’t see it that way. I believed that sometimes people physically had to work out their issues. It was a sink or swim mentality. If you can’t swim, jump in a pool once without water wings; survival will kick in and you’ll learn to swim.

  And if those issues that needed to be overcome were sex related, then sitting on an old couch wouldn’t solve shit. But we silently agreed to disagree on the topic. However, it didn’t stop me from talking about my work with him. Most of the time, it was strictly shooting-the-shit kind of talk, but that time, it was about Ivy.

  I had asked him what would cause someone to lie about their life. He didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Self-esteem issues. Hiding from one’s past. Lack of self-worth. The list went on. Since I didn’t really know much about Ivy, any of those reasons could suit her. It made me want the clock to read seven o’clock that much more so I could know more about her. It had quickly become a dying need to know. I had never experienced that kind of irrational need before.

  At five thirty, I had a basketball game. I wasn’t friends with any of the guys from the court, but I still showed up every Tuesday at five thirty to play. They didn’t mind because I was rather good at the sport. I had played it most of my life. It was another form of therapy for me, not to mention, exercise.

  I always played skins. The feeling of my shirt
stuck to my skin from sweat made me revert back to the illness inside of me. I couldn’t stand that feeling. So I was always skins, and I was always captain. And… I always won. I took the game seriously, much like I took everything in life. It may have been called a game, but I played it as anything but. It was a form of release for me, and that my competiveness spirit didn’t allow me to take lightly.

  Once I toweled off and put my dry tee shirt back on, I headed over to pick up Ivy. My heart raced with anticipation the entire drive to her apartment, which looked as though it should have been condemned years before. The thoughts and feelings that ran through me were unfamiliar.

  Part of me was mad. She had lied to me when I was there to help her and it fucking pissed me off.

  Part of me was confused. She could have told me anything, but decided to take on the life of a character from a book she had recently read, and that had me questioning so many things.

  Part of me was intrigued. Something about Ivy spoke to me. It was as if we were born from the same darkness. Lived in the same shadows and harbored the same emptiness. Her eyes, void of emotion, made me want to know everything about her. Out of all the emotions that coursed through my body, intrigue was the strongest.

  She ran to the car before I even had it in park. I felt relieved that I didn’t need to go knocking on doors until I found hers; she was outside and waiting for me as I pulled in. Normally, I would have taken that as impressive punctuality, but after my revelation the night before, it made me wonder if she even lived there. It wouldn’t have surprised me if that had been a lie, too.

  “Where are we going?” she asked in a quiet yet scared voice. She noticed we weren’t heading in the direction of my office and that seemed to have worried her. Good. I had other things planned for our evening.

  “Have you eaten yet?”

  She shook her head slowly as if she debated her answer. It was a simple yes or no question. Either she had eaten or she didn’t. So her slow reaction made me question her even more. Why would she need to think if she’s eaten or not? Did she not remember eating? Was she hiding something like an eating disorder? Or was she simply worried about my change of plan?

  “Good. We’re going to eat. I’m starving.”

  I expected a response, but I didn’t get one. She just sat there, staring out the windshield in silence.

  Surrogate dates never happened that early in therapy, but ours wasn’t a date. No. The entire reason for going out to eat was to get some answers from her. If she wanted to act like a scared little kitten, then that was exactly how I’d treat her. How do you catch a scared kitten? You corner them. You trap them.

  The hole-in-the-wall sports bar was rather crowded for a Tuesday evening. I could feel Ivy tense up next to me as we were escorted to a booth against the wall. I made sure to keep a close eye on her, watching for anything she might subconsciously do that could tell me something about her.

  “Do you suffer from social anxiety?” I asked as soon as we were seated.

  “No,” she answered with a shake of her head.

  “So being in a crowded room doesn’t bother you?”

  “Not at all.”

  I thought for a moment, pretending to look over the menu. “Do you go to places like that often?”

  “Sometimes.” Her answers were short, noncommittal, and quiet as her eyes moved quickly around the room. It was almost as if she were searching for something. An exit maybe? Her tone was convincing as she answered my questions, but her body language conveyed something completely different. Everything she did, every action she made screamed social anxiety, so why not just admit to it? Maybe she had never been diagnosed with it. Maybe it wasn’t something she had ever given any thought to. The explanations were endless; I knew I had to continue my pursuit in order to find the answers. She wouldn’t easily give me any and if she did, I couldn’t trust that she was being honest.

  “With Ben?” I pressed, testing her on her lies from the night before.

  Her eyes landed squarely on me. “Sometimes.”

  I decided to lay off the questions as the waitress came to take our orders. Ivy didn’t order anything, which only made me question her more. She was a very small woman, and it concerned me that she may also have an eating disorder as well as whatever else she was battling.

  I looked at her from across the table and really took her in. Her chest wasn’t simply on the small side; it was small. I could tell that by the way her shirt hung flat against it. I rationalized that it could have something to do with her fear of being looked at. Maybe she had a distorted self-image; that would explain an eating disorder. Most people that dealt with eating disorders had a distorted self-image, where they saw something completely different when looking in the mirror at themselves. It was something else to add to the list of possibilities.

  As we waited for my food, I tried to get her to open up more. I asked about her friends, which were answered with short stories, all of which I had read the night before while studying that book she seemed to have taken over as her own life. I wanted to confront her about it so badly, but knew I had to wait until the food came.

  Once my spicy chicken sandwich arrived, I played my cards carefully. I cut it into two pieces and placed one half on a plate, sliding it in front of her. She stared at it as I waited, watching her movements very carefully. Her breathing turned erratic and her shoulders slouched forward.

  “I don’t want this,” she finally said.

  “You should eat. You said yourself you hadn’t had dinner.”

  “I have stuff at home to eat. I’ll be okay.”

  I picked the pickle spear off my plate and held it out to her. “Well, here, at least eat this. I hate pickles and I remember you saying you loved them.”

  She stared at the pickle in my hand, not looking away from it. Her small chest began to heave up and down, imitating the onset of hyperventilation. Before I could react, she was out of her seat and running for the door.

  I had to act fast before she could get too far away, so I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket as quickly as I could and grabbed out random bills to leave on the table. I threw the money down and ran after her, feeling panicked on the inside. I more than likely gave the server an overly generous tip, but I didn’t care. I had to find Ivy before she got too far.

  I found her racing down the sidewalk. I wasn’t sure where she was going, and she more than likely didn’t, either. It was clear that she was running without a care as to where she’d end up. With the look of fear she had on her face, I worried where she might’ve gone. Anything was possible with Ivy, especially since I had no clue as to who she really was or what she was capable of. So I ran after her, not even bothering to get my car first.

  “Ivy…” I breathed as I finally caught up with her. She was a fast runner, but still no match for me. I ran every morning. It had only taken me a few strides before I was standing in front of her with my hands on her shoulders, stilling her movements.

  Tears streamed her face from the corners of her eyes to her chin. I was wrong. There was something deeply troubled inside of her, and it went beyond social anxiety and a lack of self-worth. It was something that I desperately needed to know. It was almost recognizable to me.

  “I’m sorry, okay?” she cried.

  “That’s okay. It’s all right. Why did you run?”

  “I wasn’t hungry and I started to feel like you were shoving food at me. Like I am just a charity case and you feel the need to feed me. I didn’t want to eat and you were pushing that pickle in my face. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to be there and I didn’t want the damn pickle!” Her words rushed out of her mouth, sounding as if she were on the verge of a panic attack. Her eyes once again never met mine as they quickly jumped around at our surroundings.

  “You didn’t run away because you weren’t hungry or because you didn’t want a pickle. Now tell me. Why did you run?” I wanted her to look at me, but she didn’t. Instead, her jumpy eyes settled on our feet.


  “It’s Ben. Those things remind me of him, and he’s… he’s gone,” she answered in a low tone.

  I felt something inside of me snap. I had hoped she’d open up to me, share something with me. I hoped she would let me see a piece of her, but instead, she was back to the lying. Maybe she was a pathological liar and I should’ve let her kept running. Maybe she was beyond help and I should have let her leave the office the day before when she had wanted to. I shouldn’t have stopped her, either time. But even with the knowledge of what I should have done, I couldn’t let her leave. I couldn’t let her go and never learn the truth. She was a puzzle to me and I needed to see it completed. Even if that meant it would destroy me in the process.

  “It was a plane crash on his way to Mexico.”

  “Let me guess,” I said in a harsh and deep voice. “He was going there for Jessica’s wedding.”

  That was the moment her eyes jumped to mine. Her breaths became short and shallow, rushing in and out of her lungs. Her red and grey eyes flooded with tears as she tried to push me back. I didn’t allow her to, though. I kept my grip on her shoulders, hard and unmoving as she fought with me, screaming. I knew she was causing a scene and I should have walked away. But for the first time in my life, I didn’t care what scene we were causing. I didn’t care who was watching or what they thought. I wasn’t done with her yet.

  “I know, Ivy. I read the book last night. I only want to know why you’re lying to me.”

  She finally gave up her fight and collapsed against my chest. I was considerably taller than she was, even though she wasn’t short. Her head hit right below my chin so I rested my cheek on it. I didn’t know why I had done that, but she seemed so broken, broken much like me, and an overwhelming sense of need took over. I healed people. I helped people overcome their fears. What I did for Ivy was nothing more than that. That’s what I told myself at least.

  “Why, Ivy? Why did you lie to me? I’m here to help you. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me the truth.”

  “I didn’t want to tell you that I have no friends. No one sees me. No one notices me. So there’s no point in me even trying to make friends with people. I’m invisible. I have no one; I am no one.”