Beauty and the Beast
Okay so I might have written my first story👀
“Erik, why don’t you want Kaya to have a car?” Jamil asked.
The brown couch I sat on was cozy, the pillows filled with various flowers and Que dog symbols. The pillow I got him for his Founder’s Day was one I was holding now, a memory of happy times. A picture of his family, him and his wife, stood beside the neutral purple chair he sat in.
I had that once, too.
And yet you excitingly ruined it, and all to have bragging rights of breaking a girl’s back and still “having it”, isn’t that right, he goaded. These days all Kill ever did was taunt me.
She could hurt herself, her brother is the better driver, I can drive her, she gonna try and sneak boys and girls in her car-, my thoughts were cut off.
Jamil already knew the answer to his question.
“Erik-,” he started but I cut him off.
“If Kaya gets a car then I won’t see her anymore.”
Flashes of heels, dressers that rocked as if there weren’t two peoples’ clothes in them, and tears, so many tears raced past my mind. Fast, too fast. Over the past ten years I’ve had so many times where I almost forgot the last moment her and I had where I had access to her, even if it was just her despondency. Her amusement. Me on my knees amused her, though it broke the heart of our children who watched. A moment I wrote down, down to the color and time of day to remember. The only torture I ever thought I deserved.
I watched patience settle over Jamil’s face, and I almost smiled. This was something I knew I would never lose.
“Is this the part where you tell me I need to move on?” I implored my therapist.
“Yes, right before you tell me you have and you are just actively choosing to love her anyway,” he patiently responded. His response was exactly what I’d expected, and yet still it gave me no peace. Peace was foreign in every way and had been for a while.
“Erik. I want you to be honest. Have you been following our plan? Taking up hobbies, constantly checking yourself on why you enjoy these hobbies?” he asked to which I nodded my head.
I thought about the paintings I had in my home. The set of drums in the music room. Robots scattered in my office. An office that held pictures from a wedding and a few first dates. The music room that held the videos filled with “I love you’s” and “forevers” that fell short yet seems to fill me to this moment.
“Doc can I ask you something?” I inquired to which he nodded his head.
“Was it ever possible that we would work out? With all the trauma I had, was I always going to self-destruct? Run away?” I asked. This question had been asked before, but my thoughts on it had changed. “Is that a black people thing, that we don’t get to rest and be easy, even with the people we love?” I pressed on, not waiting for his response.
Jamil tilted his head to me. He understood my fears, as I had been struggling for a minute now. Every session was about Kaya wanting a car, and every session I had told him over and over that I didn’t want her to have one because I didn’t want her to drive off and not look back.
Jamil was perceptive and did not give me a reprieve. He stared into my eyes and looked back at his family pictures my eyes kept flickering to. His eyes turned sad and unwilling, but he had nothing to worry about. Nothing could break my heart. It was still in shredded pieces on the floor of my dining room, still pumping after collecting ten years of tears.
“Erik, you don’t want Kaya to have a car because drop-off’s are the only time you have contact with your ex-wife,” he stated bluntly.
I stared back. It amused me that he believed I had no idea of this. This cat and mouse game him and played over this topic went round-and-round. This statement still, however, squeezed my heart. Jamil became blurry and something hot rushed down my face.
I cried for the remaining session.
