“Nah, I didn’t Google him. Not yet, anyway. I was distracted when Daphne fell asleep on my half-naked body. On my bed.”
“Oooh!” Lenore claps her hands together several times and looks far more entertained than a shrink is probably supposed to. “There you go burying the lede. Then what happened?”
“Nothing. I lay there a while wondering why I can’t fall asleep with someone else in the room. It makes no sense. Daphne isn’t going to throw me off a wall. But it doesn’t matter. I couldn’t do it. I had to sneak out of there after a while and sleep in her room.”
“Okay, let’s dig into that,” Lenore says. “What were you feeling right before you decided to get up and leave? Was it fear?”
“Discomfort, I guess. I was tired, but I feel like I can’t let anyone else catch me asleep.”
“Catch you,” she repeats. “That’s an interesting word choice.”
“I know it’s weird,” I admit. “I didn’t use to be like this. I’d fall asleep on trains, or wherever. Like a normal person.”
“Falling asleep is the most vulnerable you can be,” she says.
“Defenseless,” I agree.
“Falling asleep naked would be the only way to make yourself even more vulnerable.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I tell her. “But nudity doesn’t bother me. And yet I can’t stand the idea of napping in front of anyone. It gives me the willies.”
“This is really bothering you all of a sudden, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I grunt. “Because I thought I was doing so good lately, you know? But Daphne has got me all stirred up in every possible way. And I swear to God I could write off six missing months of my life if I could just get back to a life of bad decisions, seduction, and sleeping wherever I happen to land.”
Lenore bites back a smile. “Let’s try to figure out why you can’t. Why don’t you tell me about the weeks just after your accident,” Lenore says. “You were in a hospital, right?”
“Right, but I don’t remember much. I was on a lot of meds. Broken bones are really painful.” And I had a bunch of them.
“You must have fallen asleep in a hospital room in front of lots of people.”
“Sure. Fine. I can see what you’re getting at. But actually the sleeping in a locked room thing didn’t start until after I’d been home for a while. A couple months, maybe.”
She perks up. “Really?”
“Yeah. I was trying to wean myself off the pain meds—which was no fun. And opiates fuck up your dopamine receptors. So I’d wake up at all hours.”
It’s been a while since I’ve thought about those awful weeks. I was still in a brain fog half the time, too. But it’s hard to pinpoint when I started locking my bedroom door.
Now here I sit, straining to remember something that other people would have no trouble with. Story of my life. The seconds tick by, and I just get frustrated. “I don’t know, Lenore. I can’t remember what I was thinking when it started. Maybe I thought it would help me sleep, because nothing else was working? I just don’t know.”
“Okay,” she says gently. “Don’t force it. I can tell that this aggravates you.”
“It does.” My own vehemence surprises me. “Because I can’t understand my own compulsion. The truth is I don’t really mind if the whole Shipley clan were to see me sleeping. Even if I’m drooling on the pillow or whatever. I don’t really care what people think of me.”
“You are gifted in that way,” she says. “You could give seminars.”
“But that means it’s a fear. Some kind of phobia. Even if I don’t know where I got it.”
“Okay, good reasoning.” Lenore crosses her arms. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“Isn’t that your job?”
She just smiles.
“I guess…exposure therapy,” I grumble. “That’s all I got, right?”
“It’s certainly the most direct route to resolving this. You could sleep outside under the stars. Naked. Hey—where did you say you saw that bear?” Then she slaps her knee.
“I hate you.”
She smiles.
Two hours later I’m sitting at a picnic table, eating an ice cream cone with Daphne. My lengthy dry spell means that it’s practically a sexual experience watching her lick the cone slowly. Her damn tongue on that scoop of toasted coconut is the most sensual thing I’ve seen in years.
And the torture isn’t even intentional. I can tell her mind is miles away, while I sit here