“I thought you had been doing better on that front.”
I glanced up at him and scowled at his choice of words. His expression told me he hadn’t realized what type of metaphor he had used.
“I was,” I stated bluntly, “and now I’m not.”
“What changed?”
My eyes dropped back to the area rug and its swirly, uninteresting patterns. My eyes followed a blue swirl around a green one. Did I really want to go into this with him? Did I want to tell him how apparently my pathetic, empty self had developed the need to share his bed with a hooker – not for the sex but for the sleep?
Did I want to tell him she left me?
How does a whore get the option anyway?
A shiver went through my body, my stomach clenched, and I tasted bile in the back of my throat.
“What’s her name?”
“She’s no one,” I replied.
“Yet you have someone in mind when I ask the question,” Mark said. “That pretty much makes her a someone.”
I glared at him again.
“It’s not what you think,” I said.
“What do I think?”
“She’s not a girlfriend or anything. She just…slept with me.”
He paused and tapped his pen against his wrist before jotting something down.
“A prostitute?”
“Yeah.” I clenched my hands into fists a couple of times to try to get rid of the shaking. I couldn’t have been much worse off if I had been going through the DTs. “She’d stay overnight with me, and it helped to have someone else there. The dreams weren’t as bad.”
Saying it out loud made it sound even more pathetic.
“And she’s no longer in the picture?”
“She’s not.”
“What happened to her?”
I ran my hand over the top of my head, mildly annoyed with myself for needing a haircut. I took in a long breath and figured it couldn’t really make it any worse to tell him.
“I took her out, showed her a great time, fed her waffles, and then at the end of the night, when everything seemed to be going great, she took off.”
“Why did she leave?”
“I have no idea.”
“Seems like you missed some details in there somewhere.”
“I don’t miss details,” I snapped.
“Apparently, you do.”
The tension in my body had to be noticeable to Mark as I glared at him. I could almost see the crosshair on his forehead and figured I’d try a more mental shot than a physical one.