“Did you tell your parents?”
“No. My mother wouldn’t be able to handle it. She’s got so much guilt as it is; I don’t need to add to it.”
“Well, hopefully you won’t see her again. Shannon, that is. Not your mother.”
“It’s just...bothering me. I mean, I feel like it’s bothering me now as much as it was when I ran into her that day.”
“You didn’t say anything to her about...?”
I shook my head vehemently. “No. There’s no point. It would only complicate things by a thousand. She obviously still hates me and wishes her brother had never met my sister in the first place. Not that I blame her for hating me. I just wasn’t expecting to see her, I guess, and then knowing that my parents saw Sam at the grocery store... I mean, I still think about that shit.”
“Of course,” Ben said, nodding. “How could you not? Have you ever considered going to talk to someone?”
“Talk to someone? I’m talking to you right now. You’re essentially the only person that I can really talk to about this.”
“And I’m glad to be a sounding board, but I meant someone who might have experience dealing with this sort of thing.”
“Like a lawyer?”
He gave me a funny look. “A lawyer? No. Like...a therapist or something. A counselor. Someone who’s trained in dealing with matters like this. Someone that you could talk to that might be able to offer you some advice.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure I want to go that route. I mean, how much advice are they really going to be able to offer?”
Ben shrugged. “I have no idea. But they might be able to help. I’m not saying that you can’t talk to me, but I’ll be honest—I feel a little unqualified. There’s not much I can offer in the way of helpful advice.”
“I’m not looking for answers,” I said. “Or I’m not expecting them from you or anything. Sometimes it just helps to talk.”
“Yeah, I know. And if this is helping, then that’s great. But maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to consider talking to someone else, too.”
“Hmm,” I said. “That’s not something I ever considered before, but I’ll think about it.” I was just saying that; there was no way I was going to go to a shrink.
“You’re a doctor; you help people,” Ben continued. “And that’s what a therapist does, too, right? They’re just sort of...a different kind of doctor.”
“Well, if they’re a psychiatrist. I’m not going to see a psychiatrist, though.”
“Suit yourself,” he said. “But maybe you shouldn’t knock it till you try it.”
The best way to forget about my interaction with Shannon was to keep myself busy with Declan, with work, with hanging out with Allie. All things that I was happy to do. Declan and I were sitting down to dinner. It had been a whirlwind of a day; I’d had a full day of patients and then ended up having to stay later to wait for my last appointment to show up.
I had looked out the window toward Allie’s house when I had made my way over to the kitchen table with Declan’s plate, and I saw that her car wasn’t there in the driveway. I wondered where she was, what she was up to right then, and I found myself wishing that she was sitting there at the table with us.
“Here you go, bud,” I said, sliding the plate with half a chicken salad sandwich and some cold grilled zucchini that we had picked up at the market on the way home. She’d been there at the Learning Center when I’d picked Declan up, but she was talking with another parent, so I didn’t have a chance to say much, though we did share a quick glance across the room. I didn’t think that anyone noticed, and even if they had, it wouldn’t have looked like anything more than two people meeting each other’s eyes for the briefest of moments, before continuing on with what it was they’d been doing, but I was definitely aware of the sexual tension, and I was eager to have some alone time with Allie again; I just wasn’t sure when that would be.
Declan took a sip of his lemonade. “Do you think Miss Allie could sleep over here some time?” he asked, putting his cup down.
“Maybe,” I said. “Would you like that?”
“Yes! We could set up sleeping bags in the living room and stay up all night and watch movies.”
“That sounds like quite the evening.”
“We could have popcorn.”
“We might be able to arrange something like that.”
Declan grinned. “Good,” he said. He leaned toward me. “I saw you guys kissing,” he whispered.
“You did?”