Relapse

Again.

“What else has happened since the last time I saw you, Ivy?” she questions, crossing her legs at the ankle as she studies me.

My fingers start to fidget once again. “Um… I kind of had a meltdown in the yard the other day.” Might as well get it all out on the table.

Patricia’s brows raise. “A melt down? What happened?”

“Well it was my neighbor’s fault.”

“Is this one of the neighbors you’d like to have intercourse with?”

I wrinkle my nose at how professional she makes it sound. “Yeah, one of the ones I want to have sex with,” I confirm.

She nods, not mentioning my correction. “What happened to lead to this, shall we call it an altercation?”

I shrug. “If that’s what you want to call it.” I take a long lick of the sucker before diving into the story. “The kids and I were on our way home from the park, which went really well by the way, and when we got home this guy was in our yard.”

“The neighbor?” she clarifies.

“Yeah, the neighbor.” I shift in my seat, leaning forward slightly. “So he’s in our yard with this gigantic ass dog, which bulldozes me over and that’s when things went downhill. I completely flipped out on him and he basically called me a crazy bitch, and while that may be kind of true, he had no right.” The statement sounds ridiculous even to my own ears, but I keep going. “He was the one in a stranger’s yard in the first place so it’s only natural that I flipped out! Not to mention that I dropped my fucking ice cream when the dog ran into me.”

Patricia nods but her face doesn’t give anything away. “And what happened after that?”

I pull my lips together in a tight line as I think of a way to continue this story that doesn’t paint me in a completely bad light… but well there isn’t a way around it and this is what therapy is for, to air you crazy and let someone else tell you how to fix it. “I may have thrown Tanner’s ice cream at the man.”

A small crease forms between Patricia’s brows. “You threw ice cream at him.”

“My anger got the best of me,” I try to justify. “Shit happens.”

“And how did the man react to you throwing ice cream at him?” Patricia can’t hide the slight waver in her voice that gives away her concern. A part of me considers the break in her composure a win, the other part of me realizes the situation was maybe a bit out of hand if even Patricia is thrown off about it.

“He started to yell at me some more and I may or may not have been on course to hit him when one of the other neighbors came through and stopped the whole thing.” I try to gloss through the words quickly, but Patricia doesn’t miss a beat.

“You were going to hit him?” she questions, and yeah, that’s definitely a concern in her eyes.

Should have known her pride in me wasn’t going to last long. It never does.

“I know, I know, I shouldn’t have tried to hit him, it’s not okay to lay your hands on anyone, man or woman.” I try to quickly change the subject, Patricia’s heavy gaze resting on me. “So, what do you think I should do about my neighbors? Fuck them and ghost them? Shit, that’d be hard with them being my neighbors wouldn’t it?”

Patricia shakes her head and rubs at her temple. “No, we’re not going to just gloss over your anger. It needs to be addressed,” she admonishes.

My shoulders slump. “I know.”

“Now,” Patricia watches me closely, “I can’t say the angry outburst is exactly unusual for you, but you typically never get to that point until after something has built up for a long time.” Patricia would know, she’s been around long enough to have gone through more than a couple of my bouts with the law where violence was involved.

When I realized the commute to her office would change from a fifteen minute drive to a forty-five minute one with the move, I’d barely blinked. I didn’t want to have to get another therapist caught up on how fucked up I am.

A girl only has so much time.

“Ivy?” Patricia’s lips are pursed as she waits for me to speak.

I shrug, biting at my lip. “I don’t know, there was something about the guy that just got under my skin, you know?”

“And this is one of the ones you want to fuck?”

I nod. “Yea, but a little less than the other two,” I say with a shrug. “The baseball coach and police officer are tied for first place. They’re really hot and neither of them made me drop my ice cream, so...”

“You’re deflecting, Ivy.”