Holly didn't hear from Roger that night and he wasn't at work the next day. As she was driving to her therapy appointment, she was already steeling herself because it was going to be quite the session.
She arrived early and looked at the magazines on the table. Her choices were a celebrity gossip magazine (three months old at that point), Good Housekeeping (six months old) or Cosmo (last month). "`Alone with my thoughts' it is," she muttered.
Fortunately it wasn't long before the door opened.
"Hi, Holly. Come on in."
It was hard for Holly to be open about things. She was prone to overthinking things and drawing connections—whether or not they were really linked—but she wasn't good at talking about hard things or very personal ones. Rather than dealing with things right away and letting wounds heal, her coping mechanism was to squash everything down and then wait until she couldn't do that anymore before fixing whatever problem she had.
Over the past few weeks, though, she'd gotten better. Today would be the first real test of that; it was the first time she'd had a new thing to discuss. And, as one would expect, Roger had already come up multiple times. But each time, it was as someone in her past—sometimes a discussion of a more recent past, granted, but this was the first time he'd move into the present.
"So last time, we decided that you'd go into more detail on your theory that you keep falling for men who demand perfection and then withhold love when you can't provide it. Do you still think that's true?"
"Yes. But…something happened and I think we need to talk about that instead."
Holly sat up straighter and sighed. "So. Saturday, when I got home, Roger was waiting for me. On the porch. And it turned out that he and his girlfriend had broken up and that she lost the baby. He was incredibly upset about it, mostly about the baby, but I'm sure the breakup was also painful."
"Why do you think he went to you?"
"I was the only person who knew about the baby. Roger, he…doesn't have many people in his life."
"What happened?" she asked, with the tone of someone who very much already knew what happened.
"We had sex. And he stayed over."
Holly paused and then said, "It was rougher than it generally is with him. And it was 100% consensual. I didn't feel like I couldn't say no or anything like that. But I had some bruises the next morning and he freaked out. He was angry with himself for hurting me. I tried to reassure him and he wouldn't listen. And that's why I'm bringing it up; it felt very out of character for him to be so upset about hurting me."
She sighed.
"But it also felt very in character that he disregarded what I was saying about it to stick with his own narrative."
"So how are you feeling about all of it?"
"I don't know."
"Okay. So in a world where you get to decide what happens next and make it happen, what do you want? Do you want to go back to just being…whatever you are to each other? Do you want to keep having sex without commitment? Would you want to get back together with him?"
"No," Holly said. "Definitely no to the last one. That's not a life I want for myself. I wouldn't mind if we just had sex every so often, but I don't think that's really feasible. He's very much an all or nothing type person, and sex isn't enough of an `all' for him. And I don't want us to just go back to being coworkers. Which is too bad because that's almost definitely the best option."
"Do you realize that you said you definitely don't want a serious relationship with him or to go back to just being coworkers, but that you `wouldn't mind' sex with him? Are you really ambivalent about it or are you just uncomfortable saying that that's what you want?"
Holly blinked. That was an uncomfortably perceptive question and no, she didn't realize that was how she phrased it.
"The latter. It definitely feels like something I shouldn't want."
"With a man in general or with that man in particular?"
"With Roger. The whole town knows our history. It feels like something even the kids know. And whenever we're together in public, for whatever reason, it feels like everyone is watching us and judging us. Judging me," she corrected. "Roger's been judged and found wanting in the eyes of the town for years now, but when I'm with him, I get that label, too."
"Is that why you don't want a relationship with him? You don't want that judgment every day?"
Holly considered it. It might have been part of it—it almost definitely WAS part of it, but she didn't think it was the whole reason or even the main one.
"I…" She looked up at the ceiling to gather her thoughts. "Have you seen The Godfather?"
"Of course."
"Okay. You know how, at the end, Michael is in his office with the men and Kay is in the hallway and they close the door even as she's staring in, and he's on one side and she's on the other? And it's a very deliberate choice of shutting her out? That's what it's like being with Roger. I'm in his life up to a point but there's also a door between us that's very firmly shut, and I have no way of opening it from my side."
"Was that what it was like when you were married?"
"Yes. He cheated on me all the time. He wasn't even discreet about it."
"Well, that was a long time ago, and you haven't tried being in a relationship with him since then. If you talked to him and were honest about how you felt and what you wanted, do you think it would be different? That he would be more forthcoming with you?"
Holly tilted her head and thought about it. "I think he would try. I don't think he could, though. He's spent so much time doing what he wants that I'm not sure it would even occur to him to check in with someone else. It's been a long time since we were…anything but enemies that I don't know for sure, but yesterday, I did tell him how I felt about something and it was like he couldn't even hear me. It didn't fit with his chosen narrative and so it wasn't even something he would listen to. That feels significant."
"It does," the therapist conceded, "but he also saw that he had physically hurt you and he felt very real remorse. That also feels significant to me. You described your injuries after he raped you and you said that he didn't even acknowledge the bruises on your face. It was a vicious assault and it sounds like he didn't take any responsibility for it for years. Now that he is, it was probably traumatic for him to see that he'd hurt you again, even if those injuries were much less significant."
She paused and looked at Holly. "I don't know that a relationship would be possible. It would require a lot of work, even more than most do, because there's so much history and violence between the two of you. It might not be worth the effort. But there's also a reason why you two keep being drawn back together. You're the only one who knows if it would be worth the risk."
"Risk?"
"Relationships are inherently risky, Holly. Taking a chance is always a leap of faith, right? Obviously some are greater than others and this would be quite the risk. At the same time, though, and I'm not sure you realize this, but your face and body language are different when he comes up. When we discuss Ed or Ross, your face is guarded and your body is generally incredibly tense in one of two ways. Most of the time, you're hunched in on yourself, like you're waiting for someone to hit you and you're trying to be as small a target as possible. But other times, it looks like every muscle you have is rigid, like you're waiting for something bad to happen."
"But when I talk about Roger?"
"It's like you take a deep breath. You're nowhere near as tense, even if we're discussing the violent parts of your history with him. It's clear that those moments are still with you, but they don't seem to...haunt you, I'd say. You carry a lot of tension in your body and you seem to have that tension there most of the time, but you don't with him. Or even the mention of him. This is important to note, obviously, but it's also not an indication of whether trying to start a relationship is a good idea. But since the body can remember trauma and will process it in ways that it's hard to understand or control, it's interesting to keep in mind that when you talk about him, it's the one time you seem to be able to fully relax."
"So…what do I do?"
She opened her mouth to answer but Holly cut her off.
"I know you can't tell me and that I have to be able to decide things for myself. I know. But…what do I do?"
"You know what to do."
Holly rolled her eyes and the therapist laughed.
"You figure out what you want and you go get it."
"That's very helpful, thank you."
"Holly, you know what you want. Trust yourself and trust the fact that you deserve to be happy."
She nodded and stood to go.
"I'm going to want to start here next time." She paused. "Good luck."
"Thanks," Holly said and smiled.
She left, got in her car and then just sat there. She looked at her watch and tried to guess where Roger would be. She decided to drive by Blake's to see if Roger's car was there, but it wasn't.
She then did a drive through town, checking the parking lots of all the restaurants he liked. It was only about 6:30, so it would be a little early for dinner for him, but it was the only idea she had. No luck there, either.
She drove by the TV station anyway on the unlikely chance he went in to get a jump on the late newscast but he wasn't there either. She was officially out of theories of where he would be and decided to give up, go home and just talk to him at the station. He'd taken a long weekend; there was almost no way that he wouldn't be in on Tuesday. And probably very early to make up for the two days off.
Getting home, though, she realized she'd forgotten one very obvious place where he could be. Because, just like Saturday, there he was on her porch.
