NOTE FROM RIOTTORI: EVEN WORK CAN'T KEEP ME AWAY! THANKS FOR THE COMMENTS AND REVIEWS. YOU'RE ALL QUITE SPLIT ON THE QUESTION OF FLYNN'S CULPABILITY. I'M REALLY ENJOYING THE DISCUSSIONS ABOUT THAT ONE. BUT YOU'RE ALL STILL UNITED IN YOUR HATRED OF ALICE. INTERESTING! I HOPE YOU ENJOY THIS NEXT SEGMENT. THOUGHTS AND FEED-BACK GREATLY RECEIVED (AS ALWAYS).
We're sitting, waiting for Dr Black. I know he's going to hate her but there's no way we can go back to Flynn. Even his name makes my blood pressure inch dangerously up. Christian was relieved that I still wanted to have therapy. I think he thought he'd lost me again, Flynn's deceit echoing his own, making the wounds deeper, making them last longer. My husband is willing to try anything to make our marriage work.
He has ripped The Red Room right out of Escala. Some discreet workmen (who were all made to sign NDAs) were called in to remove every last piece of furniture, to haul out the bed, dismantle the suspension equipment. They then stripped the walls of their red, removing the stains left by my husband and his Subs.
He called me for a second date the day after the Flynn fiasco. He sounded scared and unsure, my little-boy-lost Fifty. He told me he was calling to ask me out again since he'd had such a lovely time the first time – we had become Ana and Christian once more – and would I please meet him in Escala. I felt my body flood with nerves about going back to the scene of so much heartache. But the voice told me it was my apartment, that I shouldn't be scared, that it was just bricks and mortar, so I agreed.
He came down to the lobby to meet me, and escorted me up in the elevator, his grey eyes glinting at me. "Fuck the paperwork," he whispered and watched me to see my reaction. I smiled at this old joke of ours and he visibly relaxed.
He took my coat when we entered out apartment and the gesture felt strange – like I was his guest,as I had once been. He offered me a glass of wine, cold and crisp, and our fingertips made the slightest hint of contact. Funny that I still felt that electricity between us, considering our recent past and the years we'd been together but then, my sensible self was often betrayed by my rather foolish heart, my weak body.
He extended his hand to me and I looked up at him, unsure of what he wanted. "Come," he said. "I have a surprise." I took his hand warily, his touch burning and comforting, simultaneously. "Ana, trust me. Please." His eyes were beseeching, those pools of grey. My hand clasped his in a tacit agreement and he led me down the corridor.
I froze, not sure what he was doing, not sure I was ready for anything yet. Whichever turning he took – left to the bedroom or right to The Red Room.
"Baby," he pleaded, tugging gently on my hand. "Come with me." My feet refused to move, I was trapped in a tar-pit of fear. It was the sound of desperation in his voice which made me go on. "Please." A one-word prayer.
I followed him down the long corridor until we were standing outside The Red Room. I noticed that the door had been replaced – you no longer needed a key to enter. He put his hand on the knob and pushed the door open. I gulped in a desperate lungful of breath.
Everywhere I looked were books, rows and rows that reached from the floor to the ceiling. The room was bright, a direct contrast to the other library in the apartment that housed the billiards table, the one that looked like it belonged in a Gentleman's Club. This one was light and airy, a breath of fresh air after the intense red the room had been. I looked up and saw that a sky-light now replaced the ceiling which had once housed suspension equipment. The floor had been sanded down, the deep mahogany scraped off and light-wood now shone through. The room was wholesome, clean, new.
Christian stood to the side, watching to gauge my reaction, expectantly. I moved to a shelf and practically squealed. "They're all first editions," he explained, a little shyly.
My finger ran across the titles, my eyes eagerly taking them in: Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Romeo and Juliet. All the best love-stories. I looked back to my Fifty. Funny that all the great romances are so tragic and flawed. Maybe that was what made them so great.
I can tell he hates Dr Black on first sight; he almost has a visceral reaction to her, his hackles rising. I know it's because she knows some of his history. I confessed that I had visited her to get a second opinion after Flynn. He knows she is strict, blunt and brutally honest. She also fails to light up around him, the way that all women do in his presence, always have, drinking in the beauty of him. She is brusque, terse. This is not going to be a fun hour but I suspect I am going to get some of the answers I need. She'll extract it from him, I'm sure. He walks into her office like a condemned man called to the gallows.