September 16…1030pm
I can tell you three things right now. First of all I just took the best hot shower ever known to woman kind, at least a solitary one. What can I say a shared shower with Ranger sets the bar pretty damn high, but he didn't join me this time, maybe someday. Right now I'm settling for warm water and his Bulgari shower gel. It still makes me all warm and gooey just from the scent, probably because I think of Ranger when I smell it.
Second, I'm curled up in our bed and I think I'm in heaven. Not only do I have the cloud like mattress covered in the softest sheets ever made, but on my bedside table he left me a cup of tea, a plate of fruit and a muffin, and little note that said, "Have to run down to the office for about an hour. I love you. Carlos." Talk about making me feel warm and gooey. I don't think I felt like this since, well, ever.
Third, I've realized how much I want to get better and have that forever with him. I love him and he deserves someone that isn't afraid to show him love and tell him the words every single day. I might not be fully there, but I have set some goals and one of them is to tell him daily that I love him.
I also decided to make some other goals. I am going to stick with the exercise program that Bobby helped me set up, weights, some cardio, and boxing-kicking lessons with Ranger. Even though I hate the running and I don't know if anything will change that, I'm going to stick with that for now. I don't want to leave the building just yet to try biking, though I may try to add the stationary bike into the routine to break up the running monotony. This morning I hardly complained at all when Ranger dragged me out of bed by the ankles to go downstairs, it'll probably get easier to wake so early, right?
I also decided to add a few other things to my routine. I was going to start yoga with Binkie tomorrow too. He goes to classes in Ewing so I have little chance of running into anyone from The Burg and Ranger told me that I'll like the instructor, he's known her a long time. Okay, so I admit that I am curious to find out more about this woman, like how does she know Ranger. I asked if he did yoga there and he gave me a look and said, "Babe." I interpreted that to mean he was too cool to go to a health club and do yoga with a group of women, but if some club could get him to do it I bet their membership would increase. I'd pay to stand behind him while he was stretching.
I am also going to go to dance lessons with Raphael Thursday night. I thought it would be fun and he assured me that I'd know no one in the class, plus his boyfriend was an instructor. I was kind of dying to meet him. Raphael was big and buff like the other Merry Men, but he had a really soft side too. I wondered what his partner would be like.
Another thing I decided to do was go back to work for RangeMan, part-time. I did monitor duty with Ranger today and that was kind of fun. The guys laughed at me when I told them that, but I figured if I was on monitors that would put them out in the field where they wanted to be, so I was going to do that a few days a week. I also agreed to help Tank out with some of the paperwork a couple days a week. It wasn't anything strenuous or demanding, but I felt like it was a big step and the right one. I wasn't ready to go back to my real job yet.
I also talked to Ella this morning while Ranger was in the shower. I asked her if she would let me help her with the cleaning in exchange for a few cooking lessons. I know the guys suggested a lot of classes and said learning something new would help me feel better about myself. When I thought about it there were two things that I really wanted to learn.
Cooking a few simple, healthy meals on my own was one. I knew there was a part of me that felt like a failure for never learning to cook, but there was also another part of me that had wanted to fail at cooking because it wouldn't feel like I was giving into Mother. When I took the possibility of pleasing or disappointing my mother out of the equation I realized I wanted to learn to cook. I think it's something I need to do, to prove to myself I can do it.
The second thing I wanted to learn was to speak Spanish, at least a little more of it than I could understand right now. It made me crazy when Ranger spoke to me so softly and lovingly and I didn't know what he said to me. I was thinking of signing up for night classes when the next semester started in January. Maybe I could even talk Lula into taking it with me.
When I showed my list of goals to Dr. Westin this morning he told me that he thought it looked like a good plan. I thought so too. Then he asked what Ranger thought about my decisions. Ranger had sat and listened to me talk through my decisions the night before. He didn't make them for me, he just added comments about why it would a good thing or what he thought the draw backs would be, but he'd allowed me to keep control. When I'd finished the list he kissed me and told me that he was proud of me, so that felt good.
Dr. Westin asked me if I had expected Ranger to make the decisions for me. I shrugged. I wasn't sure what I expected Ranger to do. We were a work in progress. We both have some control issues and I think we've been doing pretty well not fighting one another for the control in our relationship. He was used to giving orders and I was used to blowing them off. Normally if he would have told me I had to do something or not to do something there was a shot I would have went against him just to prove I could.
He asked why I felt like there had to be one controlling party in a relationship. I thought he was kidding. I always had to fight for the little bit of freedom I had from Joe. He and Dickie both tried to make my decisions for me.
Dr. Westin flipped his notebook paper and asked me if we could talk about Joe. Sure, why not. He asked how I'd let Joe back into my life after the incident with the Buick. Nicely put, huh? But he could have just said since I ran his ass over. I wasn't sure how I let Joe back into my life. I thought after the Buick incident Joe Morelli would have no effect on me at all, but I was wrong about that. So wrong. He could be so charming and he was so attractive and he knew just how to pull me in every time he tried.
Dr. Westin wanted to know how he charmed me. I wasn't sure, it was just how Joe was. After I cleared his name and captured him for my FTA money he started stopping around more often, running into me accidently, and flirting with me. I guess I fell in love with the attention he was giving me at first.
I didn't know what he was doing at the time, but I figured it out. He was trying to charm me into giving him the leads I had in his cases. I probably solved more of his cases than he'd ever admit to, but whatever, I wasn't looking for credit from anyone other than him. I just wanted him to acknowledge that I was good at my job, but he never did that.
After working together for a while he finally talked me back into his bed. It wasn't the worst place in the world to be. I guess when he wasn't taking a quickie on the floor of bakery he was a good enough lover. For a while I thought a life with Joe would redeem me for the mistakes I made with The Dick. Joe was a good cop, he was from a well-known Italian Burg family, and was considered to be a top catch and I was the one that had caught him somehow. My mother seemed to be happy that I found someone acceptable to settle down with, now all I needed was the ring. The thing was by the time Joe wanted to give me that ring I didn't want it anymore.
He asked me then what had changed my mind about wanting to marry Joe. It was that he wanted to change things about me. It started with my job. Joe didn't like my job, at all. He thought it was too dangerous. It embarrassed him when things went wrong with me. He always felt like he was trying to clean up after me, fix my messes, and keep me out of trouble. He tried to make me feel like I'd fail if he stopped helping me. He demanded that I quit quite a few times and when I refused he broke up with me.
Dr. Westin nodded to me and said, "But he always came back?" I nodded yes. I always felt like he was giving me another chance and would eventually accept me for what I was, but then we'd get into the same fight all over again.
He asked me what the usual fight was like. The fights were because he didn't understand why I wanted to do this job and I didn't understand why he hated it so much. I thought I was doing my job well, I was doing my best for sure, but he thought I was a fuck up, a disaster he called me, repeatedly. After that first break up and reconciliation he started to constantly berate me for getting into trouble, blowing up my cars, or getting dirty and smelly. If I brought someone in naked he'd be embarrassed. If I was full of garbage he'd be embarrassed. If someone firebombed my car he didn't make sure I was alright first, no he just started to yell because he was embarrassed. He was sick of having a girlfriend like me.
Dr. Westin asked how many times we'd broken up. I wasn't even sure. It was almost constant. Eventually he'd forgive me though. I wasn't sure why, but I always found myself going back, because he would call or stop over and he'd want me. Of course, most of that was physical. He really wanted a new and improved version of me. He wanted a stay home wife and mother, or at least one that had a 'safe' job.
I wanted to be what he needed. I wanted to be good enough. I wanted him to love me. I tried to do what he said. I even tried the safe job thing for him, it just turns out I'm a danger no matter where I work. I think after a while Joe settled for what I could give him. We stayed in the relationship, without the commitment.
Dr. Westin asked me to explain that. We were together in the sense that there was no one else in our beds and that's about it. I always figured at some point we'd decide that we would get married or something, but we were never close to that point. At least at the same time. I think we both had thoughts of the future, we just weren't on the same page with what that future should be either.
Dr. Westin asked me if Joe liked my friends and family. I nodded, he got along well with my family. He really seemed to be part of it. My mother loved him, that's for sure. I guess my dad didn't really have an opinion, at least he never shared it. Grandma Mazur, well, she thought Joe was hot, but she really had a thing for Ranger. Dr. Westin chuckled at that and asked about my friends. I shrugged. Joe liked Mary Lou for the most part, she was a good Burg housewife. He didn't like Lula, she was a former hooker and my partner. We got into too much trouble together. I don't think he liked Connie much either, he said she gossiped too much. He didn't like Sally, probably because he was a man. He couldn't stand when I was with other men. Like Ranger and his men.
He hated Ranger, even before we were involved he'd call him names like psycho and thug. He tried to convince me everything he did was on the wrong side of the law, like his cars were stolen, he killed people, he was friendly with crime families, ect. He tried to convince me that I'd get in trouble for Ranger's crimes if I hung around him. It didn't work though. I could see what Ranger was under the surface. He was a good and honorable man.
I guess a part of me always wondered if Joe wanted me to leave my job and stay home for my safety or if it was so he could keep me away from Ranger and my other friends. Without that job there was no reason for me to see them.
Dr. Westin asked if I ever started to believe Joe. Would I be better without the job, the danger, the friends he didn't like? Maybe, yes, a few times I had. I quit my job and almost asked Joe to marry me a few months ago. I was just tired of it all, of my life being picked apart by my mother, the constant pull toward Ranger, the grief Joe gave me about every decision I made, and feeling like I was alone even when I was with other people. I wanted it to all go away.
I sat there picking at the buttons on my sweater when Dr. Westin finally spoke again. He told me making rash decisions like quitting my job or jumping into a serious relationship wasn't an uncommon response to a traumatic event. I guess I was lucky I changed my mind when I did then. I stopped myself before I was able to tell Joe I wanted a future with him. That would have been a huge mistake.
He gave me a booklet to read called Fifteen Signs of a Controlling Relationship. I shoved it in my bag for later. Then he told me that I needed to be honest with myself. I needed to look at the relationships I had with Joe and Ranger and think about how each relationship hurt me or helped me. How did I feel when I was with them? How did they treat me? How did I want to feel? How did I want to be treated? Were they unhealthy relationships? Were they worth saving or should I let them go? He told me to write things down if it would help. I need to be honest about what is real right now and what I want to happen in the future. That way I could set the right goals and have something to work toward.
I left the appointment knowing one thing. I wanted to stay away from Joe until this weird hold he had on me was broken. As I sat with Ranger today I figured something else out. That he would always support me, even when I was wrong. He always had. There may have been a fine line between a controlling relationship and what Ranger did for me, but I felt like he was on the right side of that line. He didn't do it to benefit himself, his decisions were actually based on helping me, unlike most of Joe's.
I decided to come clean with Ranger and tell him everything that happened between Joe and me when we were kids. I needed him to understand that he had a way of sucking me and I didn't want to go back. I asked Ranger to help keep Joe away from me until I was strong enough to speak to him. That had to be the first step to figuring out who I really was and what I wanted. Right?
Ranger promised to help me with anything I wanted. I believed him and trusted him. I was hoping he'd have the same trust in me. He was still sticking to my side. He wasn't more than a room away all day. I'm not complaining, I love spending time with him, especially when we're alone. The way he holds me and talks to me makes me feel so good, so loved, but he needs space. I know him well enough to know that. I text Les and told him he needed to get Ranger out of the apartment for an hour. He needed to see that I'd be okay home alone. I was glad he agreed to go, hopefully it'd be easier for him tomorrow.
As for me, I'm excited to show him the sexy, little black nightie that found its way into my lingerie drawer with all the new bra and panty sets that mysteriously appeared along with the new workout clothes. I knew he was sneaking me more gifts, but I didn't complain. Sexy lingerie seemed like a good investment into what we would have someday, hopefully soon.
Author's notes...I hadn't planned an anti-Joe story here when I started and I don't think it'll turn out that way in the end, but clearly they don't work together and she needs to fight him to make him understand that, so there will be more to come on his behaviors that Cupcake fans will probably not like, so that was my warning. I know this one didn't have a lot of action, but her next chapter will have a lot more interpersonal interaction so that should be a lot more fun. I hope to have a Ranger chapter up in the next couple days. Thanks.