Chapter 2

"Sandy?"

Sandy's head snaps up. He hadn't heard the door open. He closes the file folder on his lap.

"Is everything..." he trails off, perplexed as to why Dr. Max is approaching him, Seth nowhere in sight.

Seth had only been in the office for a short time, maybe ten minutes.

"Everything's okay," Dr. Max assures him. "And sorry to interrupt."

Sandy waves off the apology; it's not like he'd really been getting anything done.

Doing work was really just his cover story for hanging out in the waiting room during Seth's appointment, rather than running errands or meandering around Newport.

Seth seemed to find it embarrassing to have him stay-yet another blow to his dignity-but Sandy didn't feel comfortable going far. It wasn't like he thought anything was going to happen; it was maybe just one of those irrational parent things, feeling like he needed to be Dr. Max's backup, or like Seth needed that warm hand-off after a tough session, from therapy to Sandy to the car to home.

"We were wondering if you could join us," Dr. Max says. "Seth says he talked to you about coming in for a session, told you a little bit about what we're looking for?" He smiles. "Normally I'd make him come out and ask, but I wanted to make sure today feels like okay timing for you."

"Oh, uh, of course. Yes." Sandy straightens up, hastily tucking the file folder into his briefcase.

Had Seth talked to him about coming in for a session?

Sandy searches his recent memory and comes up with it, a throwaway moment as they walked into the house after a therapy session.

"Dr. Max says he wants you to come in with me sometime, to talk about stuff." Seth tossed this over his shoulder as he approached the stairs.

"What stuff? And when?"

"I dunno." Seth paused on the first step. He didn't look back. "He didn't really say."

"You know I'm happy to-"

"Can we talk about this later? I've gotta go call Summer."

Sandy should've followed up.

It either got lost in the shuffle somehow or Seth made sure that it did. He was good at that, from timing the initial announcement to pivoting attention to anyone or anything else when he got the sense that something unpleasant might be resurfacing.

It would be impressive if it weren't so maddening.

Sandy follows Dr. Max into the office, struck by a succession of memories of a younger Seth:

"I need two dozen cupcakes for the bake sale tomorrow."

"I need to make a scale model of Venus using only hard candy. I swear they only told me about it today."

"Mr. Harrison never gave me a letter saying he wanted to have a parent-teacher conference. Who are you going to believe here? That man's a notorious liar, and possibly a gambling addict. The signs are there for anyone willing to look, Dad."

He walks into the office feeling like he's taking the stage without knowing a single one of his lines, but his apprehension and frustration ease a little when he spots Seth.

There's a black leather couch against the back wall of the office, and Seth has nestled himself firmly against the far arm of the couch, putting as much distance between himself and Sandy as is possible. There's a subtle nervous bouncing in one leg. Sandy can tell that Seth's straining to stop it, to be still and cool and calm and collected, but he can't quite get there.

There are always reminders-in case Sandy ever forgets-that this is all pretty much torture for Seth.

"So I know Seth explained a little about what we thought might be helpful-"

Seth's eyes flick over to Sandy for just a moment, and Sandy thinks he can detect just the hint of widening in his eyes, a slight puppy-dog apologetic gesture, quietly throwing himself at the mercy of his dad.

"-but I'll just give a brief rundown so we're all on the same page."

Sandy nods, inwardly relieved to be given some sense of his role in this.

ooooooooooooooooooo

The briefing made enough sense to Sandy, the idea being to detail a recent Bad Night.

The three of them discussed-or Dr. Max and Sandy discussed while Seth sat silently and pretended not to notice Dr. Max's cues to chime in-possible benefits of Seth being able to fill in the gaps in his memory, to understand what happened when he lost himself in the middle of the night. It wasn't a fix-because frustratingly little ever was-but maybe it would yield some helpful insight as Seth worked to get a handle on the blanking out problem.

So it made sense to Sandy, but the reality of sitting there, with Dr. Max looking at him expectantly and Seth desperately attempting to meld himself with the opposite end of the couch, tension and discomfort and misery coming off of him in waves, made it all feel like an impossible ask.

What's that thing he'd heard Seth say once?

Holy awkward.

Sandy's mouth is dry.

Where to start, when further torturing your already traumatized kid?

"Before you start Sandy, Seth had a question he wanted to get out of the way first." Dr. Max gives Seth a prompting look.

"Can't you-" Seth cuts himself off when he sees Dr. Max's shaking of his head. "Right. You won't." He sighs. "Some help you are," he grumbles.

Sandy's instinct is to scold Seth, but Dr. Max snickers.

"I know; I am quite mean," Dr. Max concedes. "So your question..."

Seth bites his lip and looks down at the floor, his face scrunching and twisting into a pained grimace. His head bobs up a little like he's trying to look at Sandy, but then quickly drops back down.

All the while, his knee keeps bouncing up and down.

It's painful to watch, how agonizing this is for Seth.

Part of Sandy wants to look away and most of him wants to rescue Seth from this moment, but he's also not in charge in this space. He's the parent, but he's not in charge.

Or at least, the question of who's in charge is more complicated than it is at home or on the car ride over or anywhere else in the world.

"Do I...I mean, do I ever..." Seth's voice wavers and he trails off and closes his eyes, his hands closing into fists on his lap. "Never mind. You know what? I don't wanna know. Whoever said that ignorance was bliss was onto something."

"Seth?" Dr. Max leans forward in his chair and works to catch Seth's eye.

Sandy watches Seth's eyes reluctantly rise to meet Dr. Max's.

"Seth, there's something you want to know. I know it's also scary to know-"

"But if I know, then I'll know what I'm dealing with," Seth intones drily. But he nods, something seemingly resonating through the sarcasm and the canned therapist lines. He clears his throat.

Sandy realizes he's holding his breath.

"I-I read this thing once..." Seth clenches his fists more tightly. "At night or when I'm..." his voice cracks and he clears his throat again. "Do I ever like, talk like a little kid? Like my voice..."

Sandy blinks. He isn't sure what he'd expected.

"I uh," Sandy fumbles for words. "Not really." He pauses. "Or only in a way where I think your mother or I would notice," he says.

"So yes then?" Seth lets out a frustrated breath. "Great."

"No," Sandy says quickly. "I mean, I..." He looks to Dr. Max, who gives him a little encouraging nod. "Sometimes your voice sounds a little different," he admits. "But not very different. Anyone else would probably think you were just upset."

Sandy's not sure what he's saying is true or not true, if he's telling enough of the truth or the kind of truth that will help Seth or hurt Seth, or if he's softening things to the point of having no credibility and nothing of value to offer, not if the goal is for Seth to know what he's dealing with.

It might be that Dr. Max catches on to Sandy's thought process and realizes that he's about to overcorrect, is working on something both horrendously murky and horrendously vivid, something like Sometimes you talk like things are happening to you [like someone is hurting you], but you sound enough like yourself [yes, sometimes you sound younger, but not so dramatically that it seems worth you getting self-conscious over], if that could possibly be of any consolation right now.

Or maybe he realizes that this has the potential to turn into a classic Seth Cohen interrogation, and Sandy will buckle under the scrutiny, under the picking apart of word choices and shifts in tone and text and the subtext that won't go over Seth's head.

Either way, and mercifully, Dr. Max cuts in before Sandy can dig himself any further into a hole.

"Okay, so how about we let your dad tell us about the last bad night, and see what we learn from that? Does that sound okay?"

"Okay is a bit of a stretch, but sure, whatever." Seth gives a little shrug. "Run wild."

oooooooooooooooooo

Sandy starts out slowly, haltingly, but he starts to describe what he can remember of a few nights earlier.

It wasn't that bad-definitely wouldn't crack their Top 10 worst nights-which might be what makes it easier for him to start to warm up to the process. But he's barely gotten anywhere, is just describing how he'd heard Seth calling out for him when Seth jumps in.

"Stop. I was...are you..." Seth sputters out an agitated noise. "Did Ryan hear?"

Sandy thinks of Ryan's face peering out of the doorway of the guest room as he strode briskly past, Sandy making his way to Seth's room, and Ryan making sure that Seth was being taken care of.

Or Ryan standing in the doorway of his bedroom a few weeks earlier, bruises fading from purple and blue to brown on his face, eyes looking anywhere but Sandy. I think there's something wrong with Seth. He's not making any sense.

Sandy is trying to figure out how much of a lie and how much of the truth it would be to say I don't really know what Ryan heard.

"You know what, never mind." Seth throws up his hands in surrender. "I don't wanna know. I don't really wanna know any of this. On the scale of bad ideas-"

He's starting to gain verbal steam.

"Can we try to slow down the moment right now?" Dr. Max interjects, voice firm.

Seth pauses mid-sentence and his body seems to deflate and collapse into the couch, the head of steam he'd been working on dissipating.

"This whole conversation is humiliating," he sulks, playing with the zipper on his jacket.

"I know." Dr. Max's gestures to Sandy. "And I know it's made much more painful by feeling like you have an audience. But Seth, you're doing a great job here, so can we stick with it for another minute?"

"Fine." The corner of Seth's mouth quivers a little.

Sandy has to resist the urge to reach out to him.

"Okay, so you're embarrassed that you were calling out for your dad in the middle of the night?" Dr. Max looks to Seth for confirmation. "Feel like you're too old for that kind of thing?"

Seth nods, a flush of red creeping across his face.

"So what part of you was asking for your dad that night?"

Sandy risks a glance at Seth from the corner of his eye.

"The little kid part." Seth's eyes dart over and catch Sandy looking at him. His shoulders hunch and he angles himself further away.

"Okay, and so why was he calling for your dad? To embarrass you? To make you feel bad or uncomfortable?"

"No," Seth chokes out, after what feels like an endless silence. "Obviously," he adds, managing to recover some of his adolescent posturing.

"So why?"

"I dunno."

"I don't really believe that." Dr. Max's voice remains firm but somehow still level, friendly. "What was he feeling in that moment, the little kid part?"

"Bad." Seth stops just short of rolling his eyes.

"Now I know you have a more extensive vocabulary than that," Dr. Max says with a little smile. "I've heard it in action."

Seth somehow finds a way to angle his body even further away from Sandy. "Overwhelmed," he admits, voice barely over a whisper. "Out-of-control." He pauses, blinking a few times in rapid succession. "Scared."

"Okay, and so feeling all of that and feeling it—I'd imagine—quite intensely, what did he need?"

"To feel safe again," Seth mumbles, face growing redder as he squeezes his eyes closed and tilts his head back into the couch cushion. "God, why do you make me say everything?"

"So you can hear it from yourself," Dr. Max says. "So he was feeling scared and overwhelmed and out-of-control, and he needed a safe person, someone to help him through the feelings and the moment."

"I know what you're going to say about all that," Seth says drily.

"And what's that?" Dr. Max asks, a barely perceptible grin tracing its way across his features.

Seth opens his eyes and folds his hands behind his head, staring semi-mockingly at his therapist.

"That I need to accept and trust what he needs, and try not to judge him for it," he recites in monotone.

"So you do listen to me." Dr. Max's grin expands.

"Yeah well, once or twice…" Seth's mouth twitches into a reluctant smirk. "By accident, of course."

"Hey, I'll take it." Dr. Max looks serious again. "And look, you get yourself through a lot of hard nights on your own, right?" Seeing Seth's reluctant nod, he continues. "But some nights you're not going to be able to be that safe person for yourself. Some nights you're not even going to be there at all. Part of the work is accepting that too." He gives Seth a gentle smile. "You get me?"

"Yeah." Seth's arms slowly uncross and he rests his hands on his knees. He frowns. "Still sucks though."

"No arguments here."

Sandy realizes he's been holding his breath again, listening to their exchange. He's surprised to find something distinctly familiar and almost parental in their interactions, in Seth's quiet exasperation, his crossed arms and his rolled eyes and his grudging respect.

And he can't help but be filled with some awe at the way that Dr. Max had quietly and neatly guided Seth through the moment.

So this was how someone could hold Seth in place long enough to get at something real.

"Okay, can you check in with yourself right now?" Dr. Max asks. "How are you feeling?"

Sandy watches Seth hesitate, and can almost hear the quick and perfunctory and annoyed fine that he's about to emit, but he sees Seth hesitate. He's not sure perfunctory really flies with Dr. Max.

"Okay," Seth says softly. "A little nauseous," he admits.

"Do we need to stop, or do you want to keep going?" Dr. Max's expression seems to strike just the right balance of concern and matter-of-factness, no condescension or pity. "It's okay to stop anytime you need to. Just what we've done so far-talking and just being in the room right now with your dad-is huge."

Seth's head bobs up-and-down lightly as he considers this.

"We can keep going." He takes a long slow inhale of breath and lets it out in a long whoosh of air. "Get it over with anyway, right?"

"All right." Dr. Max gestures to Sandy. "Sandy?"

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Sandy flicks the windshield wipers on and glances at Seth as he starts to back out of their parking space.

Seth had always felt a little edgy during storms, and Sandy wonders how much of that is contributing to his son's body language, his hunched shoulders and his crossed arms and his chin tucked into his chest, and how much could be attributed to the agony and the awkwardness of the therapy session or the looming threat of visiting Kirsten at rehab the next day.

It's hard to pinpoint the primary source of tension and distress these days. Right now, Sandy can only focus on the immediate ones-the rain, the driving in the rain, the transition from therapy to the car to home and with it the transition in Seth's identity, the transition from Traumatized Seth and Therapy Seth to Unfazed and Unbothered Seth, to Never Without a Joke or a Smart Comment Seth, a kind of hardening of his outer armor until he was basically unrecognizable as the same little boy curling up into himself in the passenger seat of the car right now, curls damp and heavy, seemingly oblivious to the little rivulets of rainwater tracing their way down his face.

Maybe that's Sandy's other role, the other thing that has him posted up in the meeting room for fifty minutes twice every week. It wasn't just the warm hand-off, but the ferrying of Seth from one identity to the other.

Unfazed and Unbothered Seth had his own issues, but it was also scary to imagine Traumatized Seth and Therapy Seth moving without anchor in the world.

The rest of the session had gone more or less smoothly. Seth hadn't said much, but he'd listened quietly and contributed a soft-spoken question or two. He'd seemed mortified, but subdued, and when Dr. Max asked him if he'd gotten what he was looking for, he'd shrugged.

"Take some time to think about it and we'll see if we can get a few sentences on the subject next time, huh?"

"I make no promises."

Sandy wasn't sure how Dr. Max did it, had the reserves of energy to dismantle Seth's armor, to draw Seth out of his Unfazed and Unbothered self for the limited window he could draw him out of that place, the whole time knowing that he'd have to do it all over again the next session or the next week.

To be fair, it also felt enormous and incomprehensible, what it had to take for Seth to willingly subject himself to scrutiny and what could only feel like attack, all aimed at-in Seth's mind-the glue holding him together and more or less upright.

Sandy couldn't help but think of what Seth had said to him once, when he'd been trying to coax him back into therapy.

"It doesn't have to be a big thing, going to therapy."

"Yeah well, you're not the one who'd actually have to go."

Sandy had known that therapy was hard, but he's not sure he appreciated the sheer weight of it before, what was being asked of Seth. He wishes there was a way to acknowledge it without it sounding stupid, another trite paternal pep talk about how hard Seth was working, or how worth it it was going to be to claw and fight for every ounce of mental wellness he could scrape together.

It would sound like bullshit. It would probably feel like bullshit.

Like so much, he's not sure how to touch it, or if it's a good idea to touch it at all.

And then there are always the other sources of tension and distress he could focus on.

"So, visiting your mom tomorrow..." Sandy squints through the foggy windshield, then draws back quickly, hoping Seth didn't notice him straining to see the road in front of them.

He can't make much better, but he's trying not to make anything worse.

"What about it?"

"How are you feeling about seeing her?"

"Fine," Seth says lightly. "Good."

"You know we have a family session in the morning."

"I know."

"Did you and Dr. Max get to talk about it?"

"A little."

"Do you have any questions about how things are going to go? I know it's-"

"I'm good. No questions."

"Are you sure? It might feel a little-."

"It'll be good to see Mom." Seth's voice is hoarse and solemn, still raw from therapy.

It's the most Seth has said about Kirsten in the weeks since she's been gone. Sandy isn't sure that he's even heard him speak her name in all that time.

Sometimes it felt like Seth pretended she didn't exist, and sometimes it felt like he was pretending that she was just in the next room, and any reminder that she was somewhere else set off some agitation that he kept closely guarded to himself. When he talked to her on the phone, he took it to another room and spoke in short quiet sentences and Sandy could never really get a sense of how it went.

Sandy had broached the subject on a phone call with Dr. Max, wanting to respect Seth's privacy and his right to decide what he talked about in therapy, but also concerned that he wasn't really coping with Kirsten's absence.

And Dr. Max had said, in that careful way of his, so mindful of never revealing anything Seth had said in the inner sanctum of the therapy office without express permission, Seth seems very protective of Kirsten.

It didn't answer whether Seth talked about his mother in counseling or whether he was dealing with Kirsten's absence in any real way, but it illuminated something all the same, and Sandy had been chewing on that thought since he'd hung up with Dr. Max that day.

"I'm looking forward to it too," Sandy says finally, because he doesn't really know what to say beyond that.

They drive the rest of the way home in silence.