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“Frightened?” I ask.
Jonah nods again, even though suddenly I feel certain that’s not at all what he’d planned to say. But he continues, “I think we both made some assumptions about each other that aren’t true. But you’re right. Doing what we’ve done, sharing what we’ve shared—we’ve revealed more than we planned. So we feel more bound to each other than we ever meant to. ”
Bound to him. Yes. That’s it. Even though I still wonder what kind of man Jonah is—even though the roots of his fantasy continue to puzzle and unnerve me—I am already bound to Jonah Marks.
For better or for worse, he’s bound to me too.
“How do we keep going?” I whisper.
There’s his fierce smile again. “You still want to play. ”
“Yes. ” A thousand illicit dreams remain unfulfilled inside me. Jonah can make them come true. I want that as much as I’ve ever wanted anything.
“Then we have to go back to square one. ”
“What does that mean?”
Jonah’s smile changes. Gentles. “I guess we go out on our first date. ”
“First date?” Now? After we’ve already fucked like animals? As absurd as it is, the idea charms me, and I realize I’m grinning back at him. “Do you mean tonight?”
“No. ” He seems almost offended by the idea. “We’ll make a whole evening of it. Talk and walk around town and—”
“Act like normal people. ”
He nods. “If we can. ”
I start to laugh. Jonah doesn’t, but he’s smiling down at me, and I know—we’re actually going to try this.
• • •
It’s all delightful fun until you have to explain your life choices to your shrink.
“To say I have mixed feelings about this,” Doreen said, “would be putting it lightly. ”
“You’re not supposed to give opinions about my life. That’s not what therapists do, right? They listen. ”
Doreen shoots me a look. “Have we ever had a traditional patient-therapist relationship?”
“No,” I admit.
“And I doubt we’re going to start now. Besides, I gave you my opinion when you asked whether I could ‘believe this. ’ If you weren’t uncertain about your decision, you wouldn’t have asked. ”
She just poked through the bubble of giddiness I’ve floated in since Jonah and I spoke two nights earlier. All the concerns I had—that I still have—become clear once more.
She says, “I have to admit, I feared your meetings with Jonah would prove destructive, and they haven’t. The shame you’ve carried about your rape fantasy has diminished to some degree. Both he and you took precautions to ensure your safety. Best-case scenario, I’d say. But you need to be aware what you’re doing now—merging your fantasy life and your emotional life; that’s about a thousand times more complicated. ”
“What’s going to be so different?” I snap.
“You tell me. ”
I hate it when Doreen makes me answer my own questions, mostly because I usually do know the answers. They’re just answers I don’t like. For a moment I fidget on the couch—pushing up the arms of my white cardigan, curling my feet beneath me. But I can’t postpone replying for long. “. . . I still wonder what kind of a man has such powerful fantasies about rape. When we play our games, he knows exactly what would scare me. He knows how to be cruel. He’s thought about that a lot. ”
“That’s a valid consideration. ”
“How can I judge him for that when I have rape fantasies too?”
“You know why you’re so fixated on them. You don’t know why he is. ”
I want to tell Doreen my theories about his family—about his anger with his mother, the way her threats might have taught him about violence. However, I remain quiet. Doreen would simply say that it’s only a theory, with absolutely no proof to support it. She would be correct.
More gently, Doreen says, “Have you ever considered telling Jonah the truth about your rape?”
“No. ” The word comes out more sharply than I intended.
“You’ve still never told anyone besides your mother and me, have you?”
I shake my head. “Nobody else. ”
One time, years later, I tried to tell Chloe the truth about that night. But she shut me down before I’d even revealed the whole story, telling me I’d always been jealous of her, asking whether I’d come on to any of her other boyfriends. It wasn’t exactly a moment for the Sisterly Bonding Hall of Fame. So Chloe still doesn’t know. “Refusing to believe” is the same as “not knowing,” right? For my sister, it might as well be.