Page 58 of The Dark Before Light

He glances at my eyetooth; I close my mouth. Smiling to himself, he returns to his carving. Though the blob is more refined now, with striations and a tapered side opposite the narrow protrusion, I still can’t figure out what it is.

“Hate to disappoint you, Stirling, but I do have hobbies. I swim. Cook. Read. Those are for pleasure.”

“That’s good,” I say encouragingly. “How else do you manage stress?”

“I get the sense you’d love it if I said meditation or Tai Chi.”

I laugh. “Yeah, that’d be great. But self-care doesn’t have to be active. Bubble baths and massages work, too.”

He throws me a wicked smile. “Know any masseuses? I’m very picky these days. Has to be a woman with lion eyes, one crooked tooth, and a personality like a minefield.”

I suck in a startled breath. My balance, so recently recovered, suffers a fatal blow.

Kieran watches me for a long moment, his smile slowly fading as his gaze caresses my hot cheeks. Then he nods to himself and returns to his project.

I spend the next few minutes trying to crawl my way back to control, but it’s no use. My thoughts are clogged, my senses in charge. I’m hyperaware of every breath he takes, every movement of his hands. The way he bounces his knee when he’s planning his next approach to the carving. How he stills with focus before each careful shave of wood.

Conceding that we’ve accomplished all we can today, at least from a talk therapy standpoint, I slip off my stool and wander to the mosaic table. I could—and probably should—step outside while he finishes, but I can’t. My base self is still in control, compelling me to stay close to him. Share space with him as long as I can.

I can already hear Leo’s response when I call tomorrow. “Recenter and reassess.”

Desperate for equilibrium, I select a handful of small, irregularly shaped tiles and begin fitting them together like puzzle pieces. The similarity to my mental landscape doesn’t escape me, nor does the fact that my efforts in both dimensions are futile. Mosaics aren’t puzzles. Their components don’t often connect, and even if they do, seamlessness isn’t the goal. The point is to organize their chaos to create something new.

I wish organizing my thoughts were as easy as shifting tiles, but too many of my thoughts have impossible shapes. Still, I keep trying. Somewhere inside the chaos is reason. I only have to find it.

A dim tile shot through with orange veins reminds me of how his dress shirt looked as we sat knee-to-knee last week, fake candle flames flickering.

“How many more times do I have to get a hard-on looking at you for you to admit I want you? Under me, above me, sideways, upside-down…”

More memories come forward. All the overtures, subtle and not, he’s offered with increasing urgency since the night at the Philharmonic. The undeniable chemistry we have. How his touch lights me up with an intensity I’ve never felt before. How fascinating he is to me—not as a client, but as a man.

Part of me wants to stay with these thoughts, rub their edges and soak in the twinkling light they reflect. Lose myself in fantasy the same way I did when I was young. God knows I have—most nights, in fact, alone in bed with my vibrator.

But at the end of the day, I haven’t slipped that far. I’m not fourteen anymore. I don’t believe in fantasies. So even though it hurts to put them aside, I make myself recenter and reassess.

I go back further, to our session a few days before the Phil. Kieran started off combative, but something unlocked and he shared candidly about his work for most of the hour. It was the first time he opened up to me. Then just as abruptly, he shut down. The trigger was asking him what had happened five weeks prior—the threatening phone call.

Following the trigger, I find its two-pronged origin: the death of his wife and his mother’s diagnosis. The losses of the two women he’s loved most in his lifetime.

In my mind, Leo says, “There it is. You’re back on solid ground.”

What Kieran’s feeling for me is transference. He’s unconsciously projecting the powerful emotions he has for his late wife and mother onto me. After four years without experiencing emotional intimacy with a woman, it makes perfect sense for him to confuse our professional relationship with a personal one. My personality and looks, so different from his wife’s, were unintended catalysts.

I shift a few more tiles around on the table, wishing—as I do every time I go through this exercise, which at this point is almost daily—that the conclusion brought me relief.

It never does.

“What are you thinking so hard about over here?” asks Kieran from behind me.

I turn quickly on my stool. “Just playing with tiles. Are you finished?”

He nods and holds out his hand. “Here. It’s for you.”

When I see what lies nestled in his palm, a wave of cold cascades down my body. The world tilts. My vision momentarily dims. There’s no tightrope at all anymore—only a free fall.

He made a hummingbird.

Memory tiles slip and slide from the past into the present, destroying the work I just completed. They clatter together in happy chaos—the same that permeated a long-ago conversation on a rainy night in Galway.

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