Page 1 of Someone Like You

Giselle

Dark, coal-black eyes bore into me, and I tried to ignore how they made me feel inside. I glanced back at my notes. It felt as if he could read every thought I had, but he wasn’t judging me.

Every appointment went this way, with me trying to ignore the way his eyes caressed me, the beautiful tilt of his lips when he smiled at me, and how he thoughtfully listened to me as if he genuinely wanted to hear my opinions and counsel. Not just because I was the psychologist but because he cared. I shook my head because that was crazy. And the sexual chemistry had only grown in the passing months. It had become so potent that I avoided shaking his hand whenever they arrived and departed now. He felt it just like I did.

I wished that it didn’t exist, but it did. Every appointment was becoming harder to take, even though I knew I should cancel. I focused my thoughts back on the session at hand.

“Beth, how does it make you feel when you hear Casimir say that he feels you aren’t committed to him?” I asked as I toyed with the cross that sat at my neck.

The hardened edges of Beth Perez’s face became stonier than before. Her beautiful eyes were glaciers that could cut right through you.

The daughter of Senator Rob Bradwell and Kim Huffington-Bradwell had been birthed into a life of prestige and privilege. Her father had come from a political family, and her mother was the heir to the Huffington family fortune. Kim was fromthe Huffingtons. Their family owned the second-largest energy company in the country. So, it was no secret that when she married Casimir Perez, she had married down. Someone had seen fit to assign him to the chief executive officer position of Glenco, their family’s energy company, after her grandfather retired. The company was named after Glenn Huffington, its founder, and her great-great-great-grandfather.

During the first two sessions, Beth made sure that it was all about her. It was important to her that I understood who she was. I honestly didn’t care for entitled people, and she was the most entitled of them all. But money knew no barriers, and I wasn’t discriminatory when it came to who paid the bill.

“Insulted,” Beth Perez replied, bringing my thoughts back to my original question and away from the thoughts of irritation that I harbored for my client. I always held a calm and professional demeanor, but Beth’s snide and arrogant attitude had a way of getting underneath my skin—the air of entitlement Beth held to let others know she believed they were beneath her, even her husband.

“Why does insult become the dominant feeling?” I asked with sincere intrigue, tugging the cross on my necklace back and forth on its chain.

Beth flipped long raven-colored hair over her left shoulder as her emerald green eyes turned on her husband for a moment before finding their way back to me. “I have poured everything that I could into making my husband a man of prestige and helping him to get to where he is today, a prominent pillar of the community, building his resources and wealth to a place that hecould not have imagined on his own. I have given this man all my time, connections, resources, and energy.”

I tried not to flinch when she referred to her husband as “this man.”

“What about your love, Beth? That’s all I’ve asked for, but you don’t give me that. I find myself giving and giving to you, and it’s never enough,” Casimir stated in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Love?” Beth balked and then laughed. “If I didn’t love you, I never would have done all those things, Casimir. Thatismy expression of love.”

I looked between my two clients before speaking again. The look of hurt that was in Mr. Perez’s eyes seared itself into my brain, and I wondered how it could elude his wife. After all, she was the reason they were here. It had been Bethany Perez who had first reached out and made the appointment to salvage her marriage. She had felt she was “losing Casimir,” in her own words. The first four weeks, she had prodded and needled her husband into coming.

That had been an open admission on her part to me and one that was confirmed through his nonchalant attitude week after week. By the fourth week, his wall had begun to crumble somewhat, and he had opened up, sharing the problems he had with Bethany. When the focus turned to her issues, she wanted no part of the counseling. Yet, Casimir had not allowed her to back out.

I looked at the clock mounted on the wall over my bookshelf and noted that their time was up. “I’m giving you two a homework assignment,” I stated, jotting notes on my iPad.

“Homework?” Beth recoiled. “What are we? Adolescents?”

I bit back the initial response of telling Mrs. Perez that was exactly how she behaved.

“Mrs. Perez, I think there is something that the two of you need to uncover about your relationship. Or perhaps it’s something that you need to recover in your relationship.”

“What could that be?” Mrs. Perez asked, grabbing her large navy blue Chanel bag and looping it over her shoulder.

“Your love language. It is clear to me that you love each other, but you have very different ways of expressing it. I’m not saying that’s the only problem, but it is a problem. The two of you need to get back to the heart of it all. When you learn to speak his love language, and he learns to speak yours, the healing process will begin. And you’ll both remember why you were married in the first place,” I advised.

“Dr. Champagne, may I ask you a question?” Bethany Perez stated as she stood up and glanced over her shoulder at her husband.

Casimir inhaled deeply as if it would allow him to hold onto his last strand of patience.

“Sure,” I replied patiently but braced for what was to come.

“Are you married?” Bethany Perez asked in an icy tone. It wasn’t her tone but her question that caused me to tug a little harder than normal on my chain.

“No,” I replied.

The bitterness that often rose in me with that question was at the back of my throat like acrid bile. I swallowed it, and I ignored the burning sensation in my chest.

“Have you ever been married?” Bethany asked.

Casimir stood and gently laid his palm on his wife’s lower back, guiding her toward the door. “I think it’s time that we leave.”

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