Chapter 24
Rated "M"
XXIV
"Three weeks is a long time to miss these sessions, Alexander. Is everything alright?" Dr. Jordan asked politely as she looked up from her clipboard and stared at me over the rim of her burgundy glasses. I took a breath."Um... I don't know..." I muttered, not sure how to answer the question. It was simple, a yes or no answer, and yet I couldn't figure out my own answer. Was I supposed to answer based on physical beings, or was it all emotional?
"Okay. Let's start off simple, shall we? Have you had any recent recollections of the past? Anything that makes you fell depressed or hurt?" She asked, refraining from tapping her pen against the clipboard like she had done the first session.
"No." I said, thinking long and hard to make sure my answer was truly correct. The last time I had experienced devastating memories was through the first month of my leave of absence, and I couldn't recall a time after my first day back at work that the terror of what I had done had relapsed.
"Are you overwhelmed by work or overstretched by the schedule of your job?"
"No." I answered again. I knew for a fact that I wasn't overwhelmed by the work I had to do, if anything I was overwhelmed by the peace it brought me to be back working and making money again, even if I was only given a desk and a computer for the time being, until I was dubbed emotionally stable by Dr. Jordan and could finally carry a gun again.
"Tell me."
"What?" I said, looking up and realizing that I had zoned out for a moment while thinking of my job. I watched at Dr. Jordan uncrossed her legs and leaned toward me, her eyes not once gazing down at her clipboard as they stared at me over her glasses.
"After three weeks of missing these sessions, what made you come back? What do you feel like you need to talk to me about? You can say anything. Nothing leaves this room."
"I have a partner now..." I found myself saying on a whim.
"Do you have a problem with them?" I shrugged at Dr. Jordan's question.
"Well, she can be quite cold and uptight..."
"And that bothers you..." I laughed lightly at her statement.
"Yeah. More than I realized, actually..." I said, looking out the window, but not being close enough to see the bustling streets of Manhattan.
"Why do you think it bothers you?" She asked and I turned to look at her again.
"How am I supposed to know? I feel more confused around her than I ever have in my entire life." She gazed down at her clipboard and I was slightly surprised that she wasn't scribbling all over the paper with her blue pen. She looked up and opened her mouth, closing it soon afterwards and sighing before opening it again.
"How do you feel around her?" She suddenly asked. "How do you react around her, how do you communicate with her?"
"Um... communicate? With... words..." I said and Dr. Jordan frowned. "How I feel around her? How I react around her? I... don't know..."
"Do you get nervous around her?" Was Dr. Jordan's next question. I was the one who frowned this time as I rose an eyebrow at the highly-trained and highly-paid therapist.
"Well, who wouldn't? She's the FBI for God's sake."
"That wasn't what I meant." She stated simply.
"Wait. You mean...?" I muttered, slowing coming to a stop with my words. I felt my heart race for a moment as I shook my head. "No. No. NO. I am not in love with Roxanne. Why does everyone think I am?"
"It is logical, Alexander. You're twenty-eight, you feel pressured by your parents to not only get married, but have children on the side. You're still recovering mentally from previous experiences, and you not only need someone to talk to, but you also need someone mentally capable to listen and understand what you've gone through. Subconsciously, you believe that this young woman is that someone."
"Wait. How do you know that's she's young?" I asked, slightly off topic.
"Personalities tell a lot about a person's preferences in relationships and significant others."
"Great..." I muttered, looking down at my hands for a moment before looking back up at Dr. Jordan. She looked at her clipboard and then to her watch, glancing up at me as she took off her glasses.
"Our time is up. I hope to see you next Monday at eleven." She said before standing up and placing her clipboard on her desk. I stood up and spoke before leaving the room.
"Yeah. Me too."
"Bastards..." I heard Roxanne mutter as she took off her helmet and sighed. I could see the anger blazing in her eyes, which were still as cold as Siberia. I could only stare at the woman as she battled her furious self.
"The reporters or the guys inside?" I asked simply, curious to see if she had even noticed the reporters behind her snapping pictures of the scene. Ten cop cars, all blocking the roadway, five FBI vehicles and at least a hundred field agents, including Roxanne. I had heard from Zak over the phone that it had only started off as an anonymous tip that the NYPD decided to check out, but somehow it evolved into half my precinct and half of the nearest. And not to mention almost half of the FBI agents stationed in New York City.
"What the hell do you think, Sempers?" She asked coldly, not turning her head to look at me as her eyes scanned toward the ambulance where a young woman was wrapped in a blanket, to both cover herself and to help with her mental shock.
"The guys inside?" I guessed wearily. Roxanne's facial features didn't change as she fixed a pocket on her black cargo pants and turned her radio up a few notches.
"The lot of them, really. Though if we're talking specifics, those men you're talking about escaped out the emergency exit, which makes both my job and everyone's else's here even more difficult." She said.
"How many women?" I felt the need to ask. Roxanne looked down at her hands before looking back up at the building as another FBI team entered.
"Twenty on the first floor, thirty-two on the second, fifteen on the third, seven on the fourth, and twenty-six on the floor I went up. And not to mention the fifty men we found locked up in the basement."
"What?" I said, not understanding. I couldn't remember who it was, but I remembered clearly being told that it was prostitutes or something of the sort that we being kept in the abandoned building. Female prostitutes, not, well...
"Don't act so surprised, Sempers. You and I both know this world is more fucked up than it sometimes seems. And it isn't a prostitute ring, like everyone seems to think. Like you were told. No. This... this isn't quite what people find to be prostitution, but it is still a form of the word. Prostitution is a wide category. So in modern, more accurate terms... it's a sex slave business."
I knew it wasn't a good idea to go to a bar on a Monday night, but there were so many things going on that I just needed a drink. And it wasn't just because of the incident earlier at the abandoned building.
"How was Jackson? I never got the chance to ask you how it was to spend almost a whole week with Roxanne." Zak stated after ordering a glass of wine. Constance had definitely changed him, and it was probably for the better too, in my opinion, though I never thought I'd be able to get over the change in Zak's alcohol preferences, and I wouldn't, especially if he started ordering martinis.
"Normal." I said, not wishing to spill too much detail about my new knowledge of Roxanne's diverse family. I couldn't help but kick myself mentally for sounding so vague and facile.
"So Constance was wrong? You aren't falling head first into the lust of one specific federal agent?" His words were not only exaggerated, but also sarcastic, which made me cringe even more than the "Constance" part. I felt my throat go dry, despite the hard liquor gliding down the passageway.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I asked, glancing at Zak, who only leaned on the counter, his elbows pressing into the hard surface of the bar. A smirk appeared on his face as he took a glance at me and then went back to taking slight, simple, almost unnoticeable glances at the young women at the other end of the bar. Usually I'd have the urge to look at their ID's, mostly because it was my job, though Zak and everyone in the precinct thought otherwise of my reasons. But at that moment, I didn't care. I was out drinking on a Monday night for a reason, and it wasn't to check every young woman's ID to make sure that it was in fact real, and they weren't secretly high school students who decided to go out in tight dresses and flaunt all night long.
"Again. You are in total denial..."
"Again, you seem to be mistaken." I counteracted. Zak only laughed at my comment before continuing.
"Is it because you know she'll never have feelings like that for you? Is that why you're in denial."
"I'm not in denial..." I said through my teeth, avoiding Zak's gaze by looking forward at the wall of alcohol. Zak continued.
"Or is it because you know that you're parents would never approve of such a girl? A girl who works harder than half of the guys in the precinct put together, and doesn't give a shit as to what other people think of her? Or is it because she won't let you in? She can't find a place in her heart to tell you anything about her, so you use denial of all things to ignore the pain? Is that what months of healing did to you? You sought out to get help, to get someone to tell you that what happened that day had nothing to do with your orders, and then you come back and use denial of all things so you don't have to feel anything. So you don't have to be human again and feel every emotion you've come to know? I see.
"You know, I fell for Roxanne, myself, when I met her. I felt so deeply in love with her that for days on end I found myself beating myself up because of it. I had the unusual feelings for Roxanne, but I loved Constance on the other side. I was infatuated with both, and I hated it. And then I saw something that turned my world upside down. I saw you. You and Roxanne, together. Well, physically together, in the same room, working alongside each other. My feelings for Roxanne turned to liquid and then transformed into the infatuation I feel today. The admiration and warmth I didn't understand until Roxanne put all those pieces together about that note. That's when I saw it..."
"What the hell are you talking about now?" I found myself saying harshly. Zak laughed and shook his head, eyebrows crunched together in disbelief.
"What the hell are you doing?" Zak suddenly said, his tone making it seem as if he were disappointed in something. "What the hell are you doing? Jesus Christ, Alexander. What are you doing with your life?" He paused for a moment, but I had nothing to say in place of the silence. Not a word to mutter, not a noise to make. I was dead silent, at a loss for words as I thought about Zak's reasons for saying such things. "How long is it going to take?"
"What?" I questioned, almost dazed by Zak's sudden question.
"How long is it going to take you to figure it all out? Yeah, I got the part where you work hard to become the head of the precinct one day, but what about after that? After you get where you're going? What are you going to do? Go back home to an empty apartment? Watch your parents live their own lives while they secretly watch yours? Become a recluse, or work twenty-four-seven? Because those are the only things I see happening if you keep this up. Keep up this denial and stupidity."
"Since when did my future involve your concerns?" I asked sternly. Zak was quiet for a moment as he pulled out a black velvet box and nervously fumbled with it. My throat went dry as I suddenly realized where Zak was going with the conversation.
"I'm moving on..." He spoke softly, barely loud enough for me to hear him over the noise of the bar. "I'm moving on. I'm done with the parties and the women and the alcohol. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of it all, I'm done with it. What am I going to get out of a bunch of random numbers that all lead to dead ends and a heartache you can't imagine? What's it going to get me to wake up every morning with no memory of everything you've done, everything you've thought about and said. What the point? What's the point in life for such things when my goal is so drastic compared to my present? I'm not going to get shit out of it if I don't change. And I've already started. But the only way I could've and still can is because of Constance..."
"What does you proposing to Constance have to do with me?"
"We've both changed throughout these past few months. Despite the hell you went through awhile back, you can't deny that you haven't changed in a way that has shocked everyone you know. Then again, you probably would considering everything else you are in denial of."
"I'm not in denial of anything. We've already gone over this."
"Bullshit. If you weren't in denial of everything anyone said about you and that agent hell would've broken loose a long time ago. Everyone can see it, Alexander. Everyone. The Captain, your parents, everyone in the precinct, me, hell, even Constance can see it, and yet you still stick to what you find the easiest. Is that what three months of therapy taught you? To pretend to be naïve, to hide away all those pesky emotions that you have and lock them up just to make what seems like your hellish life better. Even that's bullshit. For one, that God damn therapist of yours isn't being paid by the government to make you emotionless. Second, your life is better than half the people in the precinct. Yeah, you've seen the rough side of life, but you haven't seen anything compared to-"
Zak suddenly stopped and took a sigh before running a hand through his hair and shaking his head regretfully. "You? Was that what you were really going to say? That you've been through more hell than myself? Really, Zak? That's low, even for you."
"That wasn't what I was going to say..."
"Then what were you going to say? Constance? The Captain? Margarie?"
"Roxanne!" Zak yelled, done with my guesses. He hit the counter with his fist. "Shit..." He muttered.
"Roxanne?" I barely mustered, my brain racking up questions and thoughts that I couldn't decode.
"Roxanne..." Zak said breathlessly before bowing his head.
"What do you know?" I found myself muttering, questions forming in my mind non-stop as I stared at him.
"Nothing..."
"Bullshit."
"I can't tell you."
"You will tell me, or-"
"What? What will you do to make me tell you about Roxanne? Nothing is the answer. You won't do anything because you know better."
"Just tell me..."
"I can't..." He said before standing up and throwing a wad of cash on the counter before pulling on his coat. He locked eyes with me briefly as he spoke. "You wanna know everything I do, then ask Roxanne yourself. Or better yet pull your head out of your ass and cut this bullshit denial. You're going nowhere if you don't accept that you have feelings for her. Take it or leave it. I don't care... It's not my future, anyway..."
Apologies for the wait!
R&R!
✌lustfuleyes100
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