Alix Ohlin - Inside

“Are you all right?” he said, his mouth against her ear.

“I need to stop.”

“Okay.” He sat back and watched her.

She took a breath, trying to calm down. Her nerves were singing, plucked like too-tight strings. It had been a long time since she’d been with anyone.

“Should I leave?” he said. “You can tell me to.”

“No.”

“No, you can’t tell me, or no, I shouldn’t leave?”

“You know which,” Grace said. She went to the kitchen, drank some water, then came back to this person she hardly knew, this dark and difficult person, and kissed him. Some things were too intense to do slowly.

Afterward, they got dressed. It had happened very fast, the two of them panting and desperate and not especially well coordinated, and when it was over they still felt like strangers. Tug lounged on the couch, looking a little drowsy. Grace still felt off-kilter, feverish, her cheeks burning from his unshaven face. She poured them each more wine and wondered what she had gotten herself into. If she were her own patient, she’d tell herself to put an end to this situation as quickly as possible. Instead, she pulled her legs up beneath her and watched him. She didn’t want him to go.

“So,” she said, “how’ve you been?”

This made him laugh and he set down his glass, giving her the first real sense of accomplishment she’d felt in quite some time.

“Grace,” he said, “do we have to talk?”

She couldn’t imagine what else, in fact, to do.

Sensing her confusion, Tug patted the couch next to him. She felt summoned and, obscurely, condescended to. But she moved over and laid her head on his shoulder, waiting for him to say something. Then she heard a faint whistling sound. He was snoring.

With his head resting on the back of the couch, he had fallen asleep and left her just sitting there. She tried to curl gently into him, and his arm pulled her closer. She was uncomfortable but didn’t want to move — he always looked so tired, so beaten down — though after ten minutes, her right leg was tingling and she desperately wanted to scratch her nose. Tug’s snoring was light and sibilant, like a faraway train. Slowly, hoping not to wake him up, she straightened out her leg. In response Tug shifted, suddenly jerking his head forward, and, with the hand wrapped around her shoulder, slapped her in the face. “Jesus!” she said. “What the hell?”

“What happened? Did I hit you?” He was still half asleep and confused. “Are you okay? My God, I’m sorry.” He touched her cheek gently. “It’s all red.”

“That’s not from your hand. It’s from your face.”

“My face?”

“Your beard. I mean, your stubble.”

“Oh, Grace,” he said, and kissed her sore, mottled cheek. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m glad you slept.”

“I didn’t know how tired I was.” He kissed her again, this time on the lips, and soon they were together again, more slowly, in the bedroom, without any awkwardness or rush, more like she’d wanted. And when they finished, she was the one who fell asleep.

Over the next two weeks, he’d show up at her apartment or invite her to his, usually late at night. They rarely went out to dinner; they just drank wine and talked before heading to bed. Mornings, over coffee, were silent. She might have considered herself tangential to his life, except that in the middle of the night she’d wake to find him twined around her, his leg over her hip, his arm over her shoulder, the heat of his chest pressed against her back; or, as they lay side by side, he’d clutch her hand in his sleep; or he’d pull her to him, her head against his chest, and as she nestled there, he’d sigh.

Grace moved through these days in a fog, shrouded in secret emotion. With her patients she was kind and warm, trying to make up for her wandering attention, and if anything they seemed grateful when she dived back into the conversation sympathetically, probing the intricacies of their situations with inexhaustible thought and care. The only one who seemed to notice a change was Annie. Since the night she’d shown up at the apartment, she’d treated Grace with a familiarity that implied both trust and condescension. It was the ease of someone used to having hired help, the scornful confidence of a girl in her housekeeper. More open and less respectful, she knew now that she could get away with things, and it bothered Grace.

When she tried to get her to talk about how she was feeling about the decision she’d made, Annie asked her, “Are you pregnant?”

“Me? No,” Grace said, too surprised to say anything else. “Why do you ask that?”

“You look different,” Annie said, sprawled across a chair — she even sat differently now — with her legs flung over the side. “It’s like you gained weight, but in a good way.”

“And the first thing you associate with that is pregnancy,” Grace said, “rather than just plain good health. Why do you think that is?”

“God,” Annie said. “Take a compliment.”

“I wasn’t sure it was a compliment, at first.”

“Or maybe you’re in love .” She said this snidely, like a twelve-year-old boy.

“That’s beneath you, Annie,” Grace said.

This seemed to get her attention. She swiveled in her chair, sat up straight, and said, “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“Right. Therapy means never having to say you’re sorry.”

“You might have to, actually, maybe even a lot. But mostly you have to figure out why you did whatever you’re sorry about.”

“I know,” Annie said. “It makes me tired.”

Grace’s evenings with Tug continued steadily, and soon they were going out for dinner or to see a movie. They bought him new skis and went skiing, and on lazy Sunday afternoons they would lie together in bed and read the newspaper. She forgot they had ever had a strange beginning or that there were uneasy questions hovering over them that might occasion an ending to their relationship. They were caught up in the middle, and it felt like it was going to go on forever.

One morning there was a sharp knock on the office door, and a couple walked in before Grace could respond. She couldn’t place them, though she knew they had met, and as she stared at them blankly without rising from her seat, she saw them go from mad to madder.

“We need to talk to you,” the man said.

“Please, sit down,” Grace said, her mind coursing through unlikely scenarios before she realized they were Annie’s parents.

They sat together on the couch but as far away from each other as possible. Annie’s mother wore a dark-blue suit and her hair in a blond bun, her stiletto-heeled boots tapping with rage. Her husband’s suit was the same color. They were a matched pair, expensive and well maintained.

“What can I do for you?” Grace said. She still couldn’t remember their first names.

“What can you do? What have you done ?” Annie’s mother said. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes instantly reddened, and Grace’s heart turned over.

“I assume this is about Annie,” she prompted.

“This is about the end of your career,” the man said.

She could tell he was accustomed to making threats, and she remembered something Annie had told her: “They always get what they want, so they don’t understand why I can’t too.”

“We know what you did for Annie,” he said. “Taking her to the hospital. Encouraging her to get an abortion.”

“What?” Grace said. “That did not happen.”

“We heard all about it from Annie,” his wife said. “You said that telling us would just complicate things. You’re a monster. This was our daughter.”