Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 92466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Dr. Jensen tilted her head. “Okay…”
I shook my head. “So—I need to back up.”
“Alright.”
“The night the divorce was finalized was the darkest of my life. Everything seemed over, like all hope was gone. All I wanted to do was forget. So, I made it my mission to get fucked up. I went to this bar by myself and drank so much that I blacked out.”
“I believe you mentioned that in passing the last time we spoke.”
“I took pills, too, and I have no recollection of anything that happened that night.” I grimaced. “Including sleeping with someone while I was drunk and high.”
Dr. Jensen shut her eyes momentarily and nodded.
“Some time later, after Nicole and I were talking again, this woman named Giselle called me. I had no idea who she was. None. She told me she was pregnant, and that I was the father.” I took a deep breath. “I couldn’t remember her from that night, but she knew exactly who I was because of the band. She’d gotten my contact information through my manager, told him it was an urgent situation. I hung up on her, thinking it was some kind of joke.”
A troubled look crossed my therapist’s face. “Oh my.”
“I tried to forget about it, but it kept gnawing at me…”
“Understandable.”
I sighed. “I talked to Tristan and Ronan about it, and they convinced me I was being stupid. They were right. I couldn’t remember anything about that night, so it was quite plausible that I’d had sex with someone.”
“Right…” She nodded.
“I still had Giselle’s number in my phone, so I called her back. She lives in New York, where I’d been that night. I flew her out to L.A., and we met in person. Once I saw her, I did vaguely remember her. I soon realized she seemed pretty level-headed and honest, as much as I’d wanted to deem her a liar. It was clear she didn’t want the situation any more than I did. But she wasn’t going to have an abortion…”
“How did you feel about that?”
“Well, I didn’t allow myself to feel anything until I knew the truth. She agreed to let me pay for an in-utero paternity test.” I exhaled. “All the while, Nicole was calling me every night and still planning to come out to L.A. While I waited for the results, I pretended nothing was happening, as much as it killed me. I prayed so hard that it wasn’t mine.” I shook my head. “The results came in about a week later.”
“And you were the father?”
I nodded.
“Wow. Okay.” She jotted something down. Probably, holy fuck.
“I realized then and there that life as I knew it was over. I knew Nicole, and I knew she wouldn’t be able to handle this.” I shook my head slowly. “Not because she didn’t love me enough, but just the opposite. She loved me too much to stand by and watch our dream unfold…with me and someone else. And I hated the thought of her experiencing that.”
“Oh, Atticus… What a tough situation. How did you tell her?”
My chest constricted. This was the hardest part for some reason. “I told her there’d been a change of plans, and instead of her coming to L.A., I flew to New York. I didn’t want to give her that kind of news away from home, where she didn’t have a support system.” I closed my eyes and breathed for a moment. “When I got to her apartment, she opened the door with the most beautiful smile on her face. She took one look at me, though, and knew something was very wrong.” I cringed at the horrible memory and had to stop.
“Then what happened?” Dr. Jensen prompted a few seconds later.
“Then I had to have the most difficult conversation of my life.” I paused. “I told her everything. She cried. I cried. And exactly what I knew would happen did. I hurt her so badly, and there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t fathom how I was supposed to be a father to that child when it felt like I’d lost everything—lost my soul, lost my entire life as I knew it.”
“But somehow, here you are, still standing.”
I laughed angrily. “Barely, but yeah.”
Dr. Jensen’s eyes widened. “You have a child now…”
“A son.” I smiled. “Christian.”
She leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms. “All this time you’ve kept that from me.”
“Well, I would’ve had to tell the whole story, and I wasn’t ready.”
“When we first started working together, that had to have been around the time you found out about him. I remember you would refer to things you couldn’t talk about, and we focused on your general anxiety, but it’s no wonder we weren’t able to make much progress if you were holding back something so major.”
I looked away. “It’s not that I was ashamed of him. I was mainly ashamed of my own actions, and I couldn’t talk about how badly I’d let down the person who means everything to me. In order to talk about him, I would’ve had to talk about that.”