“I getcha, it’s cool.”
Tierney squeezed his eyes tighter, because they were starting to ache, like there was too much pressure inside them. “I had an appointment today with my new therapist, and I was going to ask her about what we should do to make sure I don’t, like, get into this relationship and then have things go haywire.” His throat made a clicking sound as he swallowed.
Ian was silent, but Tierney could feel the dude’s attention focused on him.
“So I went and explained to Dr. Palmer about Dalton, and she said we were already in a relationship, and my only option was to end it or I’d start drinking again.” More silence, but this felt different. Confused. He finally lifted his head to see Ian. “If I start drinking again, I’ll turn back into that guy I used to be. I can’t be that douche bag with him. He’d try and hang on to the relationship even if the old Tierney did come back, I know he would and— Fuck.” He hit the arm of the chair, but nothing changed. Hitting things usually helped, but not this time.
“But you came out,” Ian said, face screwed up.
“I’m pretty sure if I’m drunk enough I can be just as much of a douche bag gay as I was straight. It’s better for him if he doesn’t have to put up with that shit from me.”
“But wait.” Ian shifted, straightening. “You’re telling me— Just what did she actually say, dude?”
Had Ian always been this thick? Tierney rubbed his temples. “She said a lot of shit.” Although he could only remember a couple of things. His head had begun ringing once she’d told him he had to end things with Dalton. “She said that every patient she’d seen who got into a relationship just after rehab had fallen off the wagon.” He shoved out of his chair, pacing to the window, trying to loosen up his throat enough to speak. “In my ‘immediate postrehab emotional state’ I’m, um, fooling myself. Like, convincing myself he’s the perfect guy for me, then down the road it ends badly and I’d—” He waved his hand in the air. “You know.”
“Start drinking again?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t even go into the stuff she’d said about suicide. He wandered back to his chair and fell into it. “She gave me a scrip for antidepressants. Took away the best thing in my life and gave me some fucking pills to replace him.” Lifting his butt, he dug the prescription out of his back pocket and set it on the arm of the chair, smoothing out the wrinkles with his thumb.
Ian huff-snorted, shaking his head. “If ending your relationship is supposed to keep you from drinking, why the fuck am I here making sure you don’t?”
The guy may as well have whacked him in the head with a hammer, because the ringing in Tierney’s ears started again. “Uhhh . . .”
“What the hell? Why are you letting this doctor tell you how to live?” Ian’s expression was set, and dead serious.
Blurry vision joined the ringing in his ears, adding to his confusion. “Because she’s my shrink?” Wasn’t he supposed to trust her implicitly? “I mean, she’s the authority.” Wasn’t she?
“So?” Ian scowled. “You know enough people in the medical community to know that not all doctors know their shit. Hell, most of them probably barely graduated.”
“What, like, I’m just supposed to shop around until I find someone who tells me what I want to hear?” Didn’t that defeat the purpose? Although it was a pretty good plan. And Marty had said something about finding the right fit . . . She could be wrong.
“If you go to five, and they all say the same thing, then you listen, but I’ll tell you what. Janet, my therapist? She’d never bullshit me like that, telling me I was fooling myself like it’s some fact she could absolutely know. If I felt like something was right and I wanted to do it, she’d never just tell me I couldn’t, she’d help me figure out how.”
Tierney blinked.
Ian leaned forward, planting his elbows on his knees. “T, you know how you told me your whole life was ruined because you believed it when your grandfather said you couldn’t be gay?”
He had to work saliva into his mouth before he could reply. “Yeah?”
“So, now you’re letting your whole life fall apart because someone else told you that you can’t do something that feels right?”
He almost said, “It’s not the same,” except he couldn’t, because it totally was. He could see it, literally, things were shifting and colliding in front of his eyes—Ian’s frown and the cushion Dalton usually sat on. Rearranging to show him a different view. “Oh fuck, dude,” he whispered. He got it now, and with the knowledge came anger, as usual, but this time it was all self-directed. “I fucked up so bad.”
“This isn’t even like you— You fight and question everything, but you roll over for these two people?” Ian seemed pissed enough to punch him now, and Tierney wanted the dude to—he’d punch himself if he could—and not just to stop the fucking reverberating ring in his head, but because someone as stupid as him should get whaled on.
“I’m afraid,” he croaked like a frog, but he got it out. He had to or he’d keep it inside forever. “I just, I listened to her because—” He had to fist his hands and set his jaw in order to keep going. “I told Dalton I had to end it, dude, but I was lying to both of us. I used what that doctor told me as an excuse, then shoved the blame on her. Okay, I don’t mean to sound like a psych text here—”
“It’s cool,” Ian assured him.
“I’m falling into the harmful coping strategies I used in the past,” he parroted, something Marty had said, but it was the easiest way to explain and it was true. Ian totally understood the psychobabble, Tierney could see realization dawn on the guy’s face.
“You mean, letting someone else tell you what to do?” Dude wasn’t totally unconfused.
“I kind of— Christ.” Just say it. Have to say it. As surely as he’d had to make that announcement at Grandfather’s wake. But first, he had to shove up from the chair and stand, because his heart was jittering out the adrenaline and he couldn’t just sit there anymore. “I used to think I was in love with you.”
Ian went pale and completely still.
Oh fuck. “I’m not, dude,” he rushed to explain. “Seriously. I never was.”