“Are you taking new clients?” Ben growled when a bubbly female voice answered.
“With which practitioner, please?”
“Dr Harris.”
“His next available appointment is in October.”
“Are you shitting me? It’s June.”
“Dr Harris is very busy, I’m afraid—”
Ben hung up before she could say anything else.
The next two people on his list had similar answers, and he was starting to remember just why he liked having people who made his every fucking dentist and pedicurist appointment for him. This shit was exhausting.
He vowed to himself to call one more, and if it didn’t work out, he’d have a break and watch more shit TV, then try again later.
But a soft male voice answered this time, and he didn’t sound like a massive arsehole.
“Can I book an appointment with Dr Freiberg at some point within the next century? Please?”
The man chuckled. “I’m sure we can arrange that. Are there any days or times that work better for you?”
“As soon as fucking possible,” Ben muttered.
“I can fit you in tomorrow morning? At, say, eleven?”
Ben blinked. “Yeah. Yeah, that would work.”
“Great. What’s your name?”
“Ben Easton,” he said automatically.
“Okay, Ben. Do you have a phone number I could take?”
“No… not right now. Can you see this number I’m calling from? I… lost my phone.”
“I’ll find it,” he said.
Ben had a strange sensation. “Are you Dr Freiberg?”
“Most people call me Greg. But yes.”
“Why do you answer your own phone?” Ben asked, suddenly suspicious. “And why do you have an appointment tomorrow morning? Everyone else I spoke to is booked up until kingdom fucking come.”
“I run my own practice,” Dr “Call-Me-Greg” Freiberg said. “If the phone rings and I can answer it, I do. If not, the answerphone gets it. And I have appointments free because I don’t cram my schedule full. I like to treat people like people, not like they’re part of the therapy sausage machine.”
“Huh.” Ben remembered reading that on Dr Greg’s website. It was part of the reason he made the shortlist.
“Do you have a pen? I can give you the address.”
“It’s on your website. I have a laptop, just not a phone.”
“Okay. Well, then, I’ll see you tomorrow at eleven, and I’ll look forward to meeting you, Ben.”
“Yeah,” Ben said, then hung up. He stared at the phone for a long minute.
He’d picked his own therapist. A man, who wasn’t a massive arsehole, who dealt with addicts and people who had been sexually abused and worked in Holloway.
Ben carefully set the phone down on the arm of the sofa and curled up into a ball. Stan had been sleeping on this sofa, and it smelled of him, like his shampoo and whatever cologne he was wearing these days and of Stan.
He closed his eyes and slept.
For a long time, Ben had been of the opinion that therapy was bullshit. He’d been thrown at therapists and addiction counsellors and people who had all sorts of fucking opinions on what he should do with his life. Group therapy wasn’t just bullshit, it was “seventh circle of hell” bullshit. Circle of fucking truth. Fuck that. One of Ben’s “circle of truth” buddies had sold him out to the fucking tabloids.
Bastard.
Ben hoped he’d got a really virulent case of genital herpes. And crabs. And a UTI, to top it all off.
Dr Greg wasn’t as bad as the others. He was still a bullshit therapist, but Ben had come to the conclusion that just waiting for his brain to rewire itself and stop being addicted to drugs probably wasn’t working, and he should maybe get professional help to speed up the process.
Dr Greg was younger than Ben had thought—probably in his early forties. He had a beard and wore a plaid shirt and jeans and ran his practice in the conservatory of his ground-floor flat. And he was German. He didn’t have much of an accent at all, but when Ben had asked, he said he’d moved when he was a teenager.
Then they’d spent almost an hour talking about moving to London from other places when they were teenagers.
Ben had set up a direct payment with his card and agreed to another appointment on Thursday, in two days’ time.
He wasn’t sure what exactly his money was paying for. They hadn’t talked about anything that Ben thought he was supposed to be talking about. But he had someone to talk to now.
He picked up food on his way back to Stan’s flat and left it in the fridge, not ready to eat it even though he was starving. And went back to bed.
“Ben.”
He rolled over in bed and cracked an eye open. Stan was backlit by the light spilling through the hallway, making him look like he was glowing. That would be about right. Stan had always glowed.
“Are you okay?”
Ben nodded. “What time is it?”
“Almost four. You’ve slept for a long time.”
“Okay. I’m getting up now.”
Stan smiled and shut the door behind himself.
Like usual, it took forever for Ben to get himself out of bed, to the bathroom, and into the kitchen. He didn’t feel raw in the way other therapy sessions had left him in the past. He hadn’t been forced to relive painful memories or explore just why he had such a deep, prevailing love for painkillers and cocaine.
But he still felt scraped. Like he’d been pushed. His wariness of the entire experience was as exhausting as the sessions themselves.
Stan was sitting at his usual table, with his laptop, working.
“Do you need to be in New York?” Ben asked.
Stan closed the laptop and turned to face him. “Not particularly. Why do you ask?”
“Because you fucking live there?” Ben said, without venom. He went to the fridge and picked out the salad he’d bought earlier. He didn’t want to eat at the table with Stan, so he pulled up one of the barstools at the kitchen island and ate there instead.
“I can work remotely. I’m freelance, Ben.”
“Oh.”
“I have contracts with a few different publications, a mentoring programme, and I’m a guest lecturer at Parsons. But I’m not tied to any particular city or company.”
“Oh.” Ben felt stupid. He stuffed his face with another piece of kale.
“We can be here for as long as you want.”
“What if I don’t want to be here anymore?”
“No one’s holding you,” Stan said mildly.
“I know that,” Ben grumbled. “Do we have to stay right here?”
“No. Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know.” He ate another bite of his salad.
“Well, when you decide, let me know,” Stan said. He sounded amused.
Ben chanced a look up. Stan was grinning. “What?”
“Nothing,” Stan said. “You’re so contrary.”
“I am not,” Ben said automatically.
“You are,” Stan laughed. “You don’t know what you want, except you don’t want this.”
Ben opened his mouth to argue… then shut it again. Stan didn’t crow a victory, but it was close.