Breaking All the Rules Read online

  “Man, this feels good,” I sighed as I looked over the blank walls. The room was completely empty. Not even Marlow was there to listen to me anymore. For a brief moment, I felt truly alone. It had been a long time since I had that feeling. I never had it in prison. I almost always had a cellmate and I was constantly looking over my shoulder. I let out a long sigh as I laid on the bed for a moment, thinking about how I ended up where I was in life. A part of me couldn’t help but wonder what Marlow had said. I didn’t care about the ‘reform’ shit. I would do what the court ordered and get it out of the way. Then I’d go on about my life. That’s what I always did.

  It was the thought of being with someone that crossed my mind. I wondered, briefly, how it would feel to be close to a woman. To actually be intimate. Despite all the sex I had, I had never experienced that—at least in a very long time.

  The blaring sound of a car horn brought me back to my senses.

  I opened my eyes and stared at the popcorn ceiling. I had been out on my own since I was sixteen. I was used to being alone. I liked being alone. Everything was easier and better. I had my independence, my friends, and a bevy of hot women ready to climb into bed with me. There was no problem in that, at least not in my eyes. I had everything I wanted, and I didn’t have to do a day’s honest work to get it either.

  Being careful and being cared for wasn’t worth shit. That was my take on the world. If I was being truthful, I had been on my own since before sixteen. I just finally left that shithole I was supposed to call ‘home’ at sixteen. That was when I decided to make it on my own. And I never looked back.

  My single mother wasn’t the type of mom who was always around and did everything she could to make ends meet. She was the other type single mother, the one who was gone trying to find me a new daddy. She was the kind to use drugs to make her euphoric and happy for a while until she waited for my real father to make his inevitable return. If there were some dusty cans in the cupboard and some milk in the fridge, it was good enough. Her job as a mother was done. Nothing else mattered where I was concerned.

  At one point in time, I thought my life might be different. I saw a wife and kids. Those kids had a good home and more than just milk and canned food to eat. But I was little when I let my imagination run away with those dreams. I deluded myself in to believing that was what I wanted.

  Life wasn’t like that and I was glad I learned that lesson early on.

  I doubted if my mother even cared that I left. In her eyes, life without me would have been easier for her. And life without her would have been easier for me.

  The fewer ties you have in life, the better.

  Chapter Three

  Jenny

  “Jenny?”

  I gulped back my irritation. There was no knock on my office door, I was sure of it. I had a patient scheduled for this appointment slot, but I was still busy looking at another patient’s chart. Anybody with common sense would have at least knocked or waited in the lobby to be called in. I quickly slammed the file shut and stuffed it in the top drawer of my desk.

  I made sure my drawer was shut and put on my professional face as I looked up at the man standing in my doorway.

  My heart instantly dropped.

  My knees went weak. Thank god I was sitting. I placed my palms flat on my desk and straightened up, staring at the man in complete shock. Was he really my next patient? There was no way. I hadn’t seen him in almost ten years. Besides, what were the odds that he would wind up here?

  I had to be imagining it.

  I grabbed the new patient chart and stood up. I opened it slowly and took a look at his name.

  It wasn’t him.

  The name was different. The man in front of me now was a built, more mature looking version of the Johnny Mason I remembered from high school. He looked like the boy I used to know, but life had put him through the wringer. Still, the name on the chart didn’t match. Was this just an eerie coincidence? It didn’t make sense.

  “Mister Johnny Santos?” I asked with uncertainty. I tried to steady the tremble in my voice.

  “So formal,” he said with a playful smirk as he stepped into the office and closed the door behind him.

  I gulped and looked at the doorknob. I hadn’t seen him since… Well, it had been a very long time and a lot had happened since then. He was looking at me like he knew me. I had the gut feeling that the man standing in my office was very much the Johnny Mason I thought he was. What I didn’t understand was what he was doing there and why his name was different.

  “I address new patients formally until they’re comfortable telling me how they’d-”

  “Ah, come on, I’m not just any new patient though,” he said, dropping heavily into the comfortable chair across from my desk.

  “Is this where you would like to sit for our session? You also have the option-”

  He stood up and leaned forward. He was so close to me that my heart started to pound. He took my breath away.

  “Again, so formal. What’s up with that? What, you’re gonna act like you don’t know who I am, Doctor Lin?”

  I gulped, “Pardon me, but, Santos…”

  He chuckled, “So it’s the last name that’s got you all messed up, then. All right. I’ll take that. I changed it. Satisfied?”

  “Excuse me?”

  He sat back down and stared at me with amusement for a few seconds, “When my dirtbag dad left for good, I changed it. I didn’t want Mason attached to me in any way.”

  “Oh, so he did eventually…”

  “Get the fuck out and leave my mom alone? Oh, yeah. He left her alone, all right. And the kid got the shit end of the stick on that one.”

  “Johnny, you mean you-”

  “Look, Doctor Lin, I ain’t here to talk about that shit in the past. Father was an asshole and my mom, well, she wasn’t too much better. But if I’ve gotta have a last name I’d rather it be hers.”

  I cleared my throat and sat down slowly. I pulled his chart toward me and picked up a pen to write a note. I saw his eyes glued to the paper, so I folded the cover back and placed it on the clipboard to balance on my leg. He scoffed under his breath, but didn’t say anything about it.

  “Mister Santos, we’re here to talk about everything. Actually, those things that occurred in your past play a role in how-”

  “In how I’m all fucked up now, according to you?”

  “I never said that.”

  “Don’t think I can’t see it in your eyes, Doctor.”

  “You keep emphasizing my title. What’s the reason for that, Mister Santos?”

  I maintained eye contact even though he was trying to break me. I had to remain professional no matter how difficult it was. Seeing Johnny after all this time wasn’t easy. Seeing him at all wasn’t easy. I never thought I’d see him again. The last place I ever expected to run in to him was in my own practice. I wondered if it would be best to refer him to someone else, but then that made me feel like I was getting too personally involved. If I did that, I wasn’t being a true professional. And if I wasn’t professional, then I was an embarrassment. I felt shame course through me. I had to look away from him for a moment. I hated my occasional moments of weakness.

  “I just thought we were being formal. What, am I doing it wrong? Or only the doctor gets to be formal because I’m just some scumbag off the street you need to patch up? Fix. Make all better. What is it?”

  “Mister Santos, I’m not making any of those judgments, but I am curious to know why you’re so quick to assume that I am.”

  “Do you ever answer any fucking questions?”

  I cleared my throat and nodded, “Yes, I answer questions.”

  “You haven’t answered a single damn question of mine.”

  “What question would you like me to answer, Mister Santos?”

  He leaned forward again. I felt my heart race. The weakness came back, but I couldn’t just push it away like I always did. It was different this time. It was different with hi
m. I felt the back of my neck grow hot. I could just imagine the disappointment in my parents’ eyes if they knew a patient was eliciting such a reaction from me.

  And if they knew who the patient was—that would just make things so much worse. I tried to stay in my head to talk myself down, but Johnny’s dark brown eyes were drawing me in. I was gripping my pen so tight that my knuckles were turning white, and my fingernails were digging in to my palm. I gulped against a dry throat. The moment it happened, a smug smirk curled up one corner of Johnny’s lips as he slowly leaned back in his chair without taking his eyes off me.

  “I’m not just any new patient to you, am I?”

  I drew in a slow and steady breath, “Excuse me?”

  He scoffed, “You said you answered questions. You even asked me what question I wanted an answer to. Then you don’t follow through. Can’t trust anyone, especially not a court-mandated shrink…”

  “Mister Santos, I do hope our work together will change that outlook of yours. In an effort to gain your trust, which I understand is a complicated process, I will answer your question. You are not a regular new patient. You are someone I know. We knew each other many years ago and have not had any contact at all in about a decade so I-”

  “Yeah, ten years. And why was that, doctor? Why’d we stop talking at all? If you could be kind enough to jog this shit memory of mine.”

  I clenched my pen again and looked away. I could tell from the smug expression on his face that he remembered exactly why the two of us stopped talking. He just wanted to hear me say it. He was playing a game with me. A lot of my patients tried to push my nerves to the limit. None of them, however, had any sort of tie to me. Johnny was an entirely different story and he knew it. But I wasn’t going to fall for his games. I wouldn’t give into whatever he was playing. He’d already caused me a few moments of weakness. But this was my world; my office. I had worked too hard to get there and I wasn’t going to put up with it.

  “Mister Santos, this is very off-topic and not at all related to the court-”

  “I thought you said my past defined my present or some crap like that.”

  I cleared my throat, “First of all, Mister Santos, I was referring to your upbringing. The home environment you had-”

  “First of all, Doctor Lin, I’d had to have had a home if you want to talk about that shit.”

  “Very well, then. You don’t consider where you grew up to be ‘home’ so what does it mean to-”

  “Look, we both know why I’m here. Cut to the chase. Let’s get this shit done.”

  “Mister Santos, if you’re aware of why you’re here, then you know we can’t just ‘get this done’ the way you’re proposing.”

  “Do you always talk all uppity like that or is it just to intimidate your patients?”

  I looked at him, stunned. He hadn’t sounded anything like the boy I used to know. But as I stared at him, I realized he wasn’t sounding or behaving like the Johnny I used to know at all. It was a completely different person who was sitting in front of me, or at least that’s how he was trying to play it off. His smug attitude and his mind games were familiar, but even those were different now. The Johnny in front of me wanted to create distance, maybe even fear. The boy I used to know wouldn’t have done that in the past, at least not with me.

  Johnny had always treated me differently from everybody else. That was what drew me to him to begin with. He was a troublemaker in high school, but it was never anything too serious. People weren’t really scared of him, but they wanted to get on his good side, no matter how hard that was. Back in high school being an acquaintance of his was like being part of an elite club.

  But it was never really like that with me and everybody knew it. I was probably the last one to figure it out. It didn’t matter, though, because when it finally did click in my mind, it was like life started moving at warp speed. Back then, Johnny talked to me about things he didn’t tell anyone else. He looked at me in a way that was different. It was special. And it wasn’t long before I started looking at him the same way. I never would have imagined my first kiss coming from someone like him. He wasn’t on the honor roll or involved in extracurricular activities. He didn’t have structure from his parents and he shirked school responsibilities as often as he could.

  Still, there was always something tender about him. I could sense it every time our lips met. I could sense there was more to him than what everyone else saw and I felt sure of it every time he wrapped his arms around me.

  I wasn’t even allowed to have a boyfriend. My entire life had to revolve around school and getting into a top university. According to my parents, if I had free time I wasn’t doing enough. I had to make them proud and maintain the good family name. I was expected to be exemplary. So, I wasn’t allowed to date. My parents didn’t even know someone like Johnny was part of my life. They wouldn’t have even allowed me to look in his direction if they had known.

  He was my first look, my first hug, first kiss, my first boyfriend.

  Johnny had been a lot of things to me, but now he was a patient in my chair and a particularly difficult one at that. I stared at him and wondered if there was any trace of his old self left. The person I looked at now was rugged, built, and so far removed from pretty much anything and anyone. He glanced out the window for a few seconds before looking back at me. For a brief moment, I saw something in his dark brown eyes. I saw something that made me think of the charming boy I knew so long ago. I quickly looked away and convinced myself that it was all in my imagination.

  I had to be professional.

  “Mister Santos, why don’t we start with why you’re here?”

  “You know why I’m here,” he responded quietly.

  “Yes, Mister Santos, I know why you’re here based off what’s on paper. I want to hear it in your own words.”

  “Fine. I’ll play along.”

  “This is not something for you to ‘play along’ to, Mister Santos. This is r-”

  “Real? This is real?” He laughed openly and shook his head, “I’m only here because the court told me to be here. You’re only here because it’s your job.”

  “And none of that is real to you?”

  “I don’t even know what ‘real’ means.” His eyes quickly looked down to the ground.

  For the briefest of moments, his tough guy exterior cracked long enough for me to see true sadness.

  Chapter Four

  Johnny

  -10 years previously-

  My locker was just a few down from Jenny’s. She always looked so focused. She only went to her locker to drop off one book and pick up another. Locker time was to be minimized so she could get to class early and look over the notes from the previous day.

  I was basically her complete opposite.

  She was pretty—gorgeous actually— in a way that stood out from every other girl in school. It was more than just her perfect skin and her dark brown hair that she always pulled back in a neat ponytail. She had stunning golden eyes that complimented her skin. It wasn’t tan or olive; it was a color that I couldn’t quite describe, but it was beautiful, just like her. My favorite thing about her, though, was the way her eyes looked. There was something in them that intrigued me.

  Every day I would look over at her and see the same thing; she had a determined look on her face and serious attitude as she carried her mountain of textbooks. Every day I watched her quickly gather her things in an orderly fashion and rush off to her classroom. It took weeks for her to even give me a sideways glance. I tried to smile at her, but she would turn away too quickly. That was when I realized that my reaction to her wasn’t normal, at least not for me. That was also the moment I decided I was going to get to know her. Little did I know that the very day after that sideways glance, I was going to get my golden opportunity.

  “I can’t believe she snubbed you like that, man,” Aaron said with a snicker.

  I was busy cramming some notes I would probably never look at into the c
orner of my locker when I overheard that sentence. I started to listen, but I didn’t bother to look up.

  “Shut the hell up, Aaron. You know she isn’t just gonna get away with it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I recognized the other voice. It was none other than Brad McMurphy, the ‘all-star jock’ that walked around the school like he was king or something. He loved all the attention he got for his athletic skills, but the guy was a real asshole. Nobody wanted to mess with him though. The only person who didn’t give a shit about Brad was me … until that moment.

  “Hey, Lin!” Brad shouted.

  I looked up immediately. I turned to my right and saw Jenny’s hands freeze on the book she was about to pull out of her locker. There was a resolution on her face that, to me, screamed she wasn’t about to give in to Brad’s bullshit easily. She struck me as the kind of person who didn’t want to dedicate any time to nonsense. But Brad was all nonsense, and he forced it on everyone around him.