Shane was quiet. She had no desire to tell this man anything about her life, but she knew Carmen wouldn’t agree.

Carmen sighed. “Things have been going pretty good for us. Um, there’s been that issue about Shay sleeping in our bed almost every night—I think we mentioned that before. It’s kind of made it hard to get intimate time between us. It actually can be quite frustrating. Other than that I think things have been going well. Shane?”

Shane winced ate the word ‘intimate’. It was bad enough that she wasn’t getting sex on a regular basis but then Carmen always seemed to want to talk about it, which of course made Shane obsess about it even more.

“Uh yeah. Yeah things are going pretty well.”

“Does it bother you that you and Carmen aren’t getting much alone time because Shay is afraid to sleep in his own room?” Dr. Soden asked.

Shane shifted in her seat. God she wished she had some blow right about now.

“Yeah it’s…fine. I mean it’s annoying but he’s my brother and uh, we’ve been, um—we’ve been making it work.”

The middle-aged man smiled. “Well Shay and I spent a little bit of time talking about that today. Hopefully we can all help him feel safe in his own bed here soon. So—same time next week?”

Both women nodded and thanked him as they walked out the door.

************************

That night when Carmen was at work, Shane was busy doing dishes while Shay was in the shower.

“Ok, Shane! I’m done! Can we read now?” he yelled from the other room.

“Yeah give me one second.” She turned the water off, dried her hands, and drank the last bit of her beer.

“Ok, I’m coming.”

“Come into my room. I need your help.”

She turned into his room to see her little brother trying to drag his mattress off of his bed. Shane couldn’t help but laugh to herself—here he was in his whitey tighties, with knobby knees and bony elbows—desperately trying to drag his mattress of the bed.

“What are you doing? That thing is four times as big as you are.”