•7•

The anger had now fully taken the place of her bewilderment. She shoved his chest in indignation, but that seemed to have not have affected him because he was still standing exactly where he was, before she shoved him.

"God! I hate you! There has to be a way I could sue you or something.", her anger was slowly dissipating for a reason she couldn't quite figure out. 

"I'm your psychologist and I have full rights to make you talk to me however I please.", he stated.

"You're not my damn psychologist! Your uncle is, you had no right! What the hell is wrong with you, dude?!", a chuckle had slipped past her lips as she said that.

 She noticed his smile had grown a great fraction; something she didn't believe was possible.

"That's an amazing sound.", he stated, and for a second; just a simple second, he looked fascinated, entranced even, but then he looked away from her when the elevator came to a stop. She hurriedly picked up her coat and purse from the floor and hurried out the moment the doors opened.

 "I'll see you tomorrow!", she had heard him yell before she realised she almost walked into someone in her rush. 

"Miss Asher. I'm glad I caught you.", a voice greeted her. 

That was her actual psychologist. She then had to walk back into the elevator she got off while listening to apologies from her doctor and getting her ear chewed off by Bruno. 

The moment she was done with her not so bad session with her actual doctor, and had gotten into her car, she did something she hadn't done in a long while; she full on smiled; a big sincere smile. She could hardly remember the last time she had done that. 

Laughing was a whole different story.

That night, she arrived home, ate a big dinner of spaghetti & meatballs and lounged on her couch watching her beloved Netflix. Two hours later, the credits of the movie rolling in, she felt something that she had never felt; inspiration. She immediately jumped off her couch and practically ran to her bedroom and came back out with her work computer, waited for it to come on before she hurriedly went to the Microsoft word application and typed on a blank page, 

'She smiled.'

She had no idea what that meant, or where whatever story she'd come up with would lead to, but she knew that brief sentence alone was a good start.

The minute she dropped both her devices, a familiar feeling had started to creep back up again. She didn't dread it though; in fact, she had welcomed it. She preferred to feel what she was used to, to feeling what she wasn't. Her loneliness, sadness and the other negatives, were like home to her. She knew it was a crappy 'home', but she didn't really want to leave and venture into the unknown. She preferred familiarity; constancy. 

She feared change.

In her younger years, when she was always so eager to enter a new environment, meet new people, everytime, it came back to bite her in the ass. She had learned people were surely not that welcoming. Her parents had once fought over something she couldn't quite remember, in her school's parking lot. They had even gathered a crowd. She just stood there with her head down not even bothering to say anything. 

Suffice to say, after that day, every student called her names that she really didn't want tp remember. She made friends though, but they too had left when the bullies had come after them too. Everything was temporary. Everything good was temporary, she thought, because when you think about it, all everyone and anyone is sure of, is that the bad things always happen. Nothing stops them from happening, but many things sure can stop the good things from happening. Whether anyone believed her or not, it was still a universal truth. 

She fell asleep that night just like she did every other night; thinking of her miserable life. She was really sick of this emptiness, the loneliness, the sadness. She was sick of it all. Before she had fallen asleep, she had decided that the book she was in the process of writing now, would be her last one, ever. After she finished it, she would finally free herself from the crap she referred to as her life.

That night, in her dreams, she appeared to be running without end. She kept running and running, she couldn't stop even if she wanted to at a point, she had continued to run when she started to see a light ahead. She slowed her running to a jog and when she had gotten closer to the light, she saw that she was on the end of a very steep cliff. If she jumped off, she could either make it to the other side where the light was, or she could plummet to her doom. 

And so, she turned back around and continued running back instead. 

A coward; scared; that was what she was.