// C H A P T E R T W E L V E //

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Kissing Matty was probably the best thing that's happened to me in years...or maybe ever, besides graduating high school of course. I don't know what I felt at that exact moment, but I know that as soon as his lips touched mine, my heart stopped racing. I stopped being so nervous, and everything was okay. The way he caressed me, so gently...I felt like someone actually cared about me.

I know I'm probably just another girl to him--

I put my pen down and closed my book as there was a knock at my bedroom door.

"Come in." I turned around.

My dad came through the door, handing me a large plastic bag. I looked at it, seeing a bunch of spiral notebooks and packs of pens inside through the transparency of the bag.

"Oh, thanks." I smiled, "you really didn't have to, I could've gone to get my supplies myself." I nodded, then realizing that I had sounded ungrateful, "but thank you, again." I smiled even wider this time.

"You're welcome. Glad to see you getting an early start on your studies, too." He looked at my desk.

He was wrong. My books were indeed beside me, but I'd been writing in my journal about Matty for the third time today. I then realized that maybe I should get to reading.

"I was wondering if you weren't too busy if you wanted to go get ice cream." He asked.

I looked at him, then out of the window behind me. It was freezing outside, and he wanted to go get ice cream?

"Dad, it's too cold for ice cream." I chuckled, grabbing my journal. Somehow I felt like he was going to grab it and read it. Even though I knew he wouldn't.

"Right." He nodded. He sat down on the edge of my bed, sighing.

My eyes followed him, I felt awkward.

He stuck his hands into his pockets, I always wished my jeans were loose enough for me to do the same.

"I remember when you were a little girl you would go crazy for ice cream." He said, looking around my bedroom as if it were his first time in it. "You wanted it any time of the day, any season. You wanted it for dinner even." He laughed softly, "I remember one time I let you have it, too. And your mother came home and got all mad at me."

I smiled, I didn't know why he was saying these things...he was being weird.

"I don't know what to do with you anymore...I don't know what to do with me." He shrugged.

I didn't say anything.

"I'm sorry if I'm being the antagonist here, I just really, really don't know how to be a father to you anymore." He confessed, "and you're hanging out with weird older men and you're a young woman so I can't tell you not to."

I smiled again as he referred to George and Matty as weird older men.

"Dad, they're not weird."

"Yes they are." He shook his head, "I don't want to see either one of them in this house again. I'd prefer if you didn't see them anymore, either. I'm not telling you not to...just that I prefer it." He shrugged, I could tell he was trying his best to reason with me.

I sighed and turned back around, opening one of my figure drawing books for the class I'd be taking.

I could hear him getting up, and walking out of the room.

"I love you." He said as he shut the door.

"Love you too." I said.

I felt sorry for him. I wanted to make things better, but I didn't know how. I didn't even like to talk to him on such a serious level in the first place. As I turned the pages to the book I noticed it was more of a visual book than textual. Hm, hopefully classes will be as simple as this book.

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"All of my clients seem to have one thing in common." Elaine mumbled as she wrote in her book.

I sat up slightly in my seat, "what?"

"Oh, nothing. I'm sorry, I didn't realize I'd been thinking out loud." She shook her head, clicking her pen and putting her focus back on me.

I thought about Matty, he was one of her clients...did he fit into her category of "all," or was she just saying it to be saying it? I had just told her about how I'd been spending time with someone I had just met. His name, anonymous. I didn't want her to know, since she knew Matty already. But I think she could tell, from the way I described him.

"I think the main obstacle that we've been trying to help you overcome, is being overcome...but I wouldn't know that unless you agreed." She said, taking her glasses off and setting them aside.

Social anxiety.

Had it been?

I hadn't realized.

I thought about all of the recent events in my life, the party, talking to people and being okay about it, George, and Matty.

"I guess so." I said, wowed.

She smiled, I looked up to her like a mother. She had that sort of vibe. She was much older than I, for one thing. In her forties at least. And she was very warm, I could let her know everything and be just fine...unlike the first day I'd met her, and I felt as if with every word she judged me. That wasn't true. I was very self-conscious at the time. I still could be.

"You're brilliant." I laughed a little, so did she.

"Last question, before I go." I stood up, grabbing my hoodie and throwing it over my head.

"Go ahead." She said.

I waited until my face was free from the darkness inside of my hoodie as it went over my head, then pulled my hood down.

"Do you think your clients are crazy?" I asked.

She laughed softly, "not at all, darling. I too saw a psychologist when I was young." She shrugged, "that's how I became so interested in psychology. It's not like I'm in a psychiatric ward."

"When I had met Black ," that was the incognito name I'd given Matty for Elaine. Yeah, it sounded funny, I know. But it was a pretty good nickname. "He told me he wasn't crazy, for seeing a psychologist. It was one of the first things he told me.."

"And what did you say?" Elaine got up from her seat, tossing some crumbled papers into the trash.

"I told him neither was I."

"And trust me, dear, you aren't. You're just crippled. From some of the things you've mentioned to me, I can tell you are. Crippled from things that had negative outcomes in your teenage years...but that can be fixed. I promise you, but before you can fix any of those things, you'll have to be willing to let them be fixed at all. Which you've shown me that you are, and I'm proud of you."

I smiled again, "thanks, Elaine."

She nodded.

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