Chasing Zero

Fourteen

Johnathon stared at me, looking up from the notepad on his lap. I rolled my sleeves down to my fingers and hugged myself as I leaned back into the couch. He stared, waiting for me to say the first word.

He didn't wait long.

"How are you feeling today?"

"Negative ten."

"So, average?" Johnathon concluded as he wrote it down, and I shrugged. "Do you feel as though you're in a depression?"

"More...stuck, I guess."

"Can you recall when you first started feeling stuck, or are you not sure?"

"It was after my first date with Sky."

"Oh, right, how did that go," he excitedly asked as he leaned towards me.

I smiled as I tried to push myself further into the couch, the cushions attempting to swallow me whole. "Great. I had a wonderful time with him. We went out to dinner, he told me about...his past."

"Did he do something wrong or bad that makes you feel uneasy about spending time with him?"

"No, no," I quickly assured. "He is not that person anymore. What he told me almost seems like a lie because I do not see any signs of that sort of person whenever we've hung out. He really worked hard to get his life back on track. He left his childhood friends who led him down the dark road, and he chose the road to recovery with a new group of friends who-"

"You're spiraling."

"Right."

I tended to get off track a lot during our sessions. In the beginning, I would start off talking about what I wanted to mention, but then I would begin to get off track with the trigger words that prompted me to think of something else. This prevented me from being able to explain the full story of what I originally wanted to talk about in the limited amount of time we had together. So, to help me out, he would alert me whenever I was beginning to get off track from whatever I was originally trying to talk about.

During the instances when I wasn't getting off track, I'd let him know. It was never in his intentions to be rude, just to help me out and make sure we had the time to talk about what I desperately needed to that day. Sometimes he would ask questions to relate to what I was talking about, and if he was spiraling from what I wanted to talk about, I would let him know. If he began to ask too many questions that were irrelevant, I would let him know, but I was always sure to give him as much background information on the situation as possible so he could keep up with what I was talking about. I was almost certain my folder was the largest one of all his patients.

"He did some bad things, which I promised to never talk about with anyone else, and he's now getting his life on track. So, no, his past is not the problem. I guess it's more the fact that all of my friends think that I should know what I feel for him right now. They always say that I feel romantic feelings for him since I want to go out with him again, but I don't know if that's actually how I'm feeling or not."

"If you don't know about your feelings, then why not take a step back and allow yourselves to become better friends first?"

"That would make an interesting plot," I contemplated.

"Plot?" Johnathon stared at me, nothing but disappointment covering his face. "Spencer, please do not tell me that you are writing out this man's life and turning it into a book."

"God, no."

"Good."

"I'm using our relationship as reference for the book I'm actually writing. The chapters are inspired but what we've done, but nothing is word for word. Our story is our story. I'm just getting inspiration from my real-world experiences. This way, the book will be authentic."