Cicaro

Chapter Four

Still torn between getting a restraining order against Caleb or just increasing my security, I get ready for my next therapy session.

This time I'm driving myself. I guess my mom's parenting shift ended on the first day.

Reminding myself to think positive, I come to the conclusion that she's probably trying to prepare me for college whilst doing therapy. I have to learn how to drive myself to places someday.

"You just have to be nicer" were my mom's exact words when she called this morning.

Nice? I could do that with my eyes closed.

And so I'm wearing my finest plain T-shirt and a black forever twenty-one leggings. I am really planning on switching things up.

With Camila on probation, she is doing everything to try and please me and the heap of pancakes on my bedside table are a good enough testament that she's doing a pretty damn good job.

The drive to the building takes an hour mostly due to my constant stops to just enjoy the sites and my mini heart attacks whenever I passed a guy in a car who looked my way.

Everyone is already seated when I walk in and just like before, I'm seated next to Lily.

She smiles my way like she didn't get the hint last week, she keeps giving me off-putting vibes so I scoot to give her more space.

"Hello ladies," Miss Emily says whist walking in and takes a seat.

"Last time we did introductions and now I intend to tackle the main issue." she stops to smile.

"That entails showing you not all guys are after you."

She stands up and moves towards the video projector, inserting an odd-looking disk in it.

The projector starts with a video of a boy helping an old woman cross the street, unsurprisingly enough I feel nothing.

Next, a bunch of videos showing guys as harmless individuals.

But what gets to me are the videos of guys being helpless romantics to what appears to be their girlfriends. One particular clip gets my attention, and I start hyperventilating.

A video of a guy being extra sweet, but the girl seemed to be showing some sort of resistance even though he failed to realize it.

I begin feeling uncomfortable and the words "Switch it off." slip out of my mouth in a whisper scream.

But no one seems to hear, my eyes trail back to the same video and I see the resistance in her eyes again.

"Switch it off please," I scream, my eyes becoming blurry.

Miss Emily then looks around the room and without even looking my way, she realizes where she went wrong.

Turns out, I'm not the only one who noticed and the other girls in the room all look uncomfortable, some more than the others and I was the only one who was weak enough to voice it out.

No, it wasn't weakness, I was strong enough to voice out my opinions.

All my life, I've severally refused to see myself as weak, else I would fall into a bottomless hole of depression.

"I'm sorry, I double checked this and yet I didn't seem to notice." She seems sincerely sorry.

"How could you?, you have no idea what we've all been through. I have no idea why I thought you could help." Some random girl says solemnly in tears and walks out.

My mind immediately tells me to seek her out later, I had a hunch we would be very good friends.

"Anyone else wants to leave," Miss Emily's timid voice comes from the corner of the room.

By compulsion I move over to her and place a hand on her shoulder giving her a sad smile.

"We girls have to stick together," I say cheerfully, that makes her smile and seems to appease the other girls as they smile her way.

At that, it seems like something snaps in her mind, she stands up and I swear I can see a light bulb floating above her head.

"We can immediately move on to the next level of this program. Self defense, who's up for it?"

"You can't fear what you're stronger than." She adds confidently.

I want to point out that you can't really fight someone you trust, but I figure she knows best with the degree hung on the wall and all.

One phone call from her and hours later we're all seated on a mat exhausted from hours of learning self defense from a Tai chi master who turned out to be a feminist and gave us some strong offensive words against the opposite gender.

In my opinion she was a misogynist and needed to take a seat with us.

Half way through the session, my phone rings out and I excuse myself to answer it.

Only by the time I get into the hallway, the ringing stops and sounds of grunting fills my ears instead.

Curiosity leads me towards the sound and I stop in front of a hefty looking male punching the wall repeatedly. My head tells me to move away but my feet stay glued to the ground.

He stops and looks my way like some sort of sixth sense tells him he isn't alone.
My heart's starts beating rapidly.

Ever so slowly he tilts his head at my unmoving form before giving me a crooked smile and just like that my heart stops beating or was that a flutter.

We stay that way till he starts moving my way and then I run, I run as fast as my legs can, forgetting everything I had learnt from years of therapy, I throw that all away and run.

When I reach my car, I lock all the doors, double check them all, roll up all my windows, scramble around for my pepper spray before my mind draws attention to the fact that no one is actually after me.

I was being paranoid about nothing.

I just ran away from the hottest guy I've ever met.
I look towards the building, this was all just pointless.
I put my car in reverse and drive off.

New character introduction.
Is anyone enjoying this story as much as I am?
I'll probably give a double update today