"Patients, Please."

Opening Up

About an hour had passed, Mark has moved me to the couch where we had sat in silence for most of it. He was standing in the little kitchen making me tea, I believe. He walks back over with two mugs. He places one on the coffee table in front of me and sits down on the other side of this large L shaped couch. I wait for him to get comfortable, "I'm sorry about all of this."

He hums as he pulls the mug away from his lips, "Why are you sorry?" he mutters. "There's nothing to be sorry about."

I cross my legs in front of me, "I'm sorry for scaring you." I start messing with a loose string on my pant leg. "If I was more open and honest maybe we wouldn't be here, if I wasn't so stubborn."

"I don't blame you," he says. He sighs, "And I'm not asking you to tell me your whole life story, you only tell me what you want."

Looking over, he's sitting both feet planted on the ground. "But, you're curious?" I take a second and readjust myself on the couch. "Curious enough to print everything out."

He takes a second, "I was curious when I first met you." He ruffles his hair then tries to fix it, "After reading the first essay, that's when I looked up everything about your mom and the car wreck. I knew you were involved in it. That's why, the first time I had seen you shirtless..." He takes a second, obviously trying to collect his thoughts. "I read in one of them that you had been injured but seeing it was another thing." He looks over at me, holding his head up with his hands on the side of his face and his arms are propped up by his shoulders. "I never meant anything by it."

I look down at the mug and the steam coming from it, "But there was more in that folder."

He turns his head and covers his eyes, "Yeah. Yeah there was, after the run in with the Dean I looked into the case. I just wanted to know what it was about."

"So you know..."

"No," he cuts me off. "I saw it on a website and it had your name across it, then your birthday. I printed it off because I didn't know your actual birthday. I wanted to double check before I started reading anything about it. But unlike the wreck there were no articles or anything. Those papers were the only thing I could find. I printed them and put them in the folder so I could find them easier."

I look over, "You didn't skim them or anything." He shakes his head, "Good just know most of the things in that were fake."

He lifts his head, "What? But they were court documents."

I nod my head, "My dad and lawyer both agreed that I had been through enough shit that we also collectively decided to make our own copy of the file that was stolen and say that was the one and went to court with it."

He sits back on the couch, "So..."

"Everything is a lie," I say looking down at my legs. "Well not everything." We sit in silence for a while, "After my mom died, both my dad and I had a hard time dealing with it. My dad turned to alcohol and I turned into a class role model. I joined as many clubs as I could, I lived in the library, and I had a little social life." I turn to look at him. "John was moved in at this point, he's room was a couple down from mine. He was never home, he was always either gone with a buddy of his, he worked at the hardware store, and this was the time he stared dating Jenna." I grab the mug in front of me and hold it in my hands, it's still warm. "I don't want to talk about what happened between John and I until I get back home and have the actual file in my hand. It's easier to explain what all happened." Mark's been staring at the ground for some time now, he just nods his head after what I said. "But things happened and my dad and I decided that it would be best for me to seek professional help. Which I did, I met Mr. Kirk. He was a lovely man and I don't blame anything that happened on him."