Follow Me Back (complete first draft of the published book)

Chapter 1: Projecting

Chapter 1: Projecting

August 2013 (six months earlier...)

"You're not obsessed. You're projecting."

"Projecting?" Tessa looked up from the thick coil of auburn hair that she'd been braiding and unbraiding for the past half hour. She met eyes uncertainly with her psychotherapist, Dr. Regan, sitting on the other side of the bedroom.

"It's a common defense mechanism," Dr. Regan said. Her tone remained emotionless as usual - the human equivalent of a white noise machine - but she shifted uncomfortably as she spoke. She sat perched in a low-slung pink beanbag chair with her legs crossed at the ankles, striving to maintain a professional demeanor. Normally, she only met with clients in her office, but she'd made an exception for Tessa.

Tessa's gaze dropped to the older woman's pantyhose, bunching at the knees, and she couldn't help but feel a grudging admiration. It took some serious mental fortitude to brave the heat of the West Texas summer dressed in nylons. Tessa herself wore nothing but a thin tank top and a pair of cotton sleep shorts that barely skimmed the tops of her slender thighs.

"Projection," Dr. Regan continued. "We use that term when an individual takes her own thoughts and feelings and attributes them to another person – in your case, to a celebrity."

"But I've never met Eric Thorn. I've never even been to one of his concerts."

Dr. Regan picked up Tessa's thought journal and flipped to the beginning. She made no comment on the drawings scribbled across the cover: a hodgepodge of hearts, woodland creatures, and eyeless human faces. Forget projection, Tessa thought, wrinkling her nose. They should probably discuss why she couldn't even stand her own doodle-people looking at her.

"Tell me about this." Her therapist indicated one of Tessa's early entries. "What piqued your interest enough to write something down about him?"

"About Eric?" Tessa peered across the room at the journal page in question. "I was watching TMZ, I guess. They'd caught him walking around New York City with some actress from Pretty Little Liars. So naturally they assumed that he was dating her."

"But that's not what you wrote down."

"Of course not. Have you seen TMZ? It's like fanfiction but less believable."

Dr. Regan raised an eyebrow from behind her horn-rimmed glasses. "Tell me what you wrote instead."

Tessa reached to take the journal from her therapist's hands. She felt a vague unease as she glanced down at the page. She remembered how the grainy paparazzi footage had held her transfixed. Eric and that girl. . . . He hadn't looked like he was on a date. Not even close. The video showed him walking briskly, with a furtive glance over his shoulder as he picked up the pace. Then the camera zoomed in close. Those piercing blue eyes of his had looked straight out of the screen. And the look on his face. . . .

"He didn't look like some happy guy with a new girlfriend." Tessa told her therapist. "Not to me."

"What did it look like to you?"

Tessa closed her eyes and dropped her voice to a near whisper. "Like he was scared out of his mind."

"Good Tessa." Dr. Regan nodded her encouragement. "And what do you think that might say about your own state of mind?"

"You mean, I just imagined it? I'm actually the one who's scared out of my mind?"

Dr. Regan leaned forward intently. She tucked a strand of greying hair behind her ear.