My heart was about to nearly thump out of my chest. I bounced my leg up and down in nervousness as I sat on a couch across from Bree, waiting for her to begin talking. As she sifted through some papers, I twiddled my thumbs nervously.

“Hey,” Bree said softly, reaching out and placing a soft hand on my active knee. “Relax,” she said, and my legs immediately relaxed at her touch. I hated this, though; usually, I was calm around her. But now that I had finally admitted my feelings for her to myself—even though they had existed the whole time—I felt awkward and jumpy around her, despite the fact that nothing has changed between us (at least in her eyes). Well, nothing has changed between us, yet.

“Dr. Crowly said that the new medication has been doing well,” she said, looking up at me expectantly. I nodded. “You haven’t seen anything? How about your nightmares?” she asked.

“I haven’t seen anything that I’m not supposed to, I don’t think. Unless Tony isn’t real,” I said with a light chuckle. That would really suck if Tony were a figment of my asshole of an imagination.

“No,” she smiled. “Tony’s real.”

“And I haven’t had nightmares the past two nights,” I said. “Things really seemed to turn around right away,” I said, snapping my fingers once to illustrate my nearly instantaneous recovery. I chose to omit the detail that my feelings were down due to her absence and my new revelation about her—that wasn’t relevant right now.

“I like to hear that,” she said, smiling again. “And I’m really glad you made a friend,” she said, her eyes full of pride. “So,” she began, adjusting into a more comfortable sitting position by tucking her knees into her chest and wrapping her arms around her legs. She also tossed the papers aside, which made me feel like we were talking more personably. “What do you think is next?” she asked.

I bit my lip. “I dunno…” I shrugged my shoulders.

“Well, I’m happy to say that I think you’ve passed the biggest obstacle,” she said positively. I begged to differ. “Finding the right medication is the hardest part, but I think we’ve found the right one. We will give it a few more days to make sure you are stabilized, but I think the battle is over,” she said. “But we still have to deal with your depression,” she added after a moment of silence.

I bit the inside of my cheek. “How do you really feel, Vic?” she asked softly. The way she asked me wasn’t in the careless, redundant way I usually heard from other people, like Dr. Crowly; it was in a caring, genuine way—as if the words were coming from a friend, sincerely inquiring about my well-being and not interrogating me just to have something to write down.

“I’m happy that the medicine is working,” I said, smiling weakly. This was true—I was glad that my illness was under control. But, obviously, there was more—this was the relevant time to admit my feelings to her. My true ones.

“Besides that. How are you feeling in general?” she put her legs down and rested her elbows on her thighs, leaning in closer to me. My body suddenly started to shake, but not in the normal, paranoid way—in a nervous way. Nervous, because I was afraid to tell her.

“I don’t know,” I said quietly.

“Vic, you know you can tell me anything,” she said, her eyebrows knitting. The right side of her face twitched, as if the small movement of her eyebrows pulling on her skin was painful. I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out and lightly touching the nasty bruise, a frown stretching across my features.

“So can you,” I whispered, forgetting about my own feelings completely. I didn’t like to see Bree hurt like this.

She sighed softly. “…I’m sorry if this is distracting,” she said, putting her hand over mine. This time, though, she didn’t let go. She brought our hands down but kept them together, suspended in the air of the twelve-inch space between us.

“Won’t you tell me what happened?” I asked quietly.

“I don’t know, Vic. This shouldn’t be our focus, though. We need to talk about you,” she said quietly, her eyes gazing downward, as if she didn’t want to make talking to me sound like such a duty.

“I don’t like always talking about myself,” I said lowly, even though we both knew that she had a job to do.

“Dr. Crowly’s mad at me for coming in, you know,” she said randomly, dodging my comment.

“Why is that?” I furrowed my eyebrows.

“She said that this,” she motioned to her beat up face, “would be too distracting during sessions. Which is clearly true.”

“I’m sorry,” I said lowly.

“It’s not your fault,” she chuckled lightly. “I just couldn’t stay away; I couldn’t do that to you,” she admitted.

“It’s alright… does it hurt?” I asked.

“Not really,” she shrugged her shoulders. “But no more questions. I’m the one who’s supposed to do the questioning here,” she said with a toothy grin.

“Now, tell me how you’re feeling. We can go somewhere else, if you’d like.”

“That’s okay,” I said, looking through her window. It was storming, again, and the only place I’d rather be was outside.

“I actually feel pretty good,” I said. She looked at me skeptically. “I’m serious—I, uh, was able to talk to Tony. We talked to each other about how we felt, which made me feel better,” I said truthfully.

“That’s good. I’m happy you have him to talk to as a friend. That makes a worlds difference,” she said with a smile, but her smile carried a small ounce of pain in it. I wondered what could possibly be painful about her words… could it be that she wished that I would talk to her as a friend? Was she jealous of Tony?

I scoffed internally at the thought. Her smile probably appeared to be painful because of her physical injuries.

“I sort of, uh, got something off of my chest by talking to him, y’know?” I stammered.

“Yes,” she nodded. “It’s good not to bottle up how you feel inside.”

“Yeah, that’s what Tony said, too,” I said lowly. I picked at the ends of my sweatshirt’s hood strings nervously.

“Is there anything else?” she asked quietly. “I just want to make sure that your varying emotions are the normal kind. It’s okay to feel down, sad, and confused sometimes—it’s just important to recognize when the feelings get out of hand, when you can’t cope with them,” she explained.

I smiled—a genuine, happy smile. Even my eyes smiled, and I think she noticed. “Bree, I think the feelings I feel right now are normal. Like, I don’t feel like I’m drowning. I don’t feel the dark and heavy cloak on my shoulders, anymore,” I realized. Yeah, maybe I was feeling really bad earlier, but after talking to Tony… it all made sense.

Could it be? Was Bree Lewis the one who got me out of my depression?

Yes.

“I really hope you mean that,” she smiled proudly, and I nodded with another smile.

“You’ve made unbelievable progress, Vic. I genuinely think you will be out of here soon,” she said excitedly, and my smile broadened.

For some reason, I felt rather empowered at her words and my situation. Empowered enough to build up some nerves…

“It’s all thanks to you,” I said quietly. I don’t think she would ever realize how much I meant those words. She smiled softly, and I leaned forward a little more. “Thank you,” I whispered, the words barely audible.

Before I could change my mind, before I lost all of my nerves, I shyly leaned forward even more. My heart was aggressively pounding in my chest as out faces got closer and closer. I waited for a moment—just enough time to see if she would stop me—but she didn’t. The anticipation was nearly going to kill me, but the second I touched my lips to hers, my heart rate slowed dramatically, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and my entire body melted. Calm—I was completely calm.

The kiss was light and shy, and I desired to know what she was thinking. I pressed my lips on to hers a little harder—pure passion—and, as I did so, I peeked my eyes open to see, to my surprise and joy, that hers were closed.

Everything about the situation was slow: a slow approach, a slow contact, and a slow withdraw. And, now, we sat there, our faces still inches apart, staring at each other as our minds slowly began to process what just happened.

“Oh,” she said in a quiet whisper.

Bree’s facial expression slowly changed, and I slowly began to realize that maybe this was not a good idea. Her face twisted in slight confusion as she slowly brought her hand up to her mouth. “Oh,” she repeated with a blink.

“Ah, shit,” I muttered, and the speed of my next actions did not compare to the slowness of everything else: before she had time to react further, before I embarrassed myself even more, I jumped up and turned away, running out of the room and down the hallway as fast as possible.

Notes

I know it's short, buuuuuuuuuuuuut..............

.........i'll just leave this here.