Ⓒ︎Ⓞ︎Ⓝ︎Ⓣ︎Ⓔ︎Ⓝ︎Ⓣ︎ 🅦︎🅐︎🅡︎🅝︎🅘︎🅝︎🅖︎

𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠 𝑎 𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑓 𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑆𝑒*𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝐴𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑢𝑙𝑡. 𝐼𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔, 𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒 𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔. 𝑌𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑙-𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑡. 

✿︎𝑪𝒂𝒔𝒔𝒚✿︎

POV Akhyra

I've made the mistake of letting Lucian see me vulnerable, as a result he tried, and failed, to double cross me. He might have convinced Hannah that he's innocent about the article, but I am no fool. I know how greedy people can get, especially when it comes to getting more fame.

Lucian has reminded me of something I have always known. People getting too close are a menace.

After the interview with Patrick Juste, Hannah drives me back home, where I lock in for my daily five hours of practice, followed by a session of yoga and meditation. When I have absolutely nothing else to do to kill time, I decide to schedule a call with my therapist before the actual date of our appointment.

I position my laptop in front of me and get comfortable as I lean back against my pillows in a sitting position. I have a feeling this will be a long session.

When Dr. Noreen's face appears on my screen, I notice she has traded her former pixie hairstyle for a buzz cut colored honey brown, the same shade as my locs. It's a fantastic look on her. Today, she wears a beige jumpsuit that accentuates beautifully the melanin of her dark skin. I make a mental note to ask about the brand after our session.

"What a pleasant surprise, Akhyra," Dr. Noreen greets me behind the Webcam. 

We go over our usual routine, which is to talk about ballet, and how I'm handling the fact that my career isn't at its best right now. I give her the good news about getting scouted by Madame Laroche. Then, after we've made the round of mundane topics, Dr. Noreen gets down to business. 

"How's your partnership with Lucian coming along?"

She knows about the football player whom my father assigned to be my chauffeur because we had covered this topic two sessions ago when Lucian had begun his driving duties.

"This is over," I announce with a dismissive wave of my hand. "I'm not dealing with him anymore."

Dr. Noreen jots down something on her tablet, and I have to resist the urge to ask what is worth writing about.

"Is there any particular reason for that?" She inquires in a neutral voice that doesn't fool me.

"This therapist thing you do is very upsetting," I let out exasperated. 

She remains perfectly composed while asking, "What therapist thing?"

"This thing where you pretend to not know what's going on when you can clearly detect from the passive aggressiveness in my tone that some shit happened."

Dr. Noreen nods as if I've made a profound philosophical reflection. "In that case, why don't you tell me about the 'shit that happened' if I may borrow your own words."

Ugh! I know that I'm paying her to outsmart me, but it is still frustrating when she does. I made a brief summary of the situation about the gossip article released this weekend that speculated about a relationship between Lucian and me. Dr. Noreen takes more notes without making a single comment.

"It was nothing that surprising really," I conclude. "Lucian never wanted to get stuck here with me in the first place. He probably figured that it would be best to turn his misfortune into an opportunity."

"What explanation did Lucian provide when you confronted him about the article?"

"I didn't talk with him, but he spoke to one of my employees. Of course, he denied responsibility."

"Why wouldn't you speak with him?"

"No reason. Just didn't want to."

I wait for her next question, but Dr. Noreen keeps staring at me. She's not taking notes anymore. I don't know if I should be bothered by that. Is this some kind of reverse psychology? 

"That doesn't mean I'm scared," I feel the need to add.

"I never said you were scared."

"I'm just letting you know that I'm not."

"You are feeling something. Let's try to identify what it is."

I don't want to go down that road. Not today. Not ever, in fact.

"Why do we need to do this? Don't you want to talk about my childhood trauma instead?"

"There's a time to talk about the past and a time to talk about the present. Let's focus on what's happened recently. This change in your life, brought by the arrival of Lucian Moreno."

Dr. Noreen looks down on her tablet as she scrolls through her notes as if she has a ton of shit written about Lucian. I remember complaining about him during our last two sessions, but surely this wouldn't be enough to create a whole Lucian File?

"You're making him sound like the Messiah," I scoff. "There was no change in my life brought by his arrival."

"My bad, let me rephrase that. How would you have described him the first time you two met? Feel free to elaborate as much as you want."

Ha! There's no need to think about that one.

"Extremely annoying."

"What about after you began to spend more time in his company?"

"Still annoying."

"Can you recall any instance where he wasn't annoying?"

Our night at the hotel following the match of the quarter-finals immediately comes to mind. I haven't spoken to her about that yet. When I recount our little trip to the capital to Dr. Noreen, for some reason, I choose to skip the part where I ran toward Lucian. If I tell her now, she will want to address it right away, and I'm not ready to try to figure out what this impulsive reaction meant.

"How would you have described him that night?" My therapist asks when I finish talking about the way Lucian helped me calm down after my episode.

I don't have to think about the answer. The word presents itself to my mind as clear as day. 

"Caring."

"Would you say that the man you saw that night, that caring man, might deserve the benefit of the doubt regarding this article."

"People can be caring one second and then turn out to be backstabbing liars the next. Those aren't mutually exclusive."

"I understand where you're coming from, but let's see it from another angle. If Lucian wasn't behind it, don't you think that your assumptions could hurt him? You haven't even given him the chance to explain himself to you."

This isn't how this session is supposed to go. First, it was Hannah who tried to plead Lucian's case this morning after the interview until I threatened to fire her. Now, my own therapist has become a Lucian Defender. What the hell is this? He's not the one paying her.

"Why do I have to be responsible for his pain?" I ask irritated. "It's not like he's my friend. We're not close like that."

"From what you've shared of that night, Lucian was there when you were scared, and he tried to make you feel better. Isn't that what friends do?"

There she goes, trying to outsmart me again. At the end of our session, as usual, Dr. Noreen gives me some work to do. I've just finished journaling when someone knocks on my bedroom door. 

Valentino walks in to tell me that I have an unexpected guest but before he's able to finish his sentence, Maëlla appears next to him, wearing a charming cottage core dress and holding what looks like a picnic basket. 

"I've brought snacks, a spa kit, and all my Barbie movies," she informs me with a serious expression. "You can't tell me to leave because we're about to be besties."

Valentino sends me an apologetic glance that translates as, "I'm sorry that I couldn't stop this madness." I signal to him that it's okay and he leaves us. 

An hour later Maëlla and I are lying on the floor on the biggest blanket that I could find. Our face is green from the avocado masks we've applied. Our pedicure dries as we paint our fingernails with various pastel colors. We're currently watching Barbie: The Princess and The Popstar while also doing an improvised confession game about some embarrassing memories that we have related to boys and romance.

"Most disappointing crush you've ever had?" I ask when it's my turn to pick a question.

"That's super easy!" Maëlla exclaims. "Okay, so when I was a freshman, I was crazily obsessed with a junior year guy until I heard him have a conversation with his friends. He was like,'I could go a full week without having a shower, and nobody would notice'. He was bragging about not having to take a shower often because apparently he doesn't have a strong body odor. After hearing that I vowed to never breathe the same oxygen as him."

"Oh my God, that is so disgusting!"

"I know, right?! What about you?"

"There was this guy that I met on a dating app. That was shortly after I left France, where I grew up, for the USA when I got into Julliard. During the talking stage, I told that guy I was a ballet dancer. He seemed kind of impressed, which was good for my ego until I realized that he began to craft himself a personality of a man with refined taste to seem cultivated. When he learned that French was my maternal language, he started using those big, complicated English words that made no sense at all. What we really did it for me was our first date. My bodyguard was there too, I suppose he felt a bit intimidated by that. We were visiting an aquarium, and he used the words "scrumptiously beguiling" to describe a sea turtle, and I was like, nah, I'm done."

Maëlla bends over wheezing at the anecdote. She barely catches her breath to comment, "You had this poor fella trying to memorize the dictionary to impress you."

"I prefer authenticity over those useless gimmicks."

"Agreed. My turn: Worst kiss you ever had?"

That makes me pause.

"I'll tell you when I have one."

"You haven't kissed before?"

"It's kinda hard to kiss someone when you freak out about people touching you."

"I'm sorry because we were talking about dating, I thought..."

"No, you're fine. I did try to date for a while, hoping that maybe someone would spark some interest to experience intimacy with them, but pretty soon, I realized I was wasting both my time and theirs, so I stopped."

"Do you think you'll ever find someone like that?"

"I don't know. Sometimes, I get scared of being alone for the rest of my life. You know the thought of dying without someone by your side or without having created any significant memories with anyone can be pretty terrifying. At least if I'm successful enough, I might live in the memories of my fans, but yeah, it's pretty scary nonetheless."

"I can relate to this feeling of worrying to never find something pure with anybody," Maëlla confesses. "I try not to do it, but most of the time, I look for similarities between whatever guy I'm dating and the one who assaulted me when I was fifteen. And it's like every time I'm with someone new there's this double pressure of trying to make it work because if every relationship I try to start fail, it might mean that I'm the problem and I don't want to be the problem."

"The pressure of being the perfect one in the relationship prevents you from being yourself," I tell her. "I don't think you want someone to fall in love with a practiced version of yourself. Sometimes, it can be liberating to be like: It's me. Hi..."

 "I'm the problem, it's me." Maëlla finishes the lyrics of Anti-Hero with a giggle.

"A little mayhem makes the world more exciting."

"Agreed. But sometimes, I just wish I could find happiness more quickly. Because I feel like the happiness of my family depends on mine. And that's a heavy burden to carry. My mother blames herself for not having seen the signs of depression after the assault happened because I kept it a secret. She and my brother found out through a note I had left on the night that I attempted to take my own life. Lucian took it harder because the guy... the guy who hurt me was one of his friends from university."

"That period was dark for both of us, really. He tried to be there as much as he could, and I kept pushing him away not because I blamed him but I couldn't deal with his guilt and my own trauma at the same time. I noticed how hard he took things. He dropped out of school, basically stopped having a social life, and became this sort of empty shell. If he hadn't made it to the national team, I don't know how his life would've turned out. I think football saved him. When I say that I wanna find happiness, it's mostly because of him. Because I know he will never allow himself to be truly happy until I am."

A heavy silence falls after her declaration. I didn't expect her to share that much about herself and her bond with Lucian, but I understand this urge to talk about your trauma just to let it out, not because you're looking for sympathy. 

"Your brother is old enough to take care of his own happiness, don't you think?"

"I'm just worried I'm the reason why he's stuck."

"Love, I think the only happiness you should be worried about is your own. You've only got this lifetime to make yourself be everything you want to be. I understand that you care deeply for your brother, but if there's one thing I've learned from therapy, it is that people can only fix themselves."

Maëlla finally meets my eyes for the first time since she began to open up about her past, and I notice that there are silent tears streaming down her face.

"Thank you for saying that."

"Thank you for sharing that part of yourself with me. I know it wasn't easy."

She wipes away her tears with a self-conscious chuckle. "I was not prepared for this spa session to turn so dramatic."

"Quality girl time is incomplete without crying over past trauma."

"I'm going to drink on that."

Maëlla was right. We're already besties.