Chapter 13: Pre-heating

September 15, 2013

"OK Tessa. Let's take a look at your thought journal this week. Can you walk me through this?"

Tessa stared at the backs of her fingernails as her therapist thumbed through the spiral notebook. More of the same, she thought to herself with a sigh. Sometimes she wondered if all this therapy was really helping her make any progress at all.

"Tessa?" Dr. Regan prompted again.

"I guess it's mostly about Scott again," Tessa replied without looking up. She knew she was mumbling and she forced herself to speak a little louder. "He didn't come to see me at all last week. It kind of sucked."

She could sense Dr. Regan's thoughtful nod in response. "And how did that make you feel?"

It made me feel like shit, Tessa thought to herself angrily. What did her therapist expect her to say? Warm and fuzzy? With an effort, Tessa bit back a sarcastic reply. She'd save that for later. For Taylor. That was the nice thing about talking to Taylor, wasn't it? She didn't have to censor herself. And she didn't have to dissect every passing emotion that flitted through her head like a butcher carving up a side of beef.

"I don't know," she said to Dr. Regan, playing for time. "It's not Scott's fault, I guess. He started his new semester, so he's busier now with school. I understand that."

"OK, Tessa. Try to dig a little deeper for me if you can."

"I don't know!" Tessa snapped. "How do you think I feel? I feel lonely and hurt and angry. And scared. I feel scared. OK? Is that deep enough?"

"That's good, Tessa. I hear you saying that Scott's behavior frightens you. Could you tell me more about that?"

Tessa swallowed a groan. Honestly, couldn't Dr. Regan just ask a straightforward question for once in her life? Did she have to make everything sound like a psychology textbook?

Tessa didn't know why she found therapy so annoying lately. She should probably write about that in her thought journal. What would Dr. Regan have to say to that? Tessa nearly let out a giggle at the thought . "Tessa, I hear you saying that I annoy the crap out of you. Could you tell me more about that?"

"Tessa?" Dr. Regan interrupted her thoughts. "Did you hear me?"

"Sorry," Tessa responded, giving her head a rapid shake. She had to focus. She was never going to get better if she didn't take therapy seriously. "I guess it makes me scared that Scott might be drifting away from me. I feel like I'm a burden to him. Like I'm a chore on his to-do list. And I'd be really isolated if I didn't have him. I'd be completely alone. That scares me."

"I see. Have you expressed these feelings to Scott?"

"No." Tessa could feel her pulse start to quicken at the thought. "We don't really talk like that. It would be weird."

"Talk like what, Tessa?"

"About feelings and stuff. I don't know. His eyes just kind of glaze over, and he changes the subject. I don't want to seem clingy. Taylor says-"

"Taylor?" Dr. Regan interrupted. "This is your new online friend?"

"From Twitter," Tessa confirmed. "We've been talking a lot lately."

"That's good, Tessa. How frequently do you and Taylor talk?"

"Every night, for about a month now. Sometimes she messages me during the day, too, but she has to work a lot."

Dr. Regan wrote something on her notepad. "And just to clarify, when you say you and Taylor 'talk,' you mean that you exchange text messages?"

"Yeah. We just DM each other over Twitter."

"And you feel comfortable sharing your feelings about Scott with your friend, Taylor?"

"Sure. We talk about all kinds of things. We have a lot in common, I think."

"Tell me more about that, Tessa."

"About what we have in common? I don't know. She has a lot of anxiety too. She's not in therapy or anything, but she probably should be. I try to tell her things you told me - to try to help her a little. And then we just have common interests, I guess. We talk about Eric a lot."

"Eric Thorn?"

"Yeah. She's funny. Her username is @EricThornSucks. She pretends like she hates his guts, and she makes fun of me for obsessing about him, but she's obviously a huge fan too. She follows everything he does almost as closely as I do." Tessa cracked a smile at the thought. "I don't know. I keep telling her my theories about Eric - about how he's secretly unhappy, you know? She's the first person I've met in the whole fandom who doesn't think I'm crazy."

"OK Tessa. I hear you saying that you talk a lot about Taylor's personal life, and you talk about Eric Thorn's personal life. But do you ever talk with Taylor about your own personal life?"

"Yeah. We talk about that too. All the time."

"Do you feel comfortable sharing things with Taylor that you wouldn't share with me?"

Tessa's eyebrows rose slightly at the question. Maybe Dr. Regan wasn't quite as clueless as Tessa made her out to be. "Maybe," she responded with a nod. "Probably. There's less pressure, I guess. It's not so formal. And it's just texting. Sometimes that's easier than talking to someone face-to-face."

Dr. Regan nodded and paused for a moment. Tessa watched her curiously as her therapist gathered her thoughts to form her next question. "Tessa, do you think you might feel comfortable enough with Taylor to try talking to her about what happened last spring?"

Tessa had begun to relax and even enjoy this therapy session a little, but she felt every muscle of her body tense now at Dr. Regan's words. Last spring. She clamped her eyes closed, desperate to block out the images that came unbidden to her mind.

"Tessa?" Dr. Regan prompted softly.

"No," Tessa whispered. "No. I'm not ready. I'm not there yet."

***

Eric sat in his trailer, perched on a narrow stool, trying his best not to scratch.He knew there'd be hell to pay if he gave in to the maddening itch that burned its way across his chest and down his arms. Wardrobe and grooming had just completed prepping him for his music video shoot. He'd spent the past four hours being stripped down, waxed hairless, marinated, tenderized, powdered, and anointed with some Crisco-like substance that made his flesh glisten in the light. They'd left him alone with strict orders not to touch a thing until the director called him to the set. He felt like a suckling pig now, readied to roast, just waiting for the oven to pre-heat.

If he scratched, he'd leave angry red streaks that could take hours for the makeup artists to cover up again. He had to resist. Find a distraction. Anything to keep his hands and his mind busy.

Eric picked up his phone off the dressing table in front of him and flicked over to Twitter. One corner of his mouth quirked up as he tapped out a direct message.

Taylor: Hey you there?

He watched the screen eagerly, waiting for Tessa's reply to pop back. She usually answered instantly, as if she'd been sitting by the phone. But today the seconds ticked by. He became aware, after a minute, that he'd been holding his breath.

What was the matter with him, anyway? Holding his breath? He'd been messaging with Tessa for about a month now, and it was starting to get to the point where he couldn't make it through a day without her. He'd become kind of attached. Probably too attached. More like an addict seeking a fix, when it came to talking with Tessa.

She just made him feel better, for some reason. She took the edge off - even in his darkest moods. She knew how to tease him out of a funk, and she just had this air of optimism about her, this positivity, even in the face of all her problems. It helped him keep his own issues in perspective. And he found her thoughts about him - about Eric Thorn, that is - oddly fascinating. She had no idea what she was talking about, of course. She didn't know him. But somehow she had sensed an undercurrent of something darker, hidden beneath his shiny, carefully constructed facade. She had no idea how close she came sometimes to the truth.

And it didn't hurt that she was always around to listen, any time he had a spare moment to text.

She'd explained to him about her condition that first night when they stayed up late chatting. "Agoraphobia," she'd texted. "I'm afraid of being around other people, basically. I haven't left the house in six months."

"Why?" he'd responded. "Did you always have it?"

"No, I was normal until I went away to college. I had to drop out my freshman year."

"What happened?" he'd replied.

She'd paused for a long time before she answered - long enough to make him regret his question. Had he asked too much? Had he scared her off?

"You don't have to tell me," he'd hastily tapped out as the silence wore on. "I didn't mean to be nosey."

He'd held his breath that night, too, waiting for her response as the seconds ticked by. And he'd let out the air with a huff of relief when her next message finally popped up.

"No, it's OK," she'd said. "It's just hard to talk about it. I haven't even talked about it with my therapist yet. Not directly."

"Sounds like a pretty crappy therapist."

"She's OK. She says twitter is good for me. Therapeutic. It's social interaction at least, even if it's not real. So that's why I'm on here all the time."

Eric wondered what she could be doing now. She still hadn't replied to his message. Could she be in therapy? Or maybe she was with that boyfriend of hers. Scott. Tessa had mentioned him again last night. She'd been hoping that Scott would come over to see her today. He hadn't visited her all week.

Eric felt a twinge of some unpleasant emotion he couldn't quite identify as he recalled the conversation. Guilt, perhaps? A pang of conscience for talking to another man's girlfriend? Was it wrong? He didn't think so. His conversations with Tessa had been innocent enough. They teased each other, but it was never overtly flirtatious. Right? Or maybe it wasn't guilt. Maybe it was more like . . . jealousy?

Ridiculous. How could it be jealousy? Jealous of what? Of some loser guy named Scott who went to community college and barely visited his agoraphobic girlfriend? Was that really what was bothering him? Or was it the fact that, right at this moment, Tessa had her undivided attention directed at someone else?

This was getting out of hand, this Twitter habit he'd developed. He should put the phone down. Go outside. Take a walk. Go make small talk with the film crew. Maybe sign an autograph or two for some cameraman's teenaged daughter. . . .

But he couldn't resist the urge to stalk Tessa's profile first. Just to see if she was OK. Right? Maybe something had happened to her. Had she tweeted at all today?

He brought up Tessa's account and ran his eyes down the list of recent tweets. There, he saw. She'd tweeted this morning, an hour ago. He was just about to read the words when he suddenly felt a shadow fall over his shoulder and the hair rise on the back of his neck.

Someone had entered the trailer just behind him.

He moved to put the phone away, safely out of sight. But before he could set it down on the counter in front of him, he felt a hand reach out and grab it, ripping it from his grasp.

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