For the first time, Flynn actually felt nervous in therapy. "So... what do you think?"

Tom looked him over for a long time, his expression completely unreadable. He was leaning his elbows on the arms of his chair, pressing his clasped hands against his mouth. It wasn't an imperious pose, like it was for some shrinks. He just looked like he was thinking. Like he was completely stumped. "I don't know, Flynn. What do youthink?"

Sighing, Flynn rubbed at his temple with one hand. "I don't know, either."

Tom at least looked sympathetic. "Well, let's see. So, you kissed her."

"Yes."

"And then you were a dick to her."

"...yes."

"Why?" Tom asked. "Did you not like the kiss? It was her first kiss, right? Cut the girl some slack."

Flynn snorted. "No, she was fine. It was good. It was... great." He'd replayed it over and over in his head, actually. Sometimes his lips and his fingertips tingled at the thought. Sure, she was a novice. But she was so into it that it was incredibly hot anyway, and he was so into her that he could easily overlook a little clumsiness on her part. Besides, she liked to learn, and he could teach her.

Tom smiled. "Then why the about-face?"

"I don't know... It didn't make any sense. As right as it all felt... it felt equally wrong, in a different way, and I couldn't stand it. I couldn't deal with her."

"Wrong, how?"

Flynn shrugged, thinking through his words carefully. He'd thought about it constantly between the kiss and therapy, so he had little bits and pieces of a theory about why he'd acted the way he did. "Like... like I was enjoying it but I didn't want it, or like I wanted it but not that way. Like I had no control over the situation or over myself."

"Right," Tom said. "You're used to really calculated interactions with women. The stakes are clear from the beginning. There's no emotional investment."

"Well, there's that. But also I think it... there's the money thing, you know? It really caught me off guard that she did that. I wasn't expecting it from her. I expect it from other women. It's the pointwith other women, but with Rapunzel..."

Tom nodded. "Why does it bother you that Rapunzel wanted to pay you?"

"It just didn't... it didn't seem like her. It didn't seem like us. I give Rapunzel a lot of things I don't give other people, and I don't mean free drinks. I mean I tell her things. We... talk about things I won't talk about with other people. I do things for her, you know? I mean, I support her when she needs support. I kind of... take care of her. I don't do that with other people. And her offering me money for something really personal between us..." It felt like a slap in the face. Tom seemed to understand.

"That makes a lot of sense, Flynn."

Did it? Flynn wasn't sure anything made sense anymore.

"But," Tom continued. "Do you think she meant it as an insult? Do you think she meant to hurt you?"

"I don't know. She's beyond me. I don't understand anything she does."

Tom raised an eyebrow. "That's just lazy. You dounderstand, you just don't want to think too hard about it. Why do you think she worked overtime to give you that money? To hurt you?"

Hesitating, Flynn conceded, "No, not really. She doesn't seem that into hurting me."

"It seems to me like she's tried everything else to get through to you and now she's trying to play your game. She sees it working for other women, so why not her?"

"But it doesn't really work for other women, not like Rapunzel wants it to," Flynn said, running a hand through his hair. "They get some physical favor. But that's not all Rapunzel wants. She wants a physical relationship andand emotional one. She wants the whole shebang."

Tom smirked. "I thought you said she didn't know what she wanted..."

Sometimes Flynn liked that Tom verbally smacked him around a bit. And sometimes it was just annoying. "I already told you about the sock thing," he grumbled. "And the grocery shopping, did I tell you about that? If I didn't watch out for her, she'd have bought every potato in the place. She can't make up her mind."

"We've been through this before," Tom said. "Don't equate her waffling about socks and potatoes to knowing what she wants from you. She's been very clear and consistent about that. Stop shifting the blame, Flynn."

Flynn cracked a little, both because that was a tall order and because, for whatever reason, being called Flynn like that was starting to grate on his nerves. It was like his very name was some kind of accusation, and he couldn't tell if that's how people intended it or if he was just starting to hear things. "What's the alternative?" he snapped. "That she hangs around me all the time because she really likes me, and she's always sending me messages and bringing me things and telling me stupid jokes because she gives a shit whether I'm happy or not, and she says what she does and touches me like she does and looks at me like she does because I'm precisely what she wants? Me. This is me, you're talking to. You want me to buy all that?"

Tom tilted his head thoughtfully. "Is that so unreasonable?"

"Isn't it?"

"It happens all the time," Tom said. "You said yourself that you thought she was falling in love with you. Why is that so hard for you to believe?"

Flynn made a helpless gesture, completely floundering. It was against everything he stood for to start listing reasons why she would not love him. He was a build-himself-up kind of guy. And there are a million reasons why someone would like him. He's sexy. He's charming. He's witty. He could mix a perfect martini blind-folded at gunpoint. And no one in Corona had better hair than Flynn. But those aren't reasons to love someone. You love people who are honest, and brave, and genuine, and compassionate, and vivacious, and all of that. You love people like Rapunzel.

"You know what?" Flynn said, crossing his arms over his chest and pushing back into his chair like a child. "I don't want to talk about this anymore. Isn't this supposed to be about me? This therapy? All we've talked about is her. I've said all I have to say about her."

Tom should have looked shocked or ruffled or apologetic, but he just looked interested. "What's making you pull away? Where did your thoughts just go?"

"I'm tired of this. I don't want to think about it anymore."

"Well... you can see why that makes it seem like it's the one thing you should really be talking about, don't you?"

"No," Flynn spat. "No I don't see why what I should really be talking about are all the reasons I don't think Rapunzel would love me." He grimaced. It sounded so saccharine and sad, those words out of his mouth. He didn't sound like a cocky, handsome twenty-something with the admiration of the entire city plus one eighteen year old light-weight. "God, I don't even like saying that."

"Love?"

"Seriously, can we just change the subject?"

"You just don't like the word love?"

"No, I don't. Not right now. Just stop that." Flynn was crawling out of his skin.

Tom rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine. I don't know why the word scares you so much, but we'll use a different word. Uh... Puerto Rico."

"What? Stop it. What does that have to do with anything?"

Tom pressed on. "You're completely in Puerto Rico with this girl. It's intense. She's trying to soak it in and make the most of it, and you're dragging your feet. Most people go there for the weather, and all you can say is that it's too hot. No matter how excited and enthusiastic she is, you whine, and whine, and whine some more. It's too sunny. It feels too good. Then, it feels bad. You want to stay there forever, and you wish you never came. And you complain in such a spastic, discouraging way that eventually she regrets being in Puerto Rico with you. She'd rather be in Puerto Rico with anyone but you. But she's there, and she can't take it back. Sucks to be her."

Flynn sputtered. "Is that supposed to be encouraging? You know what? If I were in Puerto Rico, I'd go to the Bacardi distillery, get drunk on the beach, and be done with it! Puerto Rico can go to hell!"

"Then why don't you, Flynn?" Tom pressed. "Why don't you just have her over, have sex with her, and be done with her?"

Flynn instantly bristled, just hearing her referred to that way made him angry, and that fact made him even more frazzled. "I wouldn't do that to her," he said stiffly. "That would crush her."

"Her or you?"

"Fine!" Flynn snapped, tossing his hands up in there air. "You want me to say I'd be crushed? Fine! I'm terrified that she cares about me like no one else ever has and that's just as fragile as any connection I've ever had with anyone else, and she could just as easily be done with me any time she feels like it. And she acts like she loves me but then she tried to buy me like everyone else and it feels like shit. And it's a lot easier to just push her away and have her out of my life than tell her any of this and just live waiting for her to get bored or distracted or figure out that she doesn't actually care about me. Alright? Thank you, Doctor. I feel so much better now. Really, it's like an enormous weight has lifted. It's so liberating to admit that I have no balls and I'm so scared of losing her that I threw her away. I have so much beautiful clarity now."

Tom was quiet for a long time. The only sound was Flynn's breathing, fast and impatient at first, then slowly calming. "You know," Tom said finally, "The point of therapy is to see those things so that you can decide if you want to change them. And then if you do, to figure out how. Maybe it's unpleasant to say those things to yourself, or out loud, but they will fester otherwise. Why don't you think it over this week? So you tossed her away out of fear. Are you okay with that? Maybe you are, in which case we can move on. Maybe not?"

The entire thing sounded so wishy-washy and shrink-ish that Flynn left the appointment with disdain and exhaustion clinging to him like slime.