She doesn't sit on the chair across from him when she comes back on Thursday, she finds herself settling into the cushions of the couch, the soft fabric imprinting to her body. She sits down Indian style, her legs folded into one another, a slouching posture clearly noticeable. She balances the weight of her head on one hand, her teeth biting a finger that's found its way inside. She doesn't move to say a word, she just sits and stares up at him.
"I'm surprised you came back." Jack says softly, his words traveling from his body on the chair across the room. He looks at Rachel, his green eyes sparkling with kindness. He looks at her, surveying the damage underneath her eyes in the two days they've been apart. The circles underneath her eyes appear to have the appearance of marks by a purple crayon, colored roughly and without care.
"I had no choice."
"We always have a choice."
She shakes her head, trying to keep the bitterness from her tone. "I didn't."
She hasn't had the ability to make her own choices lately. She spent all of Tuesday, and Wednesday, Thursday morning even arguing with her fathers about therapy, about how unnecessary the entire thing really is, how therapy is providing a threat to her future. They barely listened, they simply said that many of today's young celebrities find themselves in therapy and rehab, often both, both a boost to their careers, and sent her along her way.
They said she can thank them for this at a later point in her life, when she's old enough to understand.
"Are you in a relationship?" She asks suddenly, without thinking. She's unsure of why it matters, but it does.
He arches an eyebrow at her tone more than her question, and he finds himself wondering why it would matter.
"You're not my type."
"That's fine." She says dismissively, barely noticing his words since he hasn't answered her question. "It's not as if I would want to date you, either."
He twirls the pencil between his fingers, waiting for her to continue, waiting for her to detail her point. When she says nothing, he speaks first instead. He breaks the silence because her stare is lingering too closely for his liking, a stare he's not used to, and he knows it's been too long since someone has stared at him that way.
He hopes there's no inappropriate thoughts circling through her mind.
"When did you and Finn break up?"
He brings back Finn, a safe topic of her high school boyfriend, a gentle reminder of other things. He wonders if she'll go back to her routine denial, and he's proven correct at her next set of words.
"We didn't break up." She hisses angrily, her voice laced with enough anger to make him almost believe her.
Jack continues to twirl his pencil as he waits for her to continue; he knows by looking at her, she's not going to stay quiet for long. He's not surprised it's the topic of Finn that brings a rise out of her, a wave of clear anger on a deep blue tide.
"How is dear Finn, then?"
"Fine." She replies, no longer concerned with keeping the bitterness from seeping into her tone.
"Just fine?"
She nods, just barely.
"Tell me about him."
She kinks an eyebrow, wondering if she's mistaken the care in his tone.
"I doubt you would care about the relationship of a seventeen year old."
He shrugs, setting down the pencil and crossing his arms behind his head.
"Humor me."
She thinks about Finn, and what his presence means in her life. She questions what he's become to mean to her during the course of these past months, how he's softly stayed with her.
"He's my anchor." That's the clearest word that resonates with her, the safety net he offers her.
"He ties you? That sounds inappropriate, given your age."
Rachel rolls her eyes, and avoids the sexual innuendo attached.
"No. He's strong, and stable; he's happy in ways I'm not."
"And you're not strong enough to be on your own?"
"I am." She says it with a force she doesn't feel, she needs this word to convey how fine she is, even if she isn't.
His brows crease in confusion as his head digests her words, and he wonders what he's missing.
"If you're strong enough to be on your own, why do you need him to be your anchor?"
"You're misinterpreting my words to hear what you want to hear."
Jack shakes his head, and folds his hands in front of her, resting them lazily on the table.
"I don't think so. I think you're playing the role of the damsel in distress, and you need someone to save you because you can't save yourself. Nobody wants to face reality, reality is difficult and hard, and it's real. Nobody wants that. Everybody wants their own fucked up version of sunshine and butterflies, rainbows sailing across the sky."
He pauses before he continues, wanting the words to fully sink in before he continues.
"That's why you have Finn, dear Finn who can protect you from reality, and the harsh glare of the outside world. That's why you like him, isn't it?"
"No, I'm pretty sure you're incorrect in your assessment. I like Finn because he's wonderful, not because I need to be saved, I'm not an avoider. I'm fine."
He nods, tapping his finger on the desk.
"Fine. Fine. You're fine." He doesn't bother hiding his contempt of the word at this point.
"Finn has a best friend." She says suddenly, changing the subject from her emotional well-being to Puck, and she racks her brain; she can't even recall the two of them speaking lately.
"Imaginary?"
Rachel takes a heavy breath before continuing, determined to not allow Jack's remarks to affect her.
"Cute. His name is Puck."
"Like the fairy from a Midsummer's Night Dream?"
A smile escapes her lip at the imagery. She can't think of anyone who would refer to Puck as a fairy. She shakes her head to end the day dream, and carries on.
"There was a thing between us once."
Those aren't the words that Rachel meant to say but when she sees the dubious expression on Jack's face, she can't help but continue on.
"A thing?"
Jack isn't sure what else to add to that. He's still not even sure if Puck is the guy's real name.
"Don't look so surprised, people do like me."
She wonders who she's trying to convince more in this moment, him or herself. She swallows a bitter laugh about who she is becoming.
"I'm fascinated. Carry on about the fairy."
If she was standing, she would have put a hand on her hip and stomped her feet like a toddler about the fairy reference but she isn't standing, and she doesn't feel well enough to care.
"One day long ago, after he ran into me and Finn at the mall, he stormed off upset that he saw us, and I ran after him. I told him Finn and I are just friends, nothing happened. I didn't want to hurt Puck's feelings, you know, that the thing between us was over."
She doesn't tell Jack that this happened this previous Monday, and not in the far off past like she wants him to assume.
"And he believed you?"
He tries to keep a straight face while trying to put two and two together but he can't, not when Rachel leaves out words that should be there. He ponders what she's trying to say without having to say it.
"He texted me later that night, and said he did, and I replied back."
"Did he respond?"
"He did, but not to what I asked."
Jack quirks an eyebrow, and refrains from rolling his eyes.
"What did he say?"
"He said he slept with Santana, the slutty cheer leader who attends our school."
Jack emits a low whistle, one that gets him on the receiving end of Rachel's dirty stare. She clenches her jaw prior to responding.
"I tell you that he sleeps with another girl, and you whistle? What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Drama. Drama." He pops his lips to further annoy her.
"You're not supposed to whistle when I tell you things."
He puts his palms out, a motion of indifference.
"Maybe he did it to be spiteful, to hurt you on purpose because he knows he could. Or maybe he's just an ass."
"He can't hurt me, I don't even like him that much." She says haughtily, with a trace of arrogance to cover the truth, the gaping wounds she has.
"Excuse me." He says, heavily sarcastic.
She shrugs, she doesn't care why he told her. She just knows he did, and that's the only thing there is to discuss.
"How did it end?"
She looks up, evidently jolted by the question.
"How did what end?"
Jack chews the eraser of the pencil he's holding, a bad habit he fell into when he was in his high school years, and it carried with him all these years. If Rachel finds the habit disgusting and grotesque, well, she doesn't say anything.
"You know, Puck. You said it happened a while back, so clearly, it had to have an end."
She doesn't say anything, the speech of her words failing. Jack's eyes narrow at the silence.
"You don't know how it ended? Or you can't tell me how it ended?"
"Fine, we broke up. Finn broke up with me while I was in the hospital, he broke up with me so he could wear a cape and no longer stand in the way of me being with Puck. And it didn't happen a while ago, it happened Monday night. Are you happy now?"
"How selfless of him." Jack says wryly. "Utterly selfless."
Rachel doesn't say anything, her eyes look away in defeat.
"What's in it for him?"
Rachel shrugs. "There's nothing in it for him. He just wanted me to be happy."
Jack laughs, a deep laugh that even she can feel.
"Bullshit. I don't believe that."
"I don't care what you believe, it's the truth. He cares about me enough to let me go."
Jack kinks an eyebrow, his laugh turning serious, his smile turning into a straight line.
"Guys don't just give up the girl, Rachel. That doesn't happen."
"He loves me." She whispers quietly, words she's never had to convince herself of. They were simple, they were true. She stares at Jack, digging her nails into the insides of her palm, and begins to hate him for putting roots of doubt inside her mind. She swallows thickly, willing herself back to the present.
He watches her carefully, but he's far enough not to see the faint pinpricks of blood that rise to the surface. She twirls a thumb in the middle of the skin, soft edges that once existed, now replaced with jagged cuts. She begins to stare more at her hands than at his face, and she waits for him to speak.
"He may love you like you want but he may also love you differently than you assumed. Life is not divided into black or white, especially when it comes to feelings like these. Feelings often come with their own blurry edges, their own color grey."
She rubs a thumb across the marks gently, and clasps her hands together before she can do further damage. She sighs, a heavy sigh weighted down by everything she hasn't said, everything she doesn't plan to say.
"What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to tell me the truth."
She looks away, a mirthless smile hugging the corners of her lips, a smile never making it to her eyes; her eyes staring at the degrees hanging on the wall. Her eyes flick over the prestigious achievements, and gazing at them brings slight pangs to her heart. She was going to be a star and now, now she's in therapy with a therapist who mocks her.
Suddenly, she feels ashamed and she can't pinpoint why.
"What did you write back?" He asks suddenly, remembering how this conversation began to turn.
"I told him if this is about getting even, we're never going to be even."
"Even?"
Rachel thinks back to the letters, back to Finn and Puck with Santana, and Finn, and Santana again, the hurting and the breaking apart the two of them have begun to dance through. She should have told Puck about the undeniable ache in her chest when her hand grabbed his arm, an ache audible outside the cavity of her chest. She thinks back to the blisters she feels when she imagines him with Santana the second time around; she wonders if it's the same blisters he felt when he imagined her with Finn.
"I don't think we're done hurting each other yet." Her voice leaves the back of her throat, barely hovering above a whisper, and Jack refrains a comment about the slight crack in her voice. He figures he doesn't want to make her cry, not until the third session, anyway.
"How do you know when you've won? Or he's won? Is this a game you can win? What's the prize?"
"I don't know."
"How long is this going to continue?"
"I don't know."
"Are you going to spend the rest of your lives focused on getting even?"
She doesn't answer, the air between them turning heavy. She watches as his eyebrows raise, she can feel the accusation in his tone.
"What do you know, then?"
"I don't know." She takes a heavy breath, cradling her head in her hands, unconcerned with her hair falling around her. She sits there, rocking back and forth, but the sobs aren't coming. She wants to cry, and her tear ducts aren't cooperating. The air is heavy with the silence between them, and he waits several pauses before pressing at the wound.
He's not completely heartless, he finds himself torn between wanting to push her, needing to push her to open but he's wondering if maybe, maybe this isn't the best subject area for today's conversation. He picks the former over the latter, and plows on ahead, figuring he has to make the incision sometime.
He begins a suture that's going to fester inside her for days, an imperfect line designed to pick apart the false seams she believes are holding her together. Therapy is about the re-opening of new wounds, and he can't re-open them if he's not willing to go through enough measures to pry.
"Let's start from the beginning. Tell me how you became involved in this messy triangle."
"I don't want to talk about it."
"What are you two fighting for?"
"We're not fighting."
She twists his words to answer what she wants him to say, what she wants to hear.
He ignores her play on words, and continues on, refusing to drop her stare.
"It sounds like you're fighting, it sounds like you're fighting very passive aggressively, more or less what I would expect from those your age. You tell him you have no feelings for him, and he retaliates by having sex with another girl, and then telling you about it. That's harsh."
"That's actually not how it happened." She says, correcting him.
"How am I supposed to talk to you if you only give me pieces of the whole story?"
"It's complicated."
"It usually is."
He takes out his stop watch, and sets it on two minutes.
"You have two minutes to summarize the most important parts. Go."
"Are you kidding me?"
"Wasting your breath, you have a minute and fifty seconds left."
"Fine, fine. It began last year when I became close friends with Puck outside of school, albeit carefully because my social standing is not equivalent to his, and he didn't want to be embarrassed. Then, after about two months, we had sex and he said it doesn't mean anything, and he walked out."
She takes a quick brush of air before she continues on.
"The next day, we began to ignore each other. I began to date Finn in January, right up until May, and then we broke up and he began to date this girl named Brittany. When summer vacation came, everybody left for the summer, including Finn but then he came back and we spent the summer having sex in his room, my room, in a bunch of rooms. I told Finn our summer together didn't mean anything to me."
She bites her lip of embarrassment; she just told her therapist, her male therapist she has sex. She briefly wonders if he cares, if he's being judgmental about the fact that she had sex with two different boys in the span of several months.
Jack doesn't say anything, he merely gestures to the time on the stop watch.
"The first day back, I trip over a box of letters, and it turns out Puck spent a summer writing me a bunch of letters. Some of them sweet and thoughtful, some of them cruel and vicious. Late October, I get back together with Finn and we're together for about a month again when he throws me a birthday party, and I ended up spending the end of the party with Puck at his house, he lives across the street, and then sneaking back to Finn when dawn broke."
She takes another breath, she finds speaking this quickly to be very draining. Jack find the story becoming intriguing, and thinks she has more problems than he did at sixteen, and he slept with every girl that walked back then.
"That morning, Finn yelled at me, and I stomped from his house, and then I got into a car accident, and Puck snuck in on a food cart to visit me, and then Finn broke up with me, but he stayed with me when Puck said he had a date, and that he couldn't make it back to the hospital to visit me."
Jack makes a face. Date? He waits for her to finish her diatribe before he asks.
"A week later, Finn drives me home and I finish reading all the letters, and Sunday, Puck stops by and it's going well, and then he says he can't do this, and then he walks out, and then it's over. It is over but it doesn't feel over. Do you know how over feels?"
She lets everything out, the last of her sentences rolling out on one breath, and she tilts her head to look at Jack expectantly.
"Well? Aren't you going to say something?"
"What are you fighting for?"
"Isn't that what you just asked several minutes ago? That has nothing to do with my two minute rant, anyway."
"No. My first question was in regards to what the two of you are fighting for. My second question is regarding what you find yourself to be fighting for."
"I don't know."
He smirks, and she begins to look uncomfortable.
"Evidently, you know nothing, then, since you haven't answered a single question."
"You never answered my question, the one regarding your relationship status."
"Would it matter?"
She tilts her head to the side, a strange expression covering her eyes. He can't read it, the mixture of feelings hovering inside her pupils, and he wonders if she can hide her feelings better than he thought.
"No. I suppose it wouldn't."
He checks his watch, and she smooths out the tangles of her hair, tucking stray strands behind her ears. Her thumb finds its way to the cashmere edges of her sweater, rubbing against the soft fabric.
They sit in silence for the last fifteen minutes of the session, neither willing to broach the distance, and at the chime of the clock, she walks out the door, and Jack can only sit in bewilderment.
AN: So, next up is the New Year's Chapter. Does anyone have any preferences for how the scenes play out? Or anything they want to see? I start school on Thursday so I'll probably have a chapter posted after that, maybe sometime over the weekend. I have a paragraph written, and it's less angsty, and a little more bittersweet than I had planned for a chapter.
