Hey guys! Just wanted to tell you that I really appreciate and enjoying reading your reviews. Here's a new chapter that I hope you enjoy.

Songs 14 - 18 now in the playlist I shared were the ones that inspired this chapter.

Thank you for reading!

NO ONE IS PERFECT

About 12 hours later, Lea was in Hershey, driving a rental car and heading to Sarah's house, at night.

When she arrived, Sarah heard the car and looked out the window, then went to the front door to greet her friend. They hugged for a moment then moved to the kitchen where Sarah's husband was finishing making dinner and they all chatted briefly about mundane things, until Sarah finally asked:

"So, what happened?"

Lea chuckled. "Can't I just come spend a few days with my favorite person in the world?"

Sarah chuckled, too "Of course you can, but I know you. I can see it in your eyes, something happened… So what is it?"

It was true, her friend knew her too well… For some reason, she had not told Sarah anything about her and Shaun finally admitting their feelings for each other or her response, and much less what came after that, Lea herself was still processing it.

Leaning over the kitchen counter and fiddling with her fingers, Lea replied. "Shaun told me he loves me… and I said it, too"

Both Michael and Sarah raised their brows in surprise and excitement.

"Finally!" Said Sarah but Lea shook her head.

"No, it wasn't as exciting as you think… I told him I don't want to be his girlfriend"

"What? Why?" Michael asked and Sarah nudged him. "What? I'm genuinely curious. This has been boiling for a while and it was just matter of time before the pot exploded"

Sarah cocked her head to the side thinking —Eh, you're right…— and nodded, then both looked at Lea who sighed again.

"It's complicated…" Lea replied. "I… I don't think he could handle it… or rather, I don't think I could… specially after what happened last night"

Sarah and her husband looked at Lea expectantly, wanting to hear more, so Lea went ahead and told them everything.

"What?… Wow… Remind me to thank your neighbors for calling the police because I probably would have done the same…" Said Sarah as she stared at the nothing for a moment, kind of in shock while processing everything after her friend finished talking.

Lea nodded "I know… I mean, it was never my intention to hurt him, but I had to be honest with him, I owed him at least that, because he's always been honest with me and that's what I appreciate the most about him, but, how do I deal with what happened last night? It's actually not the first time he does something like it. I mean, as far as I know, he's never gone to someone else's place with a baseball bat, and I don't think he'd hurt anyone, but he's had breakdown's over things not going the way he wants or someone rejecting him, before. He's just so… intense. I - I don't know how else to put it…"

Michael turned off the stove and all Sarah managed to do was to nod slightly, not knowing what else to say or do in that moment.

Lea sighed and added "I feel like I should have seen it coming; maybe I did, but I didn't think it would be like this… And being with him as more than friends; I just… Remember one time I told you he's not someone you just date for a couple months?" Sarah nodded again. "Well, I don't think I'm ready for that; to give more, you know? I don't know if I want that. To settle down and…" She sighed and shook her head slightly. "I don't know… I feel like I'm so a shitty person…"

"It's not your fault he doesn't know how to take a no for an answer or control his emotions. What would have happened if the girl he was dating had said no to him the day he asked her out?" Michael said while frowning.

"To be honest, it's not exactly his fault either… It's not his fault he was born autistic and has issues expressing his emotions…" Lea replied, staring down at her hands fiddling with her fingers as she began to get emotional, because the feelings from the night before were still on the surface.

"Well, no, but being autistic doesn't mean he's entitled to be a jerk and act like that with you or anyone else over being rejected… I know you love him and I know you never meant to hurt him, but you're not obliged to be with him just because he loves you, too. I think he needs to learn a thing or two about life and himself before even getting involved in another relationship… You know what you want and what you need from a relationship, and if you don't want to be with someone because they can't give you those things or you also can't meet their needs, whether they're autistic or not, that's okay."

Lea sniffled and let out a sob as she broke into tears, unable to hold back any longer, and Sarah moved to wrap her arms around her friend.

"And you know what? The hurtful things he or anyone else has ever said to you, are bullshit… I know you well enough to be able to say that you're the least prejudice and superficial person I know" Michael just nodded in agreement and Sarah continued while still hugging Lea "It's not like you get fired from the jobs you leave, YOU decide to leave them because you don't like them anymore, and okay, maybe that says something about commitment or whatever, but I think it's better to leave than stay somewhere where you're not happy and fulfilled; the same goes for boys, you could have dated any guy you've ever dated for a longer time but you decided you didn't want that. It was YOUR decision, not theirs, maybe because you had trust issues or whatever, but it was YOU leaving them, not the other way around as Shaun or anyone else has made it sound…"

"That sounds like I use men…" Lea muttered against Sarah's chest and sobbed again. "And maybe I have and that's also why I'm a shitty person…"

"You're not! And if you were selfish, you wouldn't be letting someone go because you think they deserve better or you think you're too much, which…"

"Which is not true…" Michael finished his wife's sentence, then added "As I'm sure Sarah has told you before, you deserve to be loved however you want or need to be loved, as well as Shaun, and if you feel that you two can't give each other all that, it's okay to let go. It's painful, but it will be all right."

"Exactly... I don't ever want you saying or even thinking you're a shitty person again, okay?" Sarah said still holding Lea as she cried some more.

"Love is such a complicated thing" Lea muttered against her friend's chest.

"I know…" Sarah replied and Michael, trying to distract them and lighten up the mood a bit, served the food.

"We should eat, a full tummy will make you feel better" He joked changing the topic and took the plates to the table.

Both Lea and Sarah chuckled breaking the hug and Lea wiped away her tears with the back of her hand; she took a moment to compose herself, then they walked to the dining table.

They sat to enjoy dinner and her friends tried to distract her by talking about random things but her mind kept wandering back to thinking about what was going to happen between her and Shaun from then on and hoping he was okay, because she had seen how bad his meltdowns or breakdowns can get; had she not walked into his room in Wyoming, who knows what else he'd have done apart from hitting his head and foot. The night before he was drunk and alone, and Lea had no idea what else happened after he left her place.

She barely touched her food and Sarah worried about her but knew she just needed time. Eventually, Lea excused herself and headed to the spare room they offered her to sleep in. She changed her clothes and laid down on the bed, under the covers, staring out at the window as the blinds were still open, watching the rain fall outside in the darkness, with the drops lit up slightly by the outdoor lamps, then she closed her eyes, finding the sound of the raindrops hitting the window kinda soothing, easing her mind until she fell asleep.

—

That same night, in San Jose, it was raining outside again, and Shaun found the sound of the drops hitting the windows distracting as he was alone in the room, at the hospital, doing research for the case him and his team were working on, then Dr. Glassman walked in.

"There you are, I've been looking for you. Why haven't you gone to see me?" Said the old man.

"You told me to meet you when I had free time. I haven't had any, I'm doing research right now" Shaun said lifting his eyes from the journal he was reading.

"Yeah, I heard you have an interesting case… You didn't even take time to eat something this afternoon?"

"Yes" Shaun said about the case, then added "I did, but I was eating. I couldn't go to your office because I was eating"

Glassman narrowed his eyes slightly. "It kinda sounds like you're making up excuses… Anyway, what did you do last night?"

"Why?" Shaun asked looking up at his mentor.

"Lea came to my office this morning, she was going somewhere out of town. She said I should ask you what happened last night and mentioned something about her neighbors calling the police. What happened? Are you okay?"

The young doctor's body tensed up as he glanced around the room in silence, which Glassman noticed.

"Shaun…" Glassman added, waiting for his mentee to respond.

"I went to Lea's place last night" He replied.

"And?"

"I wanted to smash her car up with a baseball bat"

Glassman looked at him with a mix of disbelief, horror and worry on his face. "You what?"

"I wanted to hurt her the way she hurt me. A patient's ex girlfriend smashed his car up with a baseball bat because he cheated on her. She said she was ending the relationship in her terms and it made her feel better. She said: 'you can't control how you feel about someone, but you can control what you do with those feelings'. I couldn't smash Lea's car but I still ended things in my terms, I controlled what I did with my feelings and I told her nothing but the truth. I don't think it made me feel better, though" He finished with a small shrug.

"Oh my God, Shaun…" Glassman moved to sit on a spare chair and took a deep breath before adding "Do you want to end up back in jail? Her neighbors called the police! What - God…" The doctor sighed, pulled off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose with his fingers.

"They must have arrived when I left. Am I going back to jail? I didn't like being there last time, Dr. Glassman"

"I don't know, Shaun, I have no idea if she pressed charges against you or something" Glassman answered exasperated. "You can't do things like that. That woman smashed the guy's car because he cheated on her. Lea didn't cheat on you! Even if she would have, it's wrong to do something like that. You can't just go to someone's house to damage them or their property just because they don't want to date you!"

"But I didn't hit her car, I dropped the bat on the floor"

"It doesn't matter, Shaun, what you did was wrong! Things like that and what happened with your other patient's son, are the kind of thing I've always been afraid of, they're exactly why I suggested you to get some kind of help before, but you refused… This can't keep happening, Shaun. You already got fired once because of your behavior and you were lucky you got reinstated, but not everyone will be so forgiving… I'm not gonna be here all the time to have your back, Shaun. Someone already put up a restraining order against you, what if Lea did, too, huh?" The old doctor sighed and shook his head while Shaun had taken out his toy scalpel and was rubbing his thumb against the blade. "Lea did nothing bad to you" Glassman added.

"She rejected me because of my autism"

"She's not the first and sadly she won't be the last, not only in love but life in general… You can't do things like that, you can't break like that every time things don't go the way you want them to, every time someone says no to you. It's wrong and you HAVE to work on it. You've been fired, you've got beat up, people have called the police on you and you were sent to jail for a few hours, and you only were there for a short time because of Dr. Park and me, but what if he hadn't been an ex cop? What if he hadn't been with you? What if I was no longer here? What then?" The old doctor sighed again and they sat in silence for a moment.

"Will Lea come back?" Shaun asked after a couple minutes.

"I don't know, Shaun, I think you scared the crap out of her last night and she needed some time off. She said she'd take the whole weekend, but who knows... Try to put yourself in her shoes for a bit. What if things had been the other way around, would you have liked it if Lea went to your place and smashed your TV with a baseball bat?"

"N-No" Shaun shook his head. "I didn't smash her car, though..." Glassman was about to say something again but shaun signaled him to stop with his hand, and added "I get it… Is everyone going to leave me?"

"What?" Asked his mentor with a frown as Shaun began to get upset.

"I do everything wrong… My dad didn't want me, my mom chose him over me and my brother, Carly left me, Lea, too, you'll probably get sick of me as well…" Shaun said breathing heavy. He got up from his chair and started pacing around the room, holding his toy scalpel.

"What are you talking about? Calm down…"

"Everyone will go away. I'll probably end up back in jail and no one will get me out of there because I make people upset, I make them hate me and leave me! And I'll never be loved like everyone else!" The young doctor shouted as he began crying.

"Stop it!" The old man shouted over him and got off his chair, too. "Look at me!"

Shaking, teary and with heavy breaths, Shaun made eye contact with the man who's been his only good father figure.

"Don't ever say that about yourself! You hear me? I don't want you to ever say that about yourself again!" Shaun, still breathing heavy, held tight onto his scalpel and Glassman added "We all make mistakes. We all have said things that we've then regretted, we've all done things that were wrong, but we learn from those mistakes… And I'll never get sick of you" He reached to rest his hand on Shaun's shoulder but his mentee leaned in for a hug instead. "You're a great young man, Shaun, and I'm proud of all the things you've accomplished… Yes, you have a bunch of things you need to work on; I mean, we all do… but one day you'll find someone who will love you no matter what, I'm sure of that." He added while hugging his almost son tightly, until Shaun took a deep breath and pulled back.

"Okay?" Said Glassman, looking at a calmer Shaun. The young doctor nodded and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand

"Okay…" The young doctor nodded and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

"I'm gonna go ask Dr. Park if he can find out if there's another restraining order against you or something… Will you be okay if I leave?"

"Yes" Shaun nodded again and took another deep breath.

"All right…" The old man nodded slightly then walked out of the room and left Shaun in there, thinking.

"Two tequila shots, please" Lea ordered for her and Sarah at the bar of the nightclub they were at.

After work, Sarah took Lea out for the night, because she knew that one of the ways her friend gets rid of stress is by dancing.

"I visited my grandma earlier today" Said Lea as the barman handed her the shots of tequila she had ordered, then she held one out for Sarah.

"Aw, that's nice, I bet she missed you a lot. Were your parents there?"

Lea nodded and downed her shot grimacing slightly in the end as the liquid burned her throat, then she replied "They were, but I didn't go there to see them, you know? They were their same old selves and we only talked briefly. They have a tendency to act as if nothing happened…" She shrugged. "It was really nice to see my nonna again and talk to her, though. I took her out for lunch and we had a chat. I needed that."

Sarah smiled and nodded after drinker her shot, having the same reaction as Lea.

"Shaun drinks these like nothing" Lea mentioned as her other friend (if he still was her friend) creeped into her thoughts, then she turned around and order another shot; Sarah ordered herself another kind of drink.

"What's gonna happen between you two?"

"I have no idea…" Lea replied.

"I think you're scared…"

Arching up a brow, Lea looked at her friend and waited for her to explain.

"…Of really opening up to someone and letting them in, maybe settling down; whether that someone is Shaun or not…"

"Well, of course I am… You open up like that to someone and you give them the power to tear you apart, but you also get that power. I could handle it, I've been through it before, but I don't think Shaun could. I mean, I already hurt him, even though it wasn't my intention, and look at how he reacted… I don't really want to give that kind of power to someone again, and I don't want to hurt anyone else. I know myself and I just know it would be a mess…"

"No relationship is perfect, Lea. We all make mistakes…"

"You - You and my grandma can't talk about imperfect relationships" Lea interrupted her friend, joking. "You and Michael, and my grandparents are the epitome of perfect relationships."

Sarah chuckled and shook her head. "That's so not true, not everything is flowers and rainbows all the time! We have our moments, like every other couple… It's not exactly what we do wrong, what's important is how we overcome those things together, because we're a team… You're afraid of making mistakes that you can't even know for sure if you're gonna make. You're thinking way ahead instead of taking one day at a time. You can't predict the future"

Lea scoffed and rolled her eyes. "That's exactly what he once told me: 'you can't predict the future'…"

"Well, he wasn't wrong" Sarah replied and chuckled.

"Ugh, let's dance!" Lea grabbed her friend's hand and dragged her to the dancing area where she immediately started to dance.

Shaking their hips and heads, skipping around and throwing their arms up in the air, they enjoyed the music. Lea tried to let go of all the things that were in her mind at that moment but, even though the music was good, some of the songs and their lyrics didn't help, because they were making a certain someone pop back into her thoughts over and over again.

Eventually, some guy got closer to dance with her. He told her he was there celebrating his 21st birthday, but that's all she heard, because she didn't pay much attention to whatever else he said that night, she was focused on just dancing with Sarah and whoever else was around. At one point the guy tried to kiss her but she playfully pushed his face away with her hand, shaking her head and grinning at him. Se wasn't in the mood for that, she could do it, she was single and having fun, but she didn't want to fall back into one night stands and casual flings, so she just ignored the guy from then on and kept dancing with her friend until they got tired, then they got an Uber and headed back to Sarah's house.

"I want to hurt you the way you hurt me" He said holding a baseball bat over his shoulder, ready to swing it.

She broke his heart, and one way to hurt her as much was to damage the one thing that meant a lot to her, the car her grandpa left her; her most cherished possession.

He swung the bat hitting the window, then the mirror; moved to the front and hit the windshield once, twice, then the hood and kept going while Lea cried.

"Shaun, stop, please!" She shouted in real life, waking up from the nightmare, breathing heavy and with her cheeks and eyes damp from crying.

Sarah ran to the guest room and rushed in to check on her friend. Lea sat up on the bed and hugged her knees to her chest, burying her face in the space between them. Her friend moved to sit next to her and rubbed her back.

"It was just a nightmare…" She said in a soothing voice.

Lea nodded a bit and sniffled. "I'm so sorry, did I wake you?" She lifted her head to look at her friend.

Sarah shook her head "No, I was in the kitchen, it's okay… Are you okay?"

The brunette girl nodded repeating what her friend had said "It was just a nightmare"

"You wanna talk about it?"

"It was just what happened that night, except he actually hit the car and kept hitting it, in my dream… It would have been really awful if that had happened. He knows how much that car means to me…"

Her friend nodded "Thank goodness he didn't hit the car or you"

"There would have been no way back from that if he had…"

"So you think there is a way to go back to how things were?" Sarah asked.

"Not to how they were" Lea shook her head "I honestly don't know. It may be the best for both if we're not friends anymore" She looked down at her knees and began tearing up again. "It's just, what am I supposed to do? Go back there and quit my job at the hospital? And then what? I'm gonna be there alone, job hunting and miserable…"

"So you wanna say yes to him just so you're not alone and miserable?" Sarah arched a brow.

"No! I'm just saying, I don't know what to do with my life!" She sighed and wiped her tears away.

"You could move back here…"

Lea shook her head "I don't wanna run away anymore… I fave to figure this out on my own, no matter how hard it is… I'll be fine" She nodded slightly and so did Sarah.

"I know you will" Sarah hugged her friend for a moment then added "I made breakfast, if you want to eat something before you leave"

"Thank you" Lea replied and nodded with a soft smile.

That day, on Sunday, she headed back to San Jose, thinking about what she was going to do at work from then on, knowing that at some point she was going to have to face Glassman again, but there was nothing else to be said to him, and hopefully he'd have nothing to say to her either. However, the week started and what she feared the most happened. She almost bumped into Shaun while she was chatting with a nurse about an event that would happen later that week.

"Yeah, she was a patient here…" Said the nurse.

"Shit" Lea interrupted her when she spotted Shaun and Dr. Park who were about to walk by the spot she was at with the nurse. She ducked down and hid behind the desk of the nurse's station and the nurses arched their brows up, wondering what was going on. Lea's cheeks flushed pink and once Shaun was gone, she got back out of her hiding spot.

"I - I should get back to work…" She said and awkwardly walked towards the elevator.

—So this is how it's gonna be now, me hiding from you because I can't even get myself to look you in the eye?— She wondered and sighed while heading to the clinic floor.

And that was how the week went. She'd go from her apartment to work and vice versa, go cycling at the park every now and then in the mornings to get rid of some of the energy and tension she had, kept herself occupied with whatever task she was assigned at the hospital, enrolled herself on an online coding course to keep her mind busy at home, too, just trying to live her life normally, except she kept avoiding Shaun, but truth was, he avoided her, too.

As a surgical resident, Shaun basically had nothing to do at the clinic, but sometimes he'd be there to have lunch with Debbie and Glassman; that week though, he had not set foot there at all, because Glassman had told him that Lea was back, and just like she couldn't get herself to look at him because of the shame, hurt and a dash of fear that she still felt, he couldn't get himself to do the same, because he still felt hurt, and apart from that, he hadn't figured out exactly what else he felt nor what he was supposed to do.

Then Saturday came, and that night, as she had read on an invitation at the hospital, a fundraising event for cancer research was taking place at a local brewery, open to all the hospital staff who wished to join. Lea didn't have anyone to go with, but it was a nice opportunity to possibly meet new people, a new place, and try some local beer, plus, it would keep her mind busy.

She knew a lot of people from St. Bonaventure Hospital, specially doctors, would be there but she didn't think a fundraising event at a brewery was Glassman's nor Shaun's style, so, considering that probably none of them would be there, she decided to go, not knowing that such event and night would change her life.