“Yes, and can I just say I’m the queen of multitasking, you won’t have to worry about that,” I say, trying to cover my nerves with my sassy humor as usual. I know it’s a defense mechanism I’ve always leaned on.

“Okay, let’s circle back to what you just said to me about Forrest. It’s his fault that you’re here?” Her eyes are soft, and she is just swaying from side to side on her feet waiting for an answer.

I think about that and decide if this is going to work, I just need to say the first thing that comes into my head.

“Partly,” I reply.

“Why partly?” She steps forward and shoves me on the shoulder, not hard but enough to put me off balance. I stumble a little but steady myself again.

“Because he made me feel, and I’m better when I don’t.” And that’s the truth. Before I met him, and not in a casual way but in the way that no one else knows him, I had walls of steel that no one could hurt me through.

“Made you feel what?” This time she shoves me harder, and I don’t like it, so instead of stepping back, I push forward on my feet and raise my hand to her shoulder and give her a shove. “That’s it, now keep talking, you told me you could do two things at once.”

My competitive streak raises its head and wants to prove I’m right.

“Soft, vulnerable, weak, all the things I try so hard not to be.” I try to hit her again, and she blocks my hand and then jabs me in the side.

“Shit!” It didn’t hurt so much as shock me, and as I’m trying to defend from her poking me there again, she replies.

“Forrest didn’t do that, you did.”

Her hand comes at me again, and I go to defend the same spot, and her words piss me off.

“No, I didn’t. I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen, he just made me do it.” And all of a sudden there are words pouring out of me, and I’m thrashing my hands about, not in any controlled way, just trying to stop her from touching me. “I don’t like being touched. No one gets to touch me unless I let them. He made me want to be touched. Why did he do that? Because now I like it and he’s gone.”

“But why is he gone, Harper?” Thud, another fist, into the stomach this time.

“Because I ran from him.” I’m now yelling at her because I’m struggling with all the chaos that’s happening around me.