Ash's bold declaration hung heavy in the air between Zach and her. As she looked at him, his mouth opened in just the slightest, as if her statement had truly caught him off-guard. But the next moment, he closed his mouth and all hints of any real emotion disappeared, along with Ash's patience for the conversation.

She turned and headed in the opposite direction. The original direction she had been heading in before he had ambushed her. She clenched and unclenched her fists as she walked, trying to release some of the white-hot anger that had finally pushed her into talking to him. Her ears strained as they listened to see if he was following her. Thankfully, he thought better of it, and she made it back to her dorm alone.

Once inside, she leaned against the door and let her body slowly sink to the ground. She could feel the energy from her anger slipping out of her fingertips and suddenly all she wanted to do was sleep. It took everything in her to drag herself up onto her bed. As she pulled the covers over her all she could think was that she was grateful she was done trying to have friends.

Unfortunately, Dr. Ellerson was not so pleased Ash was done with friends. At their next session, Ash boldly stated that she would now be completing her attempt to have fun without Zach and asked Dr. Ellerson to please not ask about him. Dr. Ellerson tried to pry more information from Ash but after Ash gave Dr. Ellerson silence for fifteen minutes, Dr. Ellerson finally agreed to move on.

She did manage to finish their session with a comment about how great friends were as Ash stood to leave, but she should not have wasted her breath. It only gave Ash more determination to prove friends were a waste of time and unnecessary.

At the Busy Bean, she kept her conversations with her coworkers light. Any questions about herself she quickly flipped around and without noticing, her coworkers were talking about themselves again. In class, she kept her head down, arrived just as the class started, and was packing up her things as the professor finished up the lecture.

Without the distraction of Zach or their stupid attempt at having fun, she completed more homework than she typically did and even got ahead on some of her class reading.

When she returned to Dr. Ellerson's office the next week, she proudly listed off all that she accomplished because she hadn't wasted time on friends. She was annoyed when Dr. Ellerson simply wrote something in her notebook before she asked, "What did you do for fun this week?"

"I really perfected my latte foam heart. All my coworkers were very impressed."

"And outside of work?"

"I read this fascinating study on language acquisition."

"And outside of homework?" Dr. Ellerson asked again.

This one stumped Ash. She racked her brain for anything she had done outside of class or work but the only thing was eating, and there was nothing exciting about the food offered in the mess hall.

She thought about saying something as dull as noticing the flowers that were coming into bloom as she walked around campus, but even that would be a lie since she kept her head down to avoid Zach whenever she was out and about.

Dr. Ellerson sat patiently waiting for Ash to provide an answer, but Ash had nothing.

"Is it really that important to have fun outside of work or school? Is it so bad to have fun at work and in class?" Ash questioned.

"Do you have fun at work?" Dr. Ellerson countered.

Ash thought about it. She didn't. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate her job and at times truly enjoy it, but no one in their right mind would consider making coffee for un-caffeinated people fun. She shook her head.

"And what about class? Do you have fun in class?"

Again, Ash could admit to truly enjoying most of her classes, but she would never use the word fun to describe them.

"Can you find one thing to do this week to have fun?" Dr. Ellerson asked. "Outside of work and class?"

"Sure," Ash said, already thinking about how she could observe the flowers on campus on her walk back from therapy. Did it count as fun? Maybe? At least she would have something to report the next week.

On her walk back to campus, she cataloged every flower she saw and was up to twelve different flowers by the time she was back on campus and now she had something to report back to Dr. Ellerson next week.

She was heading for the library and stepped sideways to move out of the way of a large group of people when she ran into Zach.

She hadn't seen him the moment before, and the next moment she literally bumped into him. The impact had no effect on him, and before she could barely fall backward, he grabbed her arm to steady her.

It all happened in the span of thirty seconds and it caught her so off-guard that she stood there with Zach's hold on her arm.

"Ash," he said, "how are you? I mean..." he shook his head like the question had been a mistake. "I've been wanting to talk to you, but you've been leaving class so fast, and I didn't want to bother you at work and..."

His eyes went to his hand that was still holding her arm and he dropped it quickly and looked. His eyes jumped around until he seemed to force his gaze back to her.

There was something about his movements that made it seem like he was struggling to control them. It felt so strange to see. He always seemed in control. All the time. But something was different, and it pulled Ash in as she tried to decipher what it was.

"But I did want to talk to you...because of what you mentioned when you left the bar the other night," he said, his gaze falling away. "I know you were upset and you mentioned the Frisbee Football... and the comedy club...you also mentioned that...and..."

He paused and his eyes found her again. She could sense there was a hesitancy in him, but she couldn't pinpoint exactly what facial movement or gestures were telling her that and it made her think he was actually genuine. But just as quickly as that thought occurred to her, she began to doubt it. This was Zach. He was the master of concealing everything.

"And I know it isn't fair, and you have every right to feel the way you do," he continued.

Ash tried to piece together this strange new hesitancy in him with his words, but found she didn't understand where he was trying to take the conversation.

"Zach, what are you trying to say?" she asked, truly curious at this point.

"You were right," he said, nodding like he was trying to convince himself to keep talking.

When he didn't, Ash started to fill in the silence. "I was right about..."

"The other night. When you got mad and said I disappear. You were right. I do. It's a coping mechanism and I know it's not the right thing to do. It's just when I think about it, it's the only thing that feels..."

He stopped with his mouth slightly open like the words were hanging on the tip of his tongue. Ash caught a slight movement out of the corner of her eye and she looked down to see his hands were clenched into fists.

"...safe," he finished.

His gaze took on a distant look and it felt like he was no longer there in the moment with Ash, but it wasn't the same distant feeling she had experienced before. Before when he disappeared it felt like he was intentionally shutting everything out. Now, it felt like he was trapped somewhere else like he had no choice in the matter.

"I hate it," he said. He took a deep breath as Ash held hers.

Something was different in the way he was talking. She still wasn't sure what he was trying to say, but she feared doing saying anything would break whatever was happening.

He finally added, "I hate her."

His final word hung heavy in the air between them as Ash tried to figure out what was going on. The signals he was showing were so foreign on him, that she had given up trying to read them and just listened.

"Who do you hate Zach?" she asked after he remained silent.

He took a deep breath as he looked her straight in the eyes but she could see he wasn't really looking at her. He was still trapped somewhere else. "My mom," he finally said.

This answer was not surprising, but Ash still felt shocked that he had said the words out loud.

His shoulders fell slightly like he had been tensing. "My mom is...a bad person," he said. "And I mean bad like she is wanted by the FBI and the CIA."

Ash froze in shock. This would have sounded like an outrageous excuse if Ash didn't know the truth. If Zach had told her he had worked for the CIA before they had been kidnapped, she never would have believed him.

But since getting kidnapped, she didn't doubt he had worked for the CIA. If he had said his mom also worked for the CIA, she would have probably believed it, but this was something else. She never would have guessed that Zach had been working for the agency that wanted to arrest his mom.

"She was responsible for... for terrorist attacks," he added, "and a lot of...horrible things. People... people died because... her. And she wanted... She wanted me to be... just like... her. Her but worse. But...I..." He stopped talking, frozen for a moment before he somehow broke himself out of his daze. He shuddered and looked around like it was the first time in a while he was aware of where they were.

"So... yeah," he said louder. He cleared his throat. His distant look and soft voice were gone, tucked somewhere deep inside. "I hate talking about that stuff for a lot of reasons and I know it's not right, but sometimes... I feel like all I can do is disappear."

Ash just stood there feeling dazed. He had just unloaded a lot of truth and then quickly packed it away, and she felt like she was struggling to find something to hold onto. She finally landed on the crazy mom. That she understood. She also understood all the behaviors one could develop when dealing with a crazy parent. She had pushed plenty of her peers away because of something her father had done.

"I'm sorry you have a horrible mom," she said.

And she truly meant it. As much as she made light of her horrible childhood, she wouldn't wish it on anyone. No one deserved to be treated the way her father had treated her, and it sounded like Zach's mom had treated him worse.

"Yeah...well...me too." He shrugged his shoulders as he looked around. "Are you heading to work?" he asked casually like the last fifteen minutes hadn't just happened.

Ash opened her mouth to answer but a thought stopped her. Was that it? Were things supposed to just go back to normal now that she knew Zach hated his mom? Did she want things to go back to how they had been? Would she be ok the next time he disappeared because at least she would know why? She had just spent the last week trying to prove she was better off without friends. Was she just going to ignore that data and let him disappear on her again?

"What?" he asked.

She jerked her head up in surprise. "What?" she asked innocently.

"Something is wrong."

She had forgotten what it was like to be around someone who seemed to be able to read all her thoughts. She stared at him, debating what to say.

"Just say it," he told her. "You don't need to worry about offending me. Anything you say won't hurt as much as anything my mom did."

"Ok," she said, mustering up all the boldness she could. She took a deep breath. "You have a horrible mother. And it seemed like it was hard for you to tell me that, so I appreciate you being open about that..."

"Just say it," he said, cutting her off. "I'm serious," he added when she continued to hesitate. "Don't start something you can't finish."

"Fine," she said. She wasn't sure she was going to say something but now that he was bugging her about it, she guessed she would voice it. "I'm not friends with your mom. Your mom isn't even here. She might be a terrible person, but your mother isn't the one making your choices. You are. It wasn't your mom who disappeared on me. It was you. And that was your choice. I get coping mechanisms. Trust me. I really do. I've got plenty of my own. But ultimately it was you who decided to disappear on me without a single word time and time again.

"And what am I supposed to do now? Just accept what you said about your mom and accept that you will just disappear on me again? You told me why you disappeared, but you didn't say you were going to stop doing it, so essentially we are right back where we started. I don't want a friendship where you just disappear whenever you want."

She finished talking and took a deep breath. It was shaky and she could feel the adrenaline rushing through her. What she said hadn't been nice or sympathetic but it had been true. This morning she was still resolved to not be his friend. He had changed that by telling her about his mom, but she would only go back to being his friend as long as things were different. It didn't have to be perfect, but she didn't want to go back to the way it had been.

She looked at Zach. His face was blank, but she couldn't tell if it was blank because he was about to run or just because he wanted to hide how he really felt about what she said. He held her gaze for a moment before he looked away. He put his hands in his pockets and examined something near his shoes.

Ash remained silent and waited. She had said all that she had wanted to say. Now it was up to him. After a minute, he looked back up at her. A small crease appeared between his eyes like it was actually taking work for him to figure her out.

"Ok," he finally said. He paused for a long moment and she wasn't sure he was going to continue until he did. "You're right. My mom is a lot of things, but I am still responsible for my decisions. I choose to disappear. I'm sorry. I truly am. I wasn't being a good friend like you said. Will you forgive me?"

He looked at her as he awaited her answer, and she tried to scramble for words. She hadn't imagined that he would not only agree with what she said but would then say he was sorry. She had been expecting him to disappear on her.

"Uhh, yeah," she nodded. Then she stopped herself.

Just because he had said the right words did not mean she had to agree with them. Her dad just apologized all the time and it never meant anything. But she had learned. He would wake up in the morning all distraught over what he had done and would get down on his knees to beg for forgiveness.

But nothing ever changed so the apology ended up feeling like more for his sake than for hers. By the end, she preferred it when he didn't apologize at all. At least then they weren't lying straight to each other's faces. Him saying he wouldn't drink again and her saying she forgave him. Neither was true.

"Ash?" Zach said, pulling her attention back to him.

She looked at him and could see the questioning look he was giving her. But he didn't push her. She remained silent and he followed her lead. He had also left her alone when she had said she didn't want to be friends with him. He had left her alone for more than a week and had only told her about his mom when they had literally run into each other. Did that make Zach's apology different than her dad's?

She didn't know and that was the scariest part. What would happen if she forgave him and nothing changed? It would be a waste of her time and energy. Did she really want to risk it? She focused back on him and was jolted when she found he had taken a step away. His palms were open by his side and there was a resigned look on his face.

When their eyes met he gave a small nod, like he was accepting she wasn't going to forgive him, and he was just going to leave. If she didn't want to be his friend, he would just accept it and go.

That fact alone made Ash say, "I forgive you."

Something in Zach's posture seemed to freeze and she could tell he had genuinely thought she wasn't going to. He studied her face before he said, "Thank you."

**********************************************************************

Wonky walruses!

Jeez that was an emotional chapter. Well it was for me, I don't know about you. You could be a cold hearted person therefore were untouched by it. Me, I legit teared up at one point and it caught me by surprise.

How about you? Any blurry screen moments for you or are you still holding your heart back from getting hurt? 💬🗯️💭

I like that Ash addressed the fact that even though Zach's mom was messed up that it was still on him to take responsible for his actions.  And he admitted that it was!

I read books where the guy is an absolute jerk but once it's discovered he had a hard past then the girl just forgives him and feels sympathy. I'm sorry that's not okay, rough past or not, you're actions are your own. Own up to them and change.

Again! Why I love this book! It's the nitty gritty of relationships and how the best kind of relationships help you grow as a person.

Vote, tote, and comment your way into a follow~! Love you!