Idolize Me

Chapter Twenty-Six

Everything is a blur, I can't focus on my surroundings, I don't hear what the driver says to me, instead I open the car door, and I get in.

I closed my eyes, hating myself for feeling like this, but unable to stop it all at once. Everything is painful, my lungs hurt, and my heart is pounding so hard it's making me sick. I wish it would stop. I wish my heart would just fucking stop.

And then I think of Olivia. I think of how I pulled her against me and felt her hands on my chest. My heart was pounding then, I remember feeling her heart beat, and not being repulsed by it.

I liked it. I liked her heartbeat.

I remember her hair, messy, but still so soft. Her eyes, a dull brown, nothing too memorable, and yet I can see them so clearly like she was looking right at me at this very moment.

I could smell her, the cheap perfume she wears, I used to hate it. I still hate it, but I want to smell it right now, it's the only perfume I ever want to smell again. It's terrible, but it's Olivia's terrible, and somehow that makes me want it.

Anything of hers I want, and I find that so oddly fascinating. She's nobody, she's not even middle-class, she has nothing, and yet everything she has, everything she is, I want it.

I want her.

I hadn't realized we had arrived until the vehicle stopped. Somehow, I managed to last a forty-minute car-ride to the worst place on earth, without making myself sick.

Olivia does things to me that I don't even understand.

I got out of the car and walked into the stone building. I placed my shaking hands in my pockets and took even breaths as I walked down the hall.

Bile rose in my throat the closer I got to her room, for only a second, I pondered if I could do this without panicking.

I stopped at her door and stood there. I don't know how long, but I could have stood there for an eternity and that wouldn't have been long enough.

I swallowed, but the silence of the building wasn't helping. It was so fucking quiet here. I could hear my heart pound, I could myself screaming in my own mind.

I reached out a shaking hand and opened the door.

I was greeted by grey. The walls, the carpet, and those fucking curtains. I hate grey. I hate it.

Athena was already sitting in her chair, she didn't even care enough to look up at me. "You're almost a half-hour late, Ezra."

I walked in, "I was hoping it'd be an hour."

"Don't start this before the session even begins."

"I'm not starting anything." My eyes darted to the curtains, they were shut, always shut. I wish she would open them.

"So, last week we had to send you the psych ward for a night. How did that make you feel?"

I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath, "How the fuck do you think that made me feel?"

"Ezra." She warned, "Just remember I can always send you back there."

I clenched my fists, but kept my mouth shut.

She leaned back in her seat, a look a satisfaction plastered on her face, I wanted to kill her. I wanted to run as far away from her as possible.

I focused on the grey wall in front of me. I refused to look her in the eyes.

I don't think I can look her in the eyes.

She crossed her legs, "So, tell me what you've been up to this past week. Anything new?"