Chapter 1

As her alarm clock blared, Elle rolled out of bed to face another round of therapy. She had always thought of therapy as stupid. She already knew that she's depressed and didn't need to pay a 'professional' to confirm it. But the parents insist, so every Tuesday at 8 AM she lays on the couch in the therapist's office and tells her about all her problems. Elle quickly throws on an oversized hoodie, some eyeliner and her hair into a messy bun and is on her way.
"What happened to that boy you were starting to like?" Marge, the therapist, asks.
"It was getting ridiculous. I'd look at my phone every 5 seconds to see if he texted me back, yet. I felt that if he wanted to talk to me, he wouldn't let 15 minutes pass between almost every text. I got tired of waiting, so I stopped replying."
"But I thought you liked him, Elle. You were really making progress letting people know how you feel about them. It was good for you."
"No it wasn't, I would have gotten hurt." Elle said.
"Not everyone is out to get you, honey."
But Elle knew that wasn't true. Everyone was out to get her. Nobody could be trusted. Not even herself. Which is why she stopped caring about everyone and everything after Thomas broke her heart. She loved him, and trusted him to take the most sacred thing she had. Her virginity. After that he stopped texting her, he wouldn't even look at her at school, and he barely talked to her at work.
Maybe if I just tell her what she wants to hear I can be done with this, soon. Elle thought. "Maybe you're right. I could text him, again, if you think I should."
"I think you should," Marge smiled brightly.
The rest of the hour continued like this, Elle trying to make it sound like she was regaining trust, and Marge naive enough to believe it. Nobody truly understood the extent of Elle's mental damage. Having your trust shattered will do that, fuck you up mentally. And mental fuck ups were incredibly difficult to recover from, as Elle learned first hand.
Once Elle got back home, she stripped out of her jeans and replaced them with sweatpants and crawled back into bed with her phone. She stared at it. 0 New Messages She did want to text the boy that she talked about with the therapist, Dan, but she was afraid. She was afraid that he wouldn't want to talk to her, afraid he'd be mad that she stopped replying, and worst of all, afraid that he would want to talk to her and would proceed to break her heart, just like Dylan had after she lost her virginity to him.