Chapter Two

No matter where you are, there are always rules to conform to. They're like non-optional instructions that you must abide, otherwise there's a consequence. If you don't take your shoes off in that persons house, you'll get their rug dirty and that'll make them mad; if you smoke in that place, you'll end up being thrown out and not allowed back in; if you run down the street naked trying to be at one with nature, you will be put behind bars for indecent behaviour.

I had personal rules that though I never voiced, I expected others to follow. Nobody was to touch me, nobody was to question me and everybody was to leave me alone. It had been working just fine seeing as people got the vibe I didn't want them anywhere close to me due to my sarcastic remarks and glares.

So you could imagine my surprise the next day when I realised the whole I-almost-killed-a-guy-with-my-one-hundred-year-old-car-that-runs-at-the-speed-of-a-snail ordeal hadn't put Parker Heywood off and nor had my bad attitude. During my free period, he hunted me down and found my hiding place in the school library.

I realised that day that things would no longer be running as smoothly as they had been.

"I never pegged you as a book lover." He said in lieu of hello as he came to a stop by my side. He had a triumphant look on his face, one that caused me to assume it had taken him a great deal of effort to find me.

"And I never pegged you as the type of person to stalk girls in libraries." I replied, running my fingers along a few dusty spines, looking for a good teen fiction book that would stand out to me. If the dust wasn't enough of an indication, it was clear that hardly any students ever came into the library from how deserted the place was. The only people in here were Mrs Vermont (the librarian), a boy eating a ham sandwich and creepily watching us from in between the book filled shelves, Parker and I.

"Who says I'm stalking you?"

"Well you aren't exactly denying it," My eyes flitted from the row of books to look at the freckled freshman boy staring at us from the next aisle. I stuck my tongue out at him, hoping he'd avert his eyes once he knew that I was aware of what he was doing. He didn't. He just took a slow bite from his sandwich as if he were watching an extremely entertaining soap opera on television. As difficult as it was, I decided to ignore him and focus on my more immediate problem. "And I didn't specify that it was me you were stalking, you did that on your own."

"Touché."

I picked a novel, trying to ease it out of its resting place without causing the other books to topple down. Instead however, a puff of dust was released along with the book. I sneezed.

Parker dug around in the depths of his jacket pocket for a bit before handing me a crumpled looking tissue. It looked older than the tattered book I was holding and he explained in an upbeat voice, "It's only slightly used."

"Tempting," I looked from the tissue to the smile he was trying but failing to keep hidden from his face. "But no."

"Your loss." He shrugged, putting the tissue back into his pocket where I highly doubted it would ever see the light of day again. I idly wondered if it would resurface another ten years from now.

"Why are you following me?" I demanded after a few more minutes of blurb reading, book replacing and strolling down aisles. His presence was getting on my nerves. The guy didn't even need to talk to annoy me, just knowing he was there pushed my buttons.

"Because you've piqued my interests, Montgomery," He addressed me by my surname and I was momentarily taken aback at the fact he wasn't calling me Frigid Flo like the rest of his buddies. I still couldn't quite believe he hadn't recognised me the day before, but then again, I didn't doubt that the only person Parker was truly interested in was himself. "You intrigue me. I'm not often intrigued."

I spun around to face him and held a hand to my heart, feigning joy. "You know, that's just what I wanted. Having the asshole of our school year become intrigued by silly old me? Why, that must have plagued my dreams for years-"

"You're very sarcastic." He remarked, a smile tugging the corners of his lips upward slightly. "Why is that, Montgomery?"

"Why do you keep calling me by my last name?" I answered his question with another.

"Because I like it but if you'd prefer another, I've been told by the ladies that I'm very creative when it comes to pet names. What do you think about sweet cheeks? Hot lips? You've certainly got a pair of those. I wouldn't mind kissing that sailor mouth of yours-"

"You know, I'm having a relatively pleasant time by myself in here and I'm not sure I want to ruin that by talking to you." I hastily interrupted, feeling more than a tad uncomfortable. I focused my attention more toward the thick romance novel I held in my grasp with its yellowing pages and faded cover.

"I bet my chat up lines could pick you up any day."

I looked up from the book I had finally chosen. It was some cliché love story but the choices here were limited. "And what makes you think that?"

"I can read you like a book," He paused, hazel eyes twinkling. "I bet you're great between the covers."

"I'm not letting you anywhere near my spine." I deadpanned.

His lips parted slightly, clearly not having suspected such an abrupt comeback. I took his momentary distraction as an opportunity to walk away from him. Before I could get more than a three step distance between the pair of us, he snagged the hem of my shirt and reeled me back to him. I squirmed out of his grasp, worrying he was going to make contact with my skin.

"Go hang out with your usual friends and for fuck sake, stop grabbing at me!" I seethed, stepping backwards and bumping into the shelves behind me. A few books toppled over the other side of the shelf into the adjacent aisle in a flutter of pages and thumps. Ham sandwich boy - who'd still been loitering wherever we went - let out a yelp and scuttled away.

Parker casually moved in front of the only direction I could exit with an easy going smile. I wasn't fooled. I was trapped at the end of an aisle with a wall, tall shelves bursting with novels and an arrogant boy purposefully blocking my only way of escape.

"What is it with you and touching?" He extended his arm, hand hovering closely to my shoulder as if he was purposefully trying to get me to react without actually doing anything. I bit the inside of my cheek and tried my best not to give him one. It was only when his fingers gently placed themselves on my shoulder that I couldn't keep my emotions to myself anymore. I recoiled from his touch, my back slamming against the wall. He looked at me curiously.

I was trying to keep my ragged breaths inside but I was pretty sure he took note of my heaving chest and shaking hands.

"I don't know what you mean." I played oblivious, voice accidentally breaking half way through. "Oh would you look at the time, I have that one very important class to go to."

"Which class?"

I immediately felt my palms break out into a sweat. There were many things that I wasn't good at. Unfortunately, lying was one of them. "Kite making," I blurted, grimacing afterwards.

"Really?" He cocked an eyebrow, looking amused. "I didn't realise the school offered that."

The look he wore on his face made me panic further and unwanted word vomit began to pour out of my mouth. "You know, I do love that class. I find the um- the bridle the trickiest part when making a kite. You have to get it just right or the thing will basically collapse and what use is a kite if it doesn't fly, am I right?"

"What?"

"What?"

There was a long stretch of silence before he finally broke it.

"You're quite weird," Parker mused. "Most girls are dying to get me in their pants. But you, you won't even let me tap you on the shoulder."

"I'm weird?" I laughed without amusement. "Coming from the guy that tried to flirt with me after I almost killed him."

"So you admit that you didn't just bump me with your car then?"

I scowled at him but before I could reply, Mrs Vermont began shouting at us. I couldn't make out anything the librarian actually said, her accent was too thick. I couldn't be sure where she was from but if my memory served correctly, she was Greek. However, it didn't matter. What did was the fact she was saying something about volume, manners and "the youth of today". For once in my life, I was glad she was so snappish when it came to silence in her library. It provided an excuse not to reply to a question that I had no answer to and distracted Parker enough for me to duck underneath his arm and escape the awkward conversation I'd somehow wound up in with him.

***

"You're kidding, right?" Skylar Ross, my best friend of two years, snorted.

We were sitting in the classroom that supposedly held the supported study math class for after school. We both sucked at math but technically, it was just the room Skylar and I used to talk to each other seeing as no teacher ever hung around long enough or really even had an interest in helping students out. Apart from us, the room was empty. We had an open text book on our shared desk to give the illusion that we were working but of course, once I had told Skylar how Parker had recently made it his mission in life to annoy me, the book was left long forgotten.

"Yes. I've just made that little tale up because I thought it'd be nice to waste ten minutes of my life telling it for no reason at all." I rolled my eyes.

She blew out a breath and then propped her arms up on the table, resting her chin in her hands. "Lucky you."

"What?"

"He's super hot in the your-parents-will-hate-me kinda way." She said dreamily. I shook my head at her in disappointment.

"I honestly wonder why I'm friends with you sometimes." I didn't bother trying to hide my judgemental tone. I didn't need to.

Skylar and I, though polar opposites, got on extremely well. We evened each other out. Whilst she was eccentric, on top of every nugget of social gossip there ever was and had a thing for getting through boys faster than I did tissues in hayfever season, I was a social leapor and my idea of a night out was finding the Nutella at the back of the kitchen cupboard. That often caused a raving party to celebrate with Netflix, me, myself and I.

I calmed Skylar down to a certain extent whilst she got me to go out a little more. She'd update me on what I didn't really need to know gossip-wise so that she could complain to me instead of complaining to the person's face ("I'm much more comfortable criticising people behind their backs, Flo. You know that.") and I'd hold her back from dumping her next sorry boyfriend too harshly. She'd force me to go shopping with her or out to get some coffee where otherwise I'd have stayed pent up indoors binge watching Pretty Little Liars (even after the disappointing reveal of A).

Though we were close, Skylar didn't know I was afraid of touching. Not really. She knew not to touch me, but it was an unsaid thing. She didn't know why and we hadn't talked about it, she just knew not to and so we never spoke of it. She was probably waiting for me to approach the subject on my own, to admit it to her or explain it. She'd be waiting a very, very long time if that was the case.

"We're friends because I'm the only one that'll put up with how God damn anti-social and sarcastic you are."

"Harsh but fair." I admitted with a shrug. She smiled at that, her pink glossy lips pulling back to reveal her pearly white teeth.

"So what's he like then? You don't seem too happy about getting attention from one of the hottest guys in school."

"Why would I be?" I scrunched my face up into a look of disgust. "He's annoying and doesn't know personal space."

"I don't know, maybe because like I said, he's one of the hottest guys in school." She huffed, pulling her strawberry blonde hair into a pony tail. "Come on, let's go. We've been here for ages."

I grabbed the unused math book and put it on top of the stack in the corner of the room before grabbing my bag. She was right. It was getting late, my mum would probably start calling soon. She'd been over protective since the whole touching subject came to light.

"You never used to have problems hugging your mum, are you too old now?" My mother had teased, chasing me around the kitchen counter. She was just having a joke with me, I'd known that, but I didn't know how to explain that I was truly not finding it amusing. "Is it not cool?"

"It's not that mum, honest." I'd said, trying not to yelp out in surprise when she'd ran to my left with outstretched arms and a smile on her face. I dashed away from her, back to square one as I stood facing her opposite the counter again. She didn't seem to notice my discomfort with the whole situation. We used to play tickle monster all the time. She'd chase me around the house trying to tickle me and we'd end up cuddling and watching a movie afterward. When it had come up in a nostalgic conversation, she'd chased me around saying we were playing it again. No matter how many times I tried to say I was 11, that we played that when I was 6, she wasn't having it.

"Mum, I don't want to play." I'd said in a harsher tone as she tried to advance toward me again. She hesitated a moment, frowning. I had thought that maybe she'd understood then, that I genuinely didn't want to play. But she hadn't. She lunged at me, fingers 'tickling' at my ribs and laughter escaping her lips as she thought we were having fun.

She didn't know. She couldn't understand that what I was feeling wasn't anything along the lines of being ticklish, it was closer to red hot pokers jabbing at my sides. It took her about ten seconds to realise that my sobs weren't tears of laughter and that my thrashing was to get her away from me.

"Sweetheart, what's wrong?" Her panic stricken face was still as bright as day in my mind. In all honesty, it hadn't fully left since then.

"N-nothing just, d-don't touch me." I'd sniffed.

She'd tried for a hug but I had quickly wrenched out of her grasp. We had stood, staring at each other. To this day I'm not sure which of the two of us had been more panicked. I think we were somewhat even on the scale to level fear. Though both were for entirely different reasons.

I had been eleven then and I was sixteen now. It had been just over five years since my mum had discovered my fear of touching. Just over five years since the last time she tried to hug me. Just over five years since I was given a therapist. Just over five years that my mothers face had been free of worry lines.

***

If someone couldn't swim, would you throw them into a pool? If someone had anxiety, would you force them to give a presentation on stage in front of a large audience? So if it just so happened that somebody had an irrational fear of touching and being touched, would you force them into doing it? You wouldn't, would you?

My therapist disagreed.

"It's called exposure therapy," Doctor Greene began. He was in his mid thirties, friendly, but annoying and a little odd. He had a thick head of ginger hair and slight stubble coating his upper lip and jaw. A few weeks ago he had mentioned growing his beard out and calling it his "tangerine dream".

I didn't like him.

I stared at him, confused as to why he still bothered trying with me. I had never granted him with anything more than short sentences or one word responses in my entire five years of having him "help" me. I had to give it to him, the guy did try. He was still as enthusiastic to help me as he was on day one.

"It involves practicing with what you fear in order to become less afraid of it. In your case, that's touching," At the look I sent him, he tried to make it seem more appealing. "It's been shown to be the most effective anxiety treatment."

"No."

"Exposure Therapy helps you retrain your brain," He continued talking as if I hadn't spoken. "It's not just about getting used to the fear. It's about retraining your brain to stop sending the fear signal when there isn't any danger. Flora, you recognise that your fear is exaggerated and illogical. Trying to talk yourself out of being scared doesn't work, you're only avoiding the fear and by doing that it unfortunately strengthens it... I recommend giving this a try."

"I said no." I snapped.

"I know it's hard-" He began but I didn't let him continue.

"You don't know the half of it." I interrupted, snatching my bag from the floor and getting up from the uncomfortable white leather chair I was forced to sit on with every therapy session. I stalked out of the building, ignoring his calls from behind me. The only reason I showed up was because of mum. If I didn't, the woman's internal organs would quite literally combust with worry.

Tears had blurred my vision as I took off into a sprint down the street to find my parked car. It was at that moment that I barrelled into someone's very solid chest. I quickly retreated. Wiping at my eyes, I tried to focus on who it was in front of me that I owed an apology to.

It was Parker.

//okay dokey I swear this will get more interesting soon this is kind of like a filler to get you used to the characters and all of that so yeah. I'd like to dedicate this chapter to Just_a_simple_writer because your comments have been so lovely and encouraging tysm for reading it means so much//