"Man," said Dr. Richards, as he stared into the video screen. "She's pretty!"

“She’s beautiful,” Jim agreed, though he worked very hard to intone his voice just so it wouldn’t suggest any hidden meaning. For there truly is none, he reminded himself.

“What’s her name?” The doctor inquired.

“Lea,” Jim answered. Chuckling nervously, he added, “I won’t tell you how hard I had to work to get her to act for this. She’s very camera shy, as much because she doesn’t know how beautiful she is, as anything else.”

“Damn shame,” Richards swore. “Have you told her?”

“How pretty she is? She doesn’t believe me. At best she believes that I think so under a delusion,”

“Damn shame,” the doctor repeated, his eyes still glued to the artistically monochrome video feed.

They talked of other things, pointless things, things not worth talking about on paid time, even for a reasonable rate for a therapist of Richards’ reputation. Jim still felt that it was ridiculous he was being made to see a therapist. This was the one place he was afraid he might not be in control of his feelings.

The screen faded to black, and Richards turned to face Jim, exposing to him his disgustingly unkempt round face and gnarled hair, both peppered prematurely with short, dead, white-grey hairs.

“So tell me more about Lea,” Richards offered.

Ah hell! He’s starting to fish for it. Jim cleared his throat nervously and said, “What do you want to know?”

“Just tell me about her, all about her.” The way he had said it had something inexplicably creepy about it.

That clears everything up.

“How did you meet her? What’s she like? Anything.”

Productive use of a rather expensive hour.

“She’s amazing,” He finally threw out. “She and I were in the same school when we were a lot younger, and got along pretty well, but we’ve only really been friends for a few years.”

Richards sat, massaging his ugly face, as if contemplating some deep mystery in Jim’s previous statement, seemingly unaware that the texture of that unkempt face would remind any sane person of an old, fleshy carpet. “Have you ever had any…deeper feelings for her?”

Well, at least he didn’t beat around the bush any longer. That particular wabe was becoming rather trodden-down.

“I don’t let myself.” Jim answered, truthfully.

Richards gave that skeptical laugh – you know the one I mean – the one with the know-it-all smile, with the eyebrow raised to insulting elevations, the one that sounds more like a forced exhalation, or the sneeze of a housecat. The laugh only served to remind Jim of his pedophiliac High School vice principal that was always on his case, which, in turn, as Jim would later explain, “pushed me over the edge from infuriated to just plain pissed off.”

Still, Jim wore a feigned smile as Richards compounded his condescending chuckle with an equally condescending and rhetorical question. Which are usually very condescending anyway, he thought.

“What do you mean, you won’t let yourself?” he asked with that same smile. “Either you feel that way about her or you don’t.”

“Feel what way?” Jim waffled.

“Feel attracted to her, feel like you want to be with her, hold her; you don’t need me to tell you.”

“Alright,” he admitted, in a much softer tone than he had intended. “She’s attractive; that’s no secret. I’ll admit, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings to be with her…all the time.”

He had said it with a Forest Gump-like innocence, and immediately fallowing the remark, Jim found himself hopeing that the liberal-minded doctor, who worked primarily with group-home rejects, had interpreted the statement with the appropriate level of innocence with which it was intended. Long shot, at best.

“Now he levels with me,” Richards said with an infuriating, self-righteous, “I knew it” – smile. “And let me guess,” he continued with that same, condescending smirk. “She doesn’t want anything to do with it.” Sensing Jim was sucking back tears, he added, “That hurts, man. That hurts like hell.”

That wouldn’t piss me off so much if he wasn’t right.

“I don’t blame her one bit for that.” Jim rebutted, the sting of the situation, and the frustration of having the issue raised at all, both leaking into his voice. The doctor just sat there, awaiting further clarification, so Jim continued. “I mean, neither do I. We’re only sixteen.”

Unable to comprehend the significance of the aforementioned age, Richards went on, “So…let me get this strait…even if she reciprocated your feelings, completely, you’d tell her, ‘sorry babe, I’ve been hurt, and so I don’t do relationships anymore.”

“No! Nobody’s hurt me! I don’t do relationships anyway!” Jim insisted.

“Well, maybe not for now, but you’ll get back out there eventually. There’s plenty of fish in the sea. You’re a master fisherman, and expert baiter, though I wouldn’t want to call you a master baiter.”

Jim wasn’t amused. “I will not be getting ‘back out there’” Jim said through his teeth, his eyes glowing with fire.

How can I make this certified unethical prick understand? They’re all alike! They say they won’t judge anybody, when what they really mean is that they won’t admit the faults of the criminal, the shameless, or their fellow unethical pricks, while mercilessly condemning anybody with any decent kind of chivalrous moral code.

“You’re honestly telling me,” Richards went on. “That if she called you up tomorrow and told you, ‘Jim, I think you’re a delicious babe; I totally want to jump your bones,’ that you would…”

That was it. Jim had heard many, many times more than enough. In a flash that can only be mimicked by a trained fighter caught up in a fury of chivalrous vengeance, Jim had his meaty hand around Richard’s throat, dragging him right out of his ratty, leather chair, and up against the wall. Now, Richard had worked with tough kids, from off the streets of any major metropolitan area in the western United States, and he knew how to handle any of them if they got rough, but nothing, not even a cutthroat, switchblade-wielding gang member from downtown L.A. could have prepared him for an angry country boy with eight years of combat training under his belt. Richard struggled, more successfully than Jim had anticipated, but still had to give up the moment the enraged teen opened his mouth.

“Now, you listen to me you son of a bitch!” Jim demanded, in worse language than I’m willing to repeat. “Nobody talks that way about Lea Miller around me. Now you may think you’ve got me all figured out, but that bogus degree don’t mean shit to me, faggot. You have no idea how I feel about that girl. But…” he continued, tightening his grip around the shrink’s throat. “I’m willing to bet you’ll learn pretty quick just how much I care about her.”

“Loook,” Richards gagged weakly. “That was inappropriate, I admit, but…”

WHAM!

“Jim’s free hand, rolled into a tight fist, collided at inconceivable speeds with the psyche’s jawbone, breaking it, and sending his round, crumpled mass careening to the floor, unconscious.

“Inappropriate? Peh. Send me your bill, asshole. I’m done here.”

As Jim tested his fingers to be sure none of them were broken, he was sure, as he would later tell, that he could hear the sound of a bell ringing, and an angel getting her wings back.