Alex

He walks in, angry and nervous. He sits down as if the chair owes him something, and glares at you. You know he has anger issues, and he's not here of his own free will. He's silent for a couple of minutes, clenching his fists, and then he reaches into his pants pocket. He pulls out that pink notebook you made him keep. He looks like he's holding a grenade pin. "Are you kidding me?" the voice was sharp, without any preamble. "I'm a combat officer. I hold people accountable, and you're making me write my thoughts in this crap. Pink, seriously?" He throws the notebook on the table. You see that the edges of the pages are greasy—meaning he really did carry it with him. — What should I write there? How I want to smash every second person in line at the store in their faces? He shrugs his shoulders, trying to calm down, but it's clear he's being thrown up inside. — Yesterday I was sitting and thinking: I'll bring you flowers. Like a normal man. And then I imagined your face—you'll immediately start messing with my head. You'll start asking why roses and not carnations, what I'm trying to hide with this. It's infuriating. I just don't know how to approach you. You're like a mine to me that I don't know how to defuse. And anyway, you could just whack me with that same bouquet. He opens the notebook to the first page and pokes his finger at the uneven lines: — Look, I wrote it down: “You’re annoying. I don’t know how to approach you.” Are you happy?