Free The Fight Within by Tiana Laveen Page B

and an old white V-neck T-shirt. She had no time to wait for Brian to return after school. Besides, knowing him, he’d loiter about and not get home until dinnertime. The mess couldn’t sit there all day, and she had an important client coming over in an hour to sign a contract. What would it look like for an Interior Designer to have trash piled high like Mt. Everest in front of her estate? Who would trust her with their most prized possession, the roof over their head, after seeing such a sight? Cursing under her breath, she paused and shot herself a look in the damn mirror, a beautiful piece framed in silver, but her mood was bordered in angst.
    The trash isn’t the only thing that stinks! What a messed up day, and it’s only eight in the damn morning!
    ‡

Chapter Four

    “F ifty fuckin’ Shades of Grey…” Sean mumbled as he glared at his small television mounted on the wall of his bedroom. The author of the popular book series, E.L. James, was being interviewed. “If I pulled out some handcuffs on a chick, she’d call the goddamn police!” He huffed and shuffled under his crumpled sheets, getting comfortable while successfully navigating past the lumpy dip in the middle of his Queen-sized mattress. Three hours earlier, he’d fallen asleep after finishing a shitload of homework, most of which, he could no longer recall, even if some insane professor drew a gun on him, demanding to be told. His world became a gray blur, with pops of color every now and again. Laughter with a dash of cynicism became his medicine, anything to not feel the truth, the weight of the matter on his shoulders. Shaking himself out of his own thoughts before they buried him, he turned to his left, taking note of his messy nightstand covered in half empty ink pens, balled up pieces of paper, and a coffee cup that had been there twenty-four hours too long.
    I gotta clean this place up…
    As he turned back around and glanced lazily up at the television, he heard his computer beep. He set his lethargic sights upon it, sighed, and pulled the damn thing close, propping it onto his lap like a hospital tray filled with all the unseasoned, bland food one could imagine.
    “Who do we have tonight?” he mumbled as he typed into the dating site window, prepared to take notice of a pop-up featuring the latest and greatest shallow eye-candy this side of the Hudson River. On this particular website, instead of taking down his profile completely, he’d simply removed all of his photos and put the damn thing on hiatus. Matter of fact, he’d done that with all of the dating sites he visited over the past few days. He’d meant what he said to his mother. There was simply no time to date, and though he didn’t feed the monster of jaded thoughts very often, he was sick of women and their superficiality, silly problems and mind-fuckery ways. Regardless, he’d been kidding himself. A part of him longed for conversation with the opposite sex, he was torn. He wanted the window to be left open a tiny crack, as a precaution…a ‘just in case.’
    Every now and again, someone would still come fishing around despite his boring profile, devoid of the images of him riding his friend’s motorcycle, flexing a damn muscle he’d worked hard to obtain, and other silly crap to reel in the ladies, get a little cha-cha, make plans for a horizontal joyride. No, that profile was as bare as a baby’s newborn ass. There wasn’t even a damn headshot. They got nothing from ol’ Sean, and that’s exactly how he liked it. He simply watched his porn, jerked off every now and again, and went about his merry fucking way.
    Feeling the stark silence around him, he clicked on his saved musical collection on his computer, and played, ‘Money’, by Pink Floyd.
    Yeah, that’s good…help me wake up a bit…
    Despite his ‘fuck the world’ attitude regarding dating and blank wall profile, some lady was knocking at his proverbial, computerized door. He stared at the screen,