People always told Ralee and Leona that they envied their blossoming romance during its honeymoon stage. “But,” they would all inevitably add, “one day the magic will fade, just be ready for that.” That little bit of unsolicited foreshadowing always terrified Leona. She couldn’t imagine a world where Ralee didn’t give her butterflies or make her swoon with something as simple as a wink. Leona promised herself that she’d never succumb to the cynical tide of indifference people thought came standard with every relationship. However, our best-laid plans often take a backseat to the ruthless driving of fate.

 

Waking up on some random Tuesday afternoon, after pulling another late-night movie marathon date, Leona looked over to her still sleeping partner. Ralee was laying on her back, appendages spread in every direction as if she’d tried to consciously take up as much space as possible. Her hair was a tangled moppy mess, her shirt was stained with butter from their impromptu “popcorn fight” a few hours ago, and her face contorted into the most unflattering snore-scowl Leona thought possible. All of these silent observations built up to the not-so-silent atomic fart laid by the very woman Leona had been watching.

 

Unable to withstand such an onslaught of sensation for a single second longer, Leona finally broke down… and burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. Of course her bellowing fit of joy woke up Ralee, who sat up in bed groggy and confused. “What’s so funny, love?”

 

“Nothing, hun, I just love you so damn much,” Leona declared with unwavering and unquestionable glee as she pulled her partner into a bear hug that was, in retrospect, probably too rough for first thing in the morning.

 

It was on that mundane and ultimately uneventful day that Leona stopped worrying about their spark fading. Yes, the novelty of being in a relationship had long passed. The very sight of Ralee no longer prompted Leona’s heart to race a million beats a minute. She no longer got giddy like a schoolgirl every time their hands barely brushed against one another. The two no longer had a plethora of untold stories to regale one another with… But that didn’t mean the magic was gone. It had moved, yes, but it wasn’t any weaker. There was a beauty and spectacularness in the simple life they had built with one another. It was a life of comfortable silence, knowing glances, inside jokes, and cuddling… soooooo much cuddling. Where the very act of waking up next to her partner could still fill Leona’s heart with such joy despite it being like the hundreds of others before. They were bound to one another, inexorably connected by something stronger than simple attraction or fleeting passion. They were together… and always would be.

 

***

 

As I turned off the freeway headed towards the therapist's office, I glanced over at Ralee. She was re-reading the same part of Leona’s Odyssey for the millionth time with a large goofy grin plastered to her face. Out of all the adventures and experiences of the two that I chronicled, she seemed enamored with a particularly sappy passage that I had been embarrassed to post yet unwilling to edit out. I could feel my face burning with embarrassment as a passage I regretted was repeatedly revisited before my eyes.

 

Pulling into the strip mall’s parking lot, I cleared my throat to get Ralee’s attention. Her head jerked up as we came to a stop in one of the many open spaces in front of Brent’s office. “We’re here,” I said, managing to cover up my trepidation with a faux cheerfulness I had mastered as a waiter. The woman beside me started bouncing in her seat like a five-year-old on Christmas morning, earning a chorus of groans from my car’s worn-out suspension. Thanks car, for voicing your disapproval while I could not.

 

This whole situation had me torn to pieces. Obviously I wanted Ralee to be happy, she had been my favorite self-made character for years. With everything she and Leona had done for me, I should have been their number one supporter. But… I couldn’t bring myself to be happy about this. Leona… why did she get to be happy? Why was her life a nonstop adventure filled with joy and excitement? Why was she brave, and strong, and beautiful while I was… me. It wasn’t fair.

 

Turning to me with a smile that packed way too much power to be legal, Ralee grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me back and forth. “It’s finally happening! She’s gonna be here… right? Of course she’s going to be here. She has to be here.” The excitable mass of limitless energy paused for a moment, her eyes going wide in apparent terror. “Wait a second… do I look okay? I mean, I know I’m a stone-cold stunner but do I look good or DAMN good!? Oh god, do I smell okay? My breath doesn’t stink, right? Oh god, what about my pits. Rob, please, you gotta tell me.” With almost no warning, Ralee’s arm shot up and she leaned in, trying to envelop my head in her underarm.

 

“What the hell! Cut it out. Nobody wants to smell your armpit!”

 

“Oh god, it’s that bad!?” It really had nothing to do with it being bad or not, I’m just not a fan of having my nose hijacked for someone else’s personal grooming needs. While my panicking passenger was going on some kind of rant condemning the bath soap industry, I noticed the promised hour approaching. “We’ll rally everyone who has ever been humiliated by those bastards and burn down their factories. I’ll plunge the world into an unhygienic apocalypse! If everybody stinks, nobody stinks!” Yeah, somewhere along the way she’d taken a connecting train straight to Looneyville. 

 

Dropping my hand on top of Ralee’s head, I hoped that panicking interdimensional travelers worked the same way alarm clocks did. When she stopped mid-tirade, I breathed a sigh of relief. “Ralee, you look great, you don’t smell, everything’s going to be okay. Besides, you could be an absolute mess and Leona would be happy to see you. Honestly, how could she not be?” The bumbling mess of nerves thought on my words for a moment before taking a big breath in, nope, not letting this shit start up again, regardless of how adorable it is. “Stop stalling. Haven’t you waited long enough for this?” Using all of my might, I forced a smile onto my face. “Now go in there and get her back. You deserve your happy ending.”

 

The radiant smile returned to Ralee’s face as she nodded and got out of the car. I watched her run up to the therapist’s door with a bounce in her step before throwing it open and skipping inside. For a moment, I considered leaving right then. I wasn’t sure I could handle playing third wheel to Ralee and Leona and I was sure the two could have figured out how to return to their world in time. My hand idled on the gearshift for a moment, everything in me screaming to throw the car in reverse and forget everything that had happened. Instead, I turned off the engine and followed Ralee inside. After coming this far, I’d have been remiss if I didn’t see it through to the end.

 

As I entered the sparsely decorated “hobo-chic” reception area, I noticed two things. First of all, every fish in the aquarium near the front door was dead. Like, super dead. It was as if someone was trying to showcase their aquatic corpse collection to their clients, which wasn’t at all unnerving. Second, the only three people in the room were Ralee, myself, and some middle-aged dude with five o’clock shadow wearing a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers. The man was sitting on an office chair with his feet kicked up onto the front desk while eating a bowl of knockoff fruit loops. “Get out.” The man said flatly, not bothering to look up from his extremely late breakfast. Ralee and I looked around the office frantically, confused by the lack of Leona in our vicinity. Had… had the story been wrong? She should have been here right now. “Do you two not speak English or something? El leave-o my office-o, por favor. I don’t have any appointments today and I’m really looking forward to doing fuck all right now.” Who in their right goddamn mind would ever come to a therapist like this?

 

Ralee rushed to the front desk, slamming her palms on the wooden surface and nearly causing the man to drop his bowl. “That can’t be right! You’re supposed to be seeing a Leona today, right now!” The man, dressed more for a Saturday spent watching cartoons than performing a service for others, stared down Ralee incredulously. “Where is she!?”

 

The man slurped up his milk noisily and belched just as proudly, he set his empty dish on his desk and crossed his arms. “Lady, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I don’t exactly run a booming business here. I’m pretty sure I’d know if I was seeing someone today. Now, if you aren’t here to be therapized, then kindly leave me alone.”

 

Grief, desperation, anguish, rage, a flurry of emotions cascaded across Ralee’s expression as she tried to come to terms with the fact that Leona hadn’t been here after all. She turned to me, pleading with both me and the world itself. “Maybe she’s just running late? She could have heard of this place and decided to do a walk-in visit. Maybe she wanted to be here now but got caught in traffic. That could happen, right? We can just wait here and--”

 

“What part of ‘get out’ don’t you understand?”

 

For Ralee, this was the worst case scenario, our one hope of finding Leona was slipping away with every second she didn’t show up, and now we were being kicked out of the one place we knew she was supposed to be. “Rob needs therapy.” What? “Yeah, he’s all kinds of fucked up. This guy thinks fictional characters he read about are real.” Never mind that YOU are the character in question, asshole! “So you should have a session with him and I can wait here til you’re done.” I felt like a pawn being sacrificed on a chessboard. On the one hand, I understood that she wanted to stay here for as long as possible to give Leona a chance to pop in. Sure, made perfect sense, but to put me on blast so mercilessly…

 

“Not interested, I’m taking a mental health day. I know, ironic, huh?” The unmotivated therapist leaned further back into his chair nearly careening backward to do so.

 

There it was, the final decision had been made. We couldn’t stay without an appointment and this gem of a human being didn’t want to bother with us for a moment longer. There was nothing stopping us from chilling in the parking lot, but we didn’t know if Leona would be arriving by car or if the forces which governed her story would magically jettison her to her destination. We were up a creek without a paddle. Shrugging, I tried turning to leave. However, I caught sight of Ralee as I did. She stood stock-still on the tacky carpet, not moving a muscle. Her expression was an unreadable jumble of disbelief and apathy which seemed echoed by her droopy body language. She looked absolutely shattered, a porcelain doll that had fallen off of a shelf onto the uncaring floor below.

 

Fuck. “Brent, was it?” The man behind the desk only cocked his eyebrow in response. “I’ve got about two hundred in cash on me right now, I’m going to guess that’s higher than your regular hourly rate. You see me for an hour and let her stay in the waiting room and it's yours.” I could hear the many overdue bills on my counter back home screaming at me for being an absolute idiot. That cash represented all of the money I had left from my double shift yesterday and the only possible chance I had to play any kind of catch up with expenses.

 

Ralee looked at me with disbelief. “Rob…” Ugh, why did I give her a fake name like that. Every time she said it, my skin started to crawl. “I’ve seen your car, you can’t be throwing around money like this.” She made a valid and compelling argument, one I was ready to completely ignore.

 

“Like you said, I’m pretty fucked up. Figure therapy’ll probably do me some good.” I didn’t believe that for a goddamn second. No head shrink was going to magically solve all of my problems and put a spring in my step and a song in my heart.

 

Brent looked at me, seemingly appraising what I had just proposed before heaving a heavy sigh. “Fine, but I’m not changing… deal with it.”

 

***

 

If I thought the reception area of Brent’s practice was bleak, I had a whole new perspective on the word after seeing his actual office. Stained floral wallpaper was peeling off the walls while a decrepit patterned carpet adorned the floors. Not only was the decor outdated, but nothing looked like it had been maintained in… years probably. It was almost impressive how disgusting this room was, a veritable masterpiece of filth and grime.

 

“Alrighty then, you gonna actually talk or are you going to make this the easiest money I’ve made in my life?” Brent hadn’t lied about not changing out of his robe and was now lazily spinning on a squeaky office chair about a few feet away from the abominable brown couch I had been directed to sit on. “Your friend said you were convinced fictional characters were real, right? Look, we all saw that fantasy show on HBO and fell for the mother of dragons. She’s not real kid, wouldn’t love you back if she was, and we’ve all just gotta accept that and move on with our lives.” The shaggy and unkempt man had a wistful expression as he reminisced about some crush of his.

 

Well, if I was going to be broke after this I should probably get my money's worth. “Umm, my problem has nothing to do with that, actually. I’m… kind of a writer. I feel like I’m living some twisted rendition of a book I’m writing and I’m pretty sure a couple of my characters are alive.”

 

Somewhere during my explanation, Brent stopped his idle spinning and turned his undivided attention towards me. “Well, fuck me sideways, that’s way more interesting than what I pictured. I’m in. Tell me about this book, Rob.”

 

“...Actually, my name is Leon. My friend just has a bad habit of calling me Rob.” A bad habit that I caused by introducing myself as such, but I digress. “Well, the book is called Leona’s Odyssey--”

 

“Pause for a second. Did you just say, Leona?”

 

Not sure why that warranted an interruption, I shrugged. “Yeah, that’s the main character's name. What’s wrong?”

 

Making a steeple with his fingers, Brent leans in a tad closer to me. “Not Leon, the character is named Leona?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“As in the feminine version of Leon?”

 

“I guess?”

 

“And this would be a self-insert character, I presume.”

 

“Kind of, she’s a lot braver, smarter, and stronger than me. The biggest similarity we share is our voice and mannerisms, but that’s just me being lazy with my writing.”

 

“But you two are similar?”

 

“Kind of.”

 

“Why Leona? Why not Leon?”

 

That’s a dumb question. “Well, a female character named Leon would be a bit off, don’t you think?” This guy was unbelievable, he asked me about my book and got hung up on the dumbest thing.

 

“Well, why not make her a guy? You could have written the character as a true self-insert named Leon without changing the story, couldn’t you?” What part of ‘she’s a woman’ did this guy not understand? Honestly, I was paying for this!?

 

“Well, her and her love interest are lesbians, pretty sure it wouldn’t work out if she was a guy.”

 

Brent slapped his palm against his face with enough force to cause an echoing crack throughout the room. “But YOU wrote these characters. YOU could have made her love interest straight and her a guy, right? I’m just trying to ask why you decided to make your self-insert character a woman?”

 

“,,, I’m not following.”

 

The therapist started massaging his temples and chanting under his breath something about being too sober for his profession. “Alright, let's try this again. The character Leona is basically an idealized version of yourself. You’ve already said she’s like you but better in a few ways, correct?” I nodded, hoping a less verbose answer wouldn’t piss off Brent further. “Great, glad that’s established. Now, let's forget about Leona for a second, okay? Tell me, what does an idealized version of Leon look like?”

 

That wasn’t something I’d thought about too much. I always hated the mirror but figured that was normal since everyone’s a bit self-conscious. “I dunno, like me I guess.”

“Really now, you wouldn’t change a thing about the way you look? Not to sound like too much of an ass, but you ain’t exactly batting a thousand in the looks department.” Ouch. “For me, I’d want a six-pack, a more chiseled jaw, maybe an extra few inches of height, straighter teeth, you get the idea. Tell me, what would make you happier with yourself.”

 

Weren’t we supposed to be talking about my book? “Um, well, I guess some longer hair that I could style more. I’d like to be thinner than I am now, I know I’m a bit on the heavier side. Maybe some piercings and tattoos would be cool.” Without meaning too, I started rattling off descriptions of Leona as I kept picturing her in my mind. That… that wasn’t right. I was supposed to be describing my ideal self.

 

“Okay, now tell me, does Leona have those physical traits?” How the fuck did he know? I could feel my face peel back in shock prompting a laugh from Brent. “It’s alright, you know. Wanting that for yourself. There’s nothing wrong about it.” How could it not be wrong, I wasn’t Leona. How could I be the person I was intensely jealous of? “It’s obvious that you’re confused about all of this. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have picked up on it if I hadn’t had a patient kind of like you before. Royal pain in the ass, that one. Just think about it for me, why did you make your character Leona? Maybe you’re not too far off, after all, thinking she’s real.”

 

Of course she was real, if Ralee was real and had ended up here, it only stood to reason that Leona did as well. But, the story had said Leona would be in this office at this time. Was the story wrong? Could it be wrong? My head hurt as I looked around the room. My eyes settled on one of the office’s windows where my reflection was barely visible. Did I want something else after all?

 

“Alright, I really don’t want to witness your existential crisis on my wonderful day of relaxation, lord knows I deal with too many of those myself. I’m going to shut my eyes and if you happen to leave and forget to put your money on my desk, well, we all make mistakes. But if anything I said strikes a chord with you, come back another day with insurance or cash and we’ll talk.” True to his word, Brent leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes. “But if I see your dumb ass staring back at me when I wake up, I’m charging you double what you promised, you hear me? Now scram!”

 

Not wanting to trample on the goodwill of my new therapist, I promptly exited his office and collected a despondent Ralee from the waiting room. After hurrying her out the door and back to the car, I leaned back in the driver's seat with a whole new weight on my shoulders. What Brent had been saying, that had to be nonsense, right? Leona was Leona because that was the character I’d made up. Male writers created female characters all the time and vice versa. My book wasn’t any different than that… it couldn’t be.

 

Ralee hugged her knees to her chest, a single stray tear escaping from her eye as she quietly bit back sobs that threatened to escape her throat. “I really thought she’d be here. Now what? We don’t have any idea where Leona is! Where do we even start looking for her!?” Without thinking, I looked up at my rearview mirror and caught a passing glimpse of myself as I adjusted it for the journey ahead.