To be loved is to be seen.

Tashi doesn't want to be seen. But she does want to be loved, despite what she told Art a few weeks ago, prior to her injury. That feeling has just increased tenfold since then.

Her sports scholarship is on the line. Her career is no more than a distant dream. Her earnings won't cover the rest of her tuition at Stanford if she wants to stick around and see the whole education thing through; not if she wants to live on campus, at least. She ended things with Patrick and in the same breath cut Art out of her life, too. She doesn't need a reminder of what she's lost. Everything has gone to shit.

The one thing she still has? You.

Sitting on the other end of her bed, flicking through your textbook while she does the only thing she's been capable of over the last month: brood. You hate seeing her like this. A shell of the sharp-tongued girl you grew up with. But she's already snapped at you for trying to console her. "I'm not a pussy. Stop patronising me." Even if she does look like a wounded animal these days. But that's the problem. The facade of that unbreakable rising tennis star has crumbled, and left behind what she really is:

An insecure young girl who wants to be loved. Not because she's good at tennis. Not because her legs span for miles in a short skirt. Art loved her for her skills with a racket. Patrick loved her because she was unattainable. She wants to be loved for her. She wants to be known. Truly understood.

The mortifying ordeal of being known. You know her. She knows you know her. That's what terrifies her. But she's tired of keeping this all to herself, not when she knows you would drop anything and everything to help her.

"I don't know what to do," she admits quietly. Oh. She doesn't look at you, when you lift your head from your anatomy textbook to look questioningly over at her. "There's nothing left for me anymore. I don't even like my major. I don't even know why I'm still here."

No, she does know. It's because you're here.