Counting Down

Chapter 11 - A New Beginning

Alrighty fellas, this is the second to last chapter.

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey of this book. I finally had an idea that didn't include band members and I went with it and stuck with it over these many months. Thanks for your comments and love towards the book. I've grown incredibly attached to my book characters...and doing this to them is going to break my heart.

Also, I am writing a prequel called "The Special Ones". It's based off of Jackie's teacher.

Okay, enjoy!

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I gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turned white. My heart was beating like a staccato bass drum, echoing in my ears and being felt through out my entire body. Is it normal to be shaking so hard you can't drive straight? I couldn't get over that call. The last people I'd expect to call me did just that. This was the hope I had been waiting for.

I came to a stop light, slamming hard on the brakes, and therefore snapping me back into reality. I had to stay alive until I got there. Obey the traffic laws, Jackie, I told myself. I used the pause in traffic to try to slow my breathing down to at least a semi-normal rate. The cars passed unbearably slow until the light finally flashed back to green. That was perhaps the longest red light I ever sat at.

Rocketing farther down the road, I felt the first tears of an entire waterfall begin blurring my vision at the edges. Every tear, every night spent awake gasping for air, every time I was sent into vicious flashbacks, came back to this. Everything was falling into place, just as it was meant to be. There was still the fear, the worry, the anxiety clawing up my throat from the deepest parts of me, but I held on to the tiny sliver of hope I still had.

When I had received that phone call from Tara, I thought I was going to break down right on the phone. Instead, I may have completely destroyed it. That didn't matter know. What did matter was that she felt herself being pulled to the ocean today, and that going to the hospital would be a bad idea.

I let the first real smile on my face stretch to each ear, as if tearing open an old scar. It released the tiny hope I still had, glowing inside of me, now like an inferno, that I could call Riley mine once more.

Tara's Point Of View

I had fallen asleep after talking to that Jacklyn chick and rolled over the thoughts in my head. Perhaps these events affected my dreams, and perhaps it was merely meant to be, but I knew where I had to be today. I shrugged on a bikini under my clothes, packed my wetsuit in my backpack along with a granola bar. My surfboard was strapped safely atop my van and still had lingering fragments of the kelp forest I had accidentally ravaged through while surfing last week.

The warning air sent chills down my back. Maybe it was me catching my watch's time in my peripheral vision, but I blamed it on the air. It was looking to be an usually beautiful day out. That was one thing I couldn't stand about Washington; it's gloomy skies and weather. I made day trips to California as often as I could to see the sun and get some vitamin C every now and then.

I lulled over the conversation and complete mental breakdown I had to witness this morning. I decided that it wasn't my place to interfere in such a dilemma. Particularly a predicament such as amnesia between one lover and the other. I couldn't take that from Jacklyn, no matter how much her constant gloominess made me want to burst through her metephorical cloud and shine all of my goodness on her.

The thought occurred to me that I had forgotten my drink for my travel, so I drove down the interstate until I came to the nearest exit with a gas station. The town I pulled into looked quaint and honestly right down adorable. Little shops were up and down the thin streets, each displaying it's possessions in the windows outlined in neon lights. I finally found a gas station, pulled in, and parked. While locking my car (you never know these days), I caught another sight of my watch.