Destined to be?

Chapter 6

Brayden

Something hasn't been right. That feeling had been with me all day.
Normally she was quiet. I was used to that, I respected that.
Knowing that we didn't always have to talk, knowing that we could just sit there with each other was nice.
But when she had gotten into my car this morning I could tell that she seemed stiff.
Of course she had tried to give me a smile and had hugged me when i walked her to her first class so I had pushed the pressing feeling off.
There were times when things would get to her.
All the crap that she had been through.
I couldn't even imagine.
Losing months of memory.
Having to deal with all the shit from Christy and her friends. Let alone all the crap online.
Luckily for the most part all of that has for the most part played out. All except for christy that is.
I'm not really sure what that girl's problem is but she just seems to have a pretty big chip on her shoulder and for some reason thinks that bashing on Sarah is going to fix all that.
We had gone through a patch like this before. When she had apologized for not being present. Explaining how she felt as if she was the problem and how she thought that i was going to or how i should be annoyed by that.
In all honesty I wasn't. That's what I told her then and that's still true now.
I will never be annoyed by her quietness because I do the same thing.
Getting stuck in my head, zoning the rest of the world out.
Sometimes I couldn't help it.
Just like she couldn't. I would never blame her for that.
There are times when we just get stuck on certain thoughts that are like quicksand, slowly pulling us under until they are all we can think about.
I did that a lot with the games.
Going over the play book so many times just to make sure I had all the plays down so that I wouldn't mix them up and jeopardize my team. Then that's all I could think about, especially the whole week before an actual game.
Then when i got injured.
With my knee. Everyone else was worried about the surgery and how they were going to fix the joint and the only thing that I could think about was how I could have been so stupid to not have seen that double block coming. Thinking about how the team was going to play without me there. Would they play better with the backup QB or was I letting everyone down.
That's when I started to name the colors.
I would become so overwhelmed with those thoughts and I needed a breather but I couldn't seem to get away so I had just started naming all the stuff around me forcing my brain to focus on something else and that seemed to do the trick.
I had done that a lot back home but since I've moved here, since I met Sarah I havent had to use the trick at all. Except that one time when I used it on her in the hallway outside of photojournalism when she was having a panic attack.
I was so scared. Not knowing what to do until that idea jumped out and even as I was asking her all the questions I wasn't sure if the trick I had used so many times would work on her.
Luckily it did and she was okay.
As far as i know she hasnt had to deal with another panic attack in months.
I know that amara had told me that she had a few in that first month of coming back to school. She hasn't reported anything about Sarah halving any more.
Which was a relief.
Knowing how bad they terrified her and how vulnerable she felt when she had them. I was just hoping that she wasn't trying to hide them away so that she wouldn't worry others.
That was definitely something that she would do.
Maybe that's why she was acting so off today.
Had she had another major attack.
Was she just trying to play that off or was this something else?
Then again I could be over playing the idea that something was wrong but my gut told me differently. 
Still sitting in my keep outside of her house after dropping her off after school.
It has been a solid ten minutes that I have been just sitting here like a stalker.
When she said goodbye I had gotten the feeling that she wanted to be alone.
So this whole time I had been wrestling with the idea of if i should go and talk to her or if i should just wait for her to come to me.
For the most part I usually don't push. I wanted her to be comfortable and now that I was here for her whenever she was ready, something about this seemed important.
I couldn't place my finger on why.
So with that I jumped out of my truck and went up to knock on the front door only to welcomed in by Mrs. Wilson, which I had been thankful for because instead I had avoided the whole twenty questions her dad would have given me when I asked where she was. 
Instead her mom pointed me to the back door without any hesitations and I made my way to the backyard the whole time asking myself if this was the right move to make.
The last thing i wanted to do was make her more upset, knowing just how much she hated when someone pried into her life but i also wasn't going to just sit by while i knew that she isn't quite herself.
Finding her laying down in the grass, her hair all sprawled out in waves around her shoulders, her knees were bent bare feet planted directly in the grass as one hand laid over her stomach and the other ran over the grass next to her hip.
Staring up at the sky.
Or at least that's what I thought until I stepped closer and realized she was looking at something so much closer than the clouds.
Our birdhouse.
Still hanging up in the tree. Surprisingly still intact considering all the months of weather that the tiny house has had to live through.
Smile came onto my face as I remembered all those classes of building that thing. How much work that went into something so simple.
Plus all the times that we had to start over because the structure had kept collapsing with all the ways that we had tried to build the birdhouse in the beginning.
Which was another reason I had been so surprised that the pieces of wood were even still connected, let alone that the shape was completely recognizable.
We built that.
Together
Sarah and I.
If we can build that and it hasn't fallen apart then we can get through this. Whatever it was.
Noticing that she still hadn't realized that I was standing behind her. Granted I was still a distance away but I didn't want to scare her.
Clearing my thought watching how she immediately jumped and spun around her eyes wide with shock.
"I'm sorry. I."
"Brayden. Hi. What are you doing here?"
Noticing a puff of breath exhale from her after she asked the question.
"I just, ummm. I was." I really should have gotten what I was going to say together before I decided to come out here. Her eyebrows scrunched together as she took in my twitching stance. Moving all my weight from one foot to the other, then back again.
"Brayden?" She asked again, about to get up but I waved her back down as I came over and sat down in the grass next to her.
"It's just, I noticed that there was something off today. With you I mean, is everything ok? Did something happen?" Just then the thought came to me that maybe some of her memory had come back. That would definitely explain the strange behavior and her distance that she's kept today. Knowing full well that she did not have a headache in fourth period but letting her use that excuse because she didn't feel like talking.
Besides, we were in class. Not like that's a private place. Not like here, where there was no one to listen in to our conversation.
A small sliver of fear that was slowly growing when she didn't answer me immediately.
What if her memory was coming back. Now of all times. After everything had pretty much settled down only for shit to hit the fan and stir her life up all over again.
After a huge mistake of answering her phone and talking to that asshole of a detective she had told me that she never wanted her memories back.
At first I had thought that would be the best alternative because then we could make sure that the person who took her away could be put in prison. But after I listened to her I realized that no matter how much I wanted the person to pay for causing her and her family all the grief that he had, I was actually so overcome with comfort in knowing that she wouldn't also have to live with those memories.
Of course that just leaves the door wide open for what did actually happen to her in those three months that she was gone.
Thankful that she had come home completely physically unharmed and from what I heard in the same clothes that she had disappeared in only they were clean. Which only leads to more questions.
I wanted to ask more but I was worried that if I pushed her too much too fast she would shut down. No. I just had to wait for her response.
No matter if the worry literally felt like a ball of worms eating away at my stomach lining working there way up to my lungs.