Dancing With Keenan

Chapter Six - Unravel

The door slammed behind me as I rushed out to my car. The deep ache in my chest was back full-force, and I was no longer even trying to push back the tears or the pain. I knew it was pointless. There would be no pushing this away.

I'd done the exact same thing I'd done two years ago. I'd used my grief and my pain to fuel my anger because the anger felt better than the pain.

The problem was that when the anger naturally faded away, the pain was even worse than before, and I'd caused a rift that I wasn't sure could ever be healed.

Hot tears poured down my face as sobs forced their way out of my throat.

I felt lost.

What had I done?

What had happened in there?

I knew the answers, but I didn't want to admit it.

Keenan had been right. I had this tendency to push things too far, to cling to whatever anger I felt at the moment. I made assumptions and I forced the issue until the anger turned back into depression. Wasn't that why he had left?

No, I told myself.

There was so much more to our past than that, and, logically, I knew that I couldn't lay the blame on one aspect of our history. Sure, it probably had something to do with it, but that wasn't all that had happened.

We'd been through something horrible, and that was what truly tore us apart.

I forced my mind away from those thoughts. That black hole of depression was big enough as it was, and no good would come from letting my mind wander the pain of my past. There was enough pain already coursing through me without opening that can of worms.

I glanced up at the old farmhouse and felt that familiar clench in my heart.

This was what I had signed up for when I agreed to help Keenan, I reminded myself.

I couldn't keep crying over it.

Somehow, someway, I had to figure out how to make it stop hurting.

With my shaky resolve, I started my car and eased down the dirt path.

I could do this.

I had to.

I was almost back to my apartment when my phone pinged with a new text, but by the time I pulled into the parking lot of my building and cut the ignition, I'd forgotten all about it.

It was just after eight when I kicked my door shut and dropped onto the floor in front of the sofa. I flicked on the television and popped the cap off a bottle of beer.

Nothing caught my eye on TV, and there wasn't anything new on the news, so a few minutes later, I turned the television back off and reached for my journal on the side table. I pulled the pen from the sleeve and flipped through the unlined pages until I found the first empty sheet.

The words flowed from my mind, through my fingers, and onto the paper easily as I wrote. Time slipped away from me. When I finally took a break to read over what I written so far, my drink was warm and the soreness had completely left my fingers.

Not so long ago, it seems

We were one in a way

That we'd never want to lose,

But that we couldn't keep forever