Fears To Face

∞ Chapter 10 ∞

~ Rayne ~

 Sitting on my couch, my house surrounded by darkness, I thought back to the afternoon.  It had been so different from our other meetings. Monday we both hadn’t been at ease, because we were both nervous about what we were going to tell each other and our first meeting Saturday had been so strange.

Today there hadn’t been any agreement we needed to hold on to. It was just the two of us, hanging out together carelessly. I was grateful she wanted to go into the woods with me. I liked to show her something  of the peacefulness  the woods contained. The woods that felt like a second home to me. I knew she felt it too, from the way she looked around, inhaled deeply sometimes and walked between the tree-trunks and loose branches.

I wasn’t sure what to do first when I saw her slipping from the trunk. I knew she didn’t fully trust me, but it meant something that she agreed to go into the woods with me alone, I figured. Then I saw a piece of wood standing upward from the trunk. It was sharp and Kayley was heading right to it. That faded my doubts immediately. It didn’t matter whether she would appreciate it or not, I had to stop her fall.

When she stood straight up again, I realized how close she was to me right then, closer than anyone had been in my life. I loved the way her body felt to mine; the way her shoulder pressed to my chest, the feel of her heartbeat against my skin, her warm breath in my neck. But at the same time it felt wrong, way too close, too far into my private cycle. With that came the knowledge that she didn’t really like me, that it was a miracle I had talked her into hanging out with me.

My heart skipped a beat in the negative way for the second time this afternoon when I saw her heading straight to that hole. I thought she would notice, see it, or maybe even sense it somehow, but when she was only three inches from the side and she made an attempt to take another step, I had to stop her. I was surprized by how light she laughed when I asked her whether she wanted me to get her away from it or not. Like I was just any other human guy, while I’m not and she had been terrified by me when we met.

The TV was sending light and sound flows into my living room and the fire was burning bright at the fireplace. At 6 o’clock I turned everything out, grabbed my coat from the hall and my keys from the little desk in the corner and got into my car. As I drove to the edge of town to Adan’s, I came across the small shopping centre and the streets were crowded with people. All the chatting and laughing gave a peaceful feeling to the sky that seemed to flow with the wind. The pleasant feeling disappeared as soon as I walked into Adan’s. Owen was running through the kitchen from left to right and from the front to the back as I took off my coat and took my cap from my locker. He spotted me.

“Rayne, thank god you’re here. It’s a mess, I need men baking burgers, hurry!”

I supressed the urge to sigh. What a great start of the evening. I walked over to the ovens and the frying pans and started baking. Owen was head of the kitchen and the manager of this place and easily stressed when it was busy in the restaurant. He was nice, though, when it was more quiet. He’d been my saving grace a little over a year ago and had even asked me once to come over and have dinner with him and his girlfriend back then, they were engaged now. It had been an awkward evening with many silences and he had never asked me again, but at least he had tried, unlike all my other colleagues who mostly kept their distance from me.

Children were playing in the restaurant and my thoughts wandered back to my youth. My carefree youth, with a lot of laughter and fun with my little brother Luke as we ran through our garden or through the house. I thought of my younger years a lot, hoping to keep them save in my memory by recalling them often, they seemed so far away. I wondered often what my parents looked like now, whether they still lived in the same small house or not, if they ever thought of me.