The Catalyst | Joanne

Chapter 34

The doors opened.

Dianne took a deep, shaky breath and stepped into the waiting lift.

Wiping her eyes, she tried her best to stop any more tears from falling. Something had changed, something palpable, the minute she had left the apartment. Through everything she had experienced over the last few weeks, it had been one tiny mistake that had finally broken her. Broken them.

She shook her head, trying not to ponder the possibility that this could be the end of anything at all. They just needed a moment, she rationalized, to calm down and to consider what had happened. It had been a silly, drunken video. A post that- before she met Joe- nobody would have noticed. A post that, now, only served to demonstrate the madness she was feeling. The unstable, uncomfortable madness she had been drowning in. The madness she would need help to escape, if only Joe would realise how deeply she had already fallen.

Crossing the road, the rain tickled at her hair, leaving a droplet on the end of her nose. Blinking through the sheets now falling from the sky, she ignored it and put one foot in front of the other. One foot. Then the other. Until she reached the bridge.

The studio wasn't that far away. Usually, she wouldn't have walked, but she needed the time. Time to forgive what Joe had said in his heightened state. Time to forget the entire situation, if only for a little while. She crossed over the river, keeping her head down to shelter herself from the rain. As she walked, she thought back over what had happened. What had led her to be here, alone, on a bridge, in the rain.

Joe's reaction had shocked her. In moments like this, where she had made little errors in the past, he had been by her side to help her move forward. He had been supportive, giving her advice until she was confident enough to manage things by herself. This time was different. He had snapped at her. Shouted. Walked away. He knew, she thought, he knew that she was hurting. Her video, the things she had said, the way she had let herself get in that state in the first place, only served to prove that she was vulnerable. Broken. Crying out for help.

"I've never been that good with emotions." She remembered Joe saying that to her early in their partnership. "I don't always know what to do. I don't always do the right thing." She sighed. That might just be the biggest understatement in the world.

Pushing open the door to the studio, Dianne blinked as the warm lights hit her. Looking over, she saw Amy and Oti stood in front of the mirror. When they saw her, they froze.

"Do... do you want to talk about it?" Oti said gently as Dianne shrugged off her coat and let her bag slide down her arm.

Dianne threw her damp hair up into a ponytail before turning to her friends and shaking her head.

"No," she said, as confidently as she could muster, "I just want to dance."

///

"Pick up, pick up, pick up."

Joe paced around his living room, phone pressed to his ear.

"Hi. Everything OK?"

Zoe's voice immediately calmed him. "Oh, thank God" he breathed, "Zoe, I think I've made a massive mistake."

Zoe sighed. "I saw the video. Is Dianne OK? What happened?"

Sitting down on the edge of the sofa, picking threads out of the cushions, Joe threw his head back. "I don't know. I mean, I think I reacted pretty badly. Well, I over-reacted. It was one small thing, but it was like it just turned into an avalanche and now... " he could feel tears beginning to form once more and tried his best to swallow down the lump in his throat, "now she's gone."