Street Smart

Chapter 83: David

    We were sat in the car parked in the retirement home's parking lot, neither quite ready to start the move. Nobody was around, but cars passed fairly consistently. Kelly stared straight out the window, breathing heavily. Her hand was placed on her lap. Needing connection, I reached over and held tight to it. We didn't need to speak. Words couldn't describe what we were feeling. The sensation of change was hanging above us and each breath our lungs sucked in, the more the medical poison burned. We need it. But we fear it. That's the craziest thing about it.

    I could feel her pulse escalate, to the opposite rhythm of mine and, oh, how it made such an elegantly off-beat song.

    "We're going to be okay," I looked over at her, "You know that, right?"

    I wasn't sure I knew it, but I had to put on a brave face, for her. She exhaled a long breath and her eyes fluttered up to mine.

    "I do. And I hate that so much."

    We both laughed. But quickly her smiled faded,

    "I am a bit scared, though."

    "That's okay. So am I."

    "Why are you scared?"

    I wasn't sure what to say. There was a lot and a little. I like trying to put the past in the past, but that's just never really possible. It's our past that creates our future and our future that shapes our past.

    "You know why."

    "Don't worry about Elliot. I think he'll be fine this time."

    "I hope."

    "So, tell me. Why are you scared?" I pushed the conversation back on her.

    "More like why am I not."

    Seeing her joke around meant that change really had begun, and something about that made me so ready. It's time to embrace our past. Without that, there's no way we're getting out of this confused misery.