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“Both.”
He groaned as he sat next to me on the wall. Just his presence was comforting.
“I remember how hard it was for you to make the choices you made when we left California. I remember how hard it was for you to heal. If you ask for my unprofessional psychological opinion with a dash of expertise in Blake-ology, it’s not because you still love him. I think… It’s because of the way you left all of your history behind. What were the last words you said to him that weren’t work-related?”
I thought back to when I stormed out of our apartment in California. Erik and I had been arguing for almost three hours, and my voice was getting tired. Our last interaction haunted me for months after I left. The words played in my mind at full volume.
~
“I am such an idiot!” I screamed at Erik. “I’m basically on my knees begging you to come with me because the thought of leaving you behind feels like ripping myself in two, and then you have the audacity to say that to me?!”
“How’s that for one of your stupid honesty moments?!” he matched my volume. I was sure the neighbors could hear every word we screamed at each other.
“Screw our history! Screw this. Screw you, Erik! I’m leaving on Sunday. I’m going to Virginia with or without you!”
I turned around and slammed our front door. My car was just outside. I got in it and drove to my mom’s house a few streets down. I cried on my childhood twin bed while my mom held me for an hour. I knew it was over.
~
The next time I talked to Erik, I was thousands of miles away and through a computer screen. We were meeting with Connor about new dynamics.
“I think you’re missing closure,” Nathaniel sighed. “Maybe it would be helpful to get some while he’s here so you can put this behind you.”
“This isn’t going to be as easy as I want to pretend it's going to be, is it?”
“No.”
Nathaniel threw his arm around me as I buried my face in my hands. Erik wasn’t even here and was already messing with my head. The fact that he captured this much control over my thoughts was alarming.
Nathaniel was right. I needed closure. I just wasn’t sure how I would get it without subjecting myself to another rollercoaster of emotions.
I was scared of many things. Feelings were number one on my list.
Chapter Five
Friday afternoon.
Three days before.
Gabby dragged her feet while getting ready to go to the gym. Yesterday, she begged me to go dancing with her at a country dance hall in Wimberly, but I wasn’t big into dancing. After two hours of going back and forth, I caved, but only if she came to the gym with me since I always found it more inspiring to run with someone. I didn’t think she would agree, and now I was trapped with going to the gym and then dancing.
While she got ready, I sat on her bed, listening to another of the repetitive speeches about how I needed to work less and enjoy life more. She preached that running shouldn’t be the only thing I do for fun. She swore to me that I would see what I was missing out on tonight.
We walked a few blocks to the gym in the opposite direction of my office. I loved living downtown because everything was close, and I could walk everywhere. Most of the year, the weather was pleasant enough. We weren’t south enough that it got boiling outside; we weren’t near water, so humidity remained relatively low; we weren’t so far north to the point where we got buried in the snow into the spring.
The noise of the crowded gym, combined with the fluorescent overhead lighting, reignited my energy. Squeaking sneakers against the floor and the slamming of weights on the ground was soothing to me. The guy at the counter scanned our QR codes, and we took the stairs to the second floor, where the full-sized track awaited us.
Gabby barely held up her end of the bargain and only ran two of the twelve laps she promised before opting for the treadmill. She was more of a walk-while-watching-TV kind of person.
I continued running without her, feeling some of the stress of the week melt away every time my feet connected with the soft ground. Come Monday, the pressure to perform would be intense, and the commotion of feelings would ramp up, so I intended to take the weekend to relax my brain and try to put any thoughts of Erik out to pasture. I set my own goal to try and not do any work for the weekend, which would be quite a feat for me.
Sweat dripped off my face as I stretched on the edge of the track, so I made a pit stop in the bathroom to wash my face before heading back downstairs. My cheeks were a shade darker than the rest of my face, and the cold water felt incredible on them. I fixed my ponytail, ensuring it wasn’t at that half-fallen awkward spot on my head.
I waved Gabby over as I passed her on my way to the small lockers by the entrance where my keys and wallet were. She held her index finger at me, letting me know her episode wasn’t over yet. I opened the locker and grabbed my stuff.
A few lockers down from me, a tall man pressed his forehead to the cold metal. He was defeated trying to open the locker in front of him. I was sure he was new, not because I had never seen him before, but because anyone who had been here before knew to only use specific lockers or bypass them altogether.
“Hi,” I tapped him on the shoulder. He tore his head from the metal and slowly turned to me. I took a step back to see the man standing in front of me.
