Page 41 of A Heart to Find
“The song currently playing is from our high school years. You may not remember it because you weren’t into the Top 40 of the day, but I remember it like it was yesterday.”
“Why do I get the feeling it’s not bringing back positive memories?”
“I guess you’re more intuitive than I’ve given you credit for.” Her lips tried to smile, but her cheeks threatened to crack. “I think I’m ready to head back to my room now.”
“Keira, wait. Please don’t end on this note. Talk to me. Tell me what’s hurting you.”
The time for talking was ten years ago, not now. Not here.
And yet, her vocal cords had other ideas. Bad ideas. Ideas about communicating her hurt and clearing the air.
She inhaled some of the polluted air from the past into lungs that wanted to be brave. As she exhaled the muddied air, she spoke her truth. “I get that dances aren’t a big deal to you, or at least they weren’t back then. But I can’t tell you how much it hurt me when you didn’t show up to take me to the prom. It’s a pain I got over a long time ago, obviously, but hearing that song and being here with you again like this… it’s bringing the feeling of abandonment back and I don’t like it.”
“Keira, I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s okay, there’s nothing that needs to be said. I just wanted you to know why this is a hard night for me. I would be fine with this experience with anyone else, but I can’t do this with you.”
She started walking away, but he stepped in front of her, blocking her from the steps down to the street.
“I won’t try to make you do anything you don’t want to do, but I’m trying to understand this.”
She sighed. Why hadn’t she stayed in her hotel room with her tea and her cookies?
She tried to chastise herself for her willingness to toss aside all the positive vibes they shared this evening, but pain had a funny way of twisting her heart in confusing knots.
“I’m sorry, Keira. I hate to probe into something that causes you distress, but I don’t know why you thought I’d be coming to pick you up for the prom. You broke up with me the week before. I wouldn’t have dared to show up with how angry you were with me.”
“No, that’s not true! We never broke up—you just disappeared! Like I never mattered at all.”
“You told me you never wanted to see me again. We were in your driveway, and we were talking about our plans for after graduation. You told me to go off and have a blast trotting around the globe, remember? And then you kicked me off your property, telling me you’d send your grandmother out to whip me with wet noodles if I ever came near you again.”
Heat torched her cheeks as her memory transported her back in time. He was right. She had said all of those things. She had looked in his eyes and told him she had wasted too many of her years with him already and she didn’t want to waste another day since they wanted such different things. She had pushed him in the chest and told him to get back in his car and drive off a cliff for all she cared.
And then he disappeared.
And somewhere along the line, she had blocked out her part in the ordeal. In the death of their love story.
Her hands fled to her cheeks, but her cold hands did nothing to quell the swelling of the flames.
“You’re right.” Amazement colored her tone. “You’re exactly right.”
“I’m surprised you forgot about that. It was so opposite of how you usually behaved. Scared me a little, to be honest.”
His taunting trickled through her foggy brain, teasing emotion out of her like her cat teased out the last crumb of food from her feeder.
“Okay, fine. I forgot that admittedly rather important detail. But still. I thought you’d show up. I thought you’d make a giant romantic gesture and tell me I was all you ever wanted. That you didn’t care about anything as much as you cared about making a life with me.”
“And then we’d live happily ever after?”
“Something like that.” She shrugged. “Stupid, I know. High school love isn’t forever love. I realize that now.”
“It’s not a stupid idea. Believe me, the idea of spending my life with you appealed to me even then.”
She fought the tears that threatened to betray her present state of emotional insecurity. She didn’t want him to know he still affected her. That even though ten years had passed, she found herself feeling like a vulnerable teenager, wishing the boy she adored would love her back just as fiercely.
Stupid fairy tales.
“Come in and dance with me. Just one dance.”
