Shattered on the Ground

It's a common belief that positive thinking leads to a happier healthier life. As children we are told to smile, be cheerful, and put on a happy face. As adults we are told to look on the bright side, to make lemonade, and see glasses as half full.

Reese was staring up at her ceiling with only one thought repeating on a loop in her mind,

’What the fuck did I just do?’

Another side of her thought perhaps the better question was, who, did she just fuck?

Reese closed her eyes, swallowing hard as she wished for her heart to just return to its normal beat, hoping for her racing thoughts to slow through her mind. But her heart wouldn’t slow and her thoughts wouldn’t cease. Some might call it a panic attack, others might label it as simple adrenaline but Reese knew there was no clear cut answer for the apparent heart palpitations or her racing thoughts. As simple as Reese could put it, it was her body at war with herself. Her explanation ended there because venturing further would mean admitting feelings, accepting her mistakes, realizing that sometimes what was wrong was right.

Sometimes reality can get in the way of our ability to act the happy part though. Your health can fail, boyfriends can cheat, people may die.

Reese found herself terribly cold from the rain that had assaulted her earlier this evening and despite the toasty warm body beside her, she refused to give into the temptation of curling to it.

He ran a finger down her arm, feeling the goose bumps like braille.

“You’re cold,” It wasn’t a question but a statement and he tried moving closer in an attempt to warm her but Reese shrugged him away silently and he sighed. “One step forward, three steps back.” He grumbled.

“That wasn’t one step. It was a step, a skip, a sprint, and then a leap off a cliff with a hundred foot drop.” She locked her jaw as she glared up at ceiling, wondering why that divine intervention thing that people are always talking about didn’t…well, didn’t intervene.

Silence fell amongst the two and while they were only inches apart they could have been miles apart for all their acknowledgement of each other.

It's in these moments, when you just want to get real, drop the act, and be your true scared unhappy self.

“…I never cheated on you…I mean, I never slept with her…”

For a moment the words didn’t register with Reese but then slowly she finally turned to face the body beside her. Dark hair fell into his face, yet deep brown eyes stared back at her unfailingly through the dark room.

“Excuse me?”

She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard and looked away for a moment. “I never cheated on you, Reesie—not the way you think.”

When the words finally sunk in she sat upright, her body turned fully toward him. “What the hell are you talkin-“

“That night at the party,” He sat up and closed his eyes tiredly. “with April, what you saw…it wasn’t what you thought you saw.”

Reese was silent and when he didn’t continue she snapped, “Oh really? Because a hot girl all over you and you’re tongue in her mouth is never what it looks like. It’s not what it looks like, yeah never heard that that one before.”

“Reese calm down,” He held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I’m not saying what you saw isn’t what you saw. It just…it just wasn’t all of it, you saw a split second of something that lasted longer---I mean, shit that came out wrong...you can’t not know how it began and not know the ending and say you know what happened.”

“Are you seriously trying to have this conversation while you’re naked in my bed?” She questioned incredulously.

Ask most people what they want out of life and the answer is simple - to be happy. Maybe it's this expectation though of wanting to be happy that just keeps us from ever getting there.

“It was a fucking masquerade party, Reese Lynn. How was I supposed to know she’d have the exact same mask as you? How was I suppose to know she was going to try and manipulate me?!”

Reese looked away, she didn’t want to have this conversation; not now not ever. She didn’t want to relieve the moments where the only boy she ever loved shattered her heart and any trust she ever had in the opposite sex.

“I was drunk when she found me—she only got me drunker. I didn’t know Reese, how the fuck was I suppose to know?”

She wouldn’t say it, she wouldn’t admit that inner Girl thought of, ’You’re just supposed to know. If you love someone you know, isn’t that how it happens in all the good books and movies? You’re just supposed to know when it’s not my kisses…’

“Reese?” He questioned hesitantly, trying to coax a response out of her.

Reese remembered that day. She’d been such an ignorant teenager; she’d believed that he could have been the one, she believed she could live her life as a graphic designer, she’d believed that she could somehow always be with Nixon when he went on tour, she believed that Ashley would be her maid of honor at her wedding. She believed in so much, she’d dreamed up an entire world built on the foundation that was Kenneth Nixon and Reese Hanley.

But in real life, boyfriends can cheat, tragedies can happen, in real life you need a real job, you need solid things, black and white things not dreams. A successful career, a successful boyfriend, a solid group of successful friends, weren’t those the keys to happiness? Wasn’t that what it meant to be normal? To live the American dream?

Reese wasn’t that hopelessly in love teenager anymore. She was a doctor, she had a true foundation based souly on the things she made for herself. These things he was talking about were irrelevant now; worrying about the past was irrelevant—they didn’t matter anymore. They weren’t who she was now.

She was happy now; she had a career, a boyfriend, friends who didn’t look at her like a fragile doll.

Maybe the more we try to will ourselves to states of bliss, the more confused we get - to the point where we don't recognize ourselves.

Yet here was Kenneth Nixon in her bed…How much had things truly changed? Had she truly changed?

“Why didn’t you say anything?” She questioned suspiciously. “If it was the way you say it was—why the hell did you let me break up with you? Why did you let us go through that hell?”

Nixon was silent for a long time and Reese began to wonder if he ever planned on answering her. “Because I knew the moment I looked at you and realized the girl in my arms wasn’t you, that I’d lost you…The absolute betrayal in your face…I knew I’d never get your trust back, that we could never be what we were again. I knew that even if you believed the truth you would still have this image in your head of me with another woman behind your back. Even if it wasn’t what it seemed, the betrayal, the pain, the anger, the hate—like a switch you just felt it all so strongly and I knew that even if I told you the truth and you managed to forgive me that I’d already lost you. That seed in your mind to doubt me had already been planted, the burn of betrayal had already left its mark and there was nothing I could do or say to erase those things.”

Reese was silent for a long moment as she looked at the man beside her in disbelief. “So you let me walk away? I meant so little to you that you just cut your losses and ran?”

“No! It’s not, Jesus Christ,” He struggled with words to explain. “It’s not like that. God are all you women such fucking mental ninja’s to just totally flip what a guy is saying to make it a bad thing?”

“Don’t change the subject!”

Nixon pursed his lips and closed his eyes. “Reese,” He began slowly. “I loved you and I never forgave myself for just dropping the ball and letting things end…Things just got so messy so fast I didn’t know how to fix things until it was too late. I’m sorry, I’m not Mr. Perfect that always knows what to do or knows how to fix things—“

“Clearly,”

“It was just too late…” he shrugged helplessly. “It was just too late and then Ashley died and you almost died.” His eyes met hers truly for the first time since they’d been talking. His eyes were saw haunted it was hard to look into those familiar chocolate orbs. “All I could think was, please God not her, please don’t take her.” He swallowed hard blinking. “I wanted to tell you the truth but you were so lost and hurt and then at the funeral home you told me you were leaving and I couldn’t. I didn’t want to add to the things bothering you, I didn’t want to be the one that held you back. I felt like if leaving Tennessee had even a chance to help you heal then I knew I couldn’t stop you.”

Reese looked away, she didn’t know whether to feel angry that he was bringing all this up or hurt. It was a type of hurt she would never admit to it, a type of hurt that only happened from tearing open healed scars on your heart. “Why tell me now? Why not just let me patch you up in that ER and then go on your merry way?”

Reese tried to imagine that scenario, of seeing him that one time and then never again. She tried to imagine it, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t imagine only seeing Nixon and Chris that one time and never again. Seeing them had filled something she’d been deficient of since she’d left—a sense of herself, familiarity.

Instead we just keep smiling - trying to be the happy people we wish we were.

“Because I saw you and you hadn’t changed from the last time I’d seen you in that funeral home. You were still trying to hide from everyone, still unhappy…if you were fine, if you were living this incredible life you pretend you love I would have left. But you weren’t, you weren’t you, you weren’t this doctor you came off appearing. You were this teenage girl who’d lost her sister and still couldn’t find a reason as to why she was gone, you were still this hurt girl who was trying to flinch off the pain and make everyone believe she was okay.”

“Who do you think you are, Dr. Phil? You gonna say this all goes back to loosing Ashley, loosing you, and my issues with my parents?”

“I think Dr. Phil would say its unhealthy to try to live the life Ashley wanted and not your own.” He returned levelly.

“This is fucking ridiculous.” She’d reached her wits end, she couldn’t do this anymore, she wouldn’t let Kenneth Nixon of all people analyze her. She wouldn’t let him tell her what she felt when Nixon hadn’t even seen her in years. Reese sure as hell wasn’t going to let Kenneth Nixon drag her back through all the things she ran from. She’d made a life for herself entirely her own. One where people didn’t look at Reese and see one tragic half of a whole, She wouldn’t be looked at like the pathetic girl who fell in love when she was sixteen and never got over it.

She wasn’t that person.

Reese ripped the covers angrily off her body and stormed toward the door.

“I’m not doing this, Kenny!” She yelled. Reese wasn’t sure exactly why she was yelling but she couldn’t seem to make herself stop. “I’m not just going to fall in to your goddamn arms and say you are right and my entire life is one giant complicated fucking lie! You don’t get to come into my home, into my bed, and bring up all this shit. Ashley is dead—I got over it, I moved on, I made something of myself. We broke up—I got over that too!”

Another word was ghosting its way through Nixon’s mind and whispering in his ears. It wasn’t jealousy this time but liar.

“I don’t love you Nixon!”

“I never asked you too,” He returned evenly. He was standing now, five feet away and not daring to get any closer.

Reese opened her mouth to continue her rant but found that like a deflated balloon she was out of air and out of things to say. She glared at the wall and ran a shaky hand through her brunette locks.

“You know what was the worst part?”

Reese closed her eyes tiredly; she didn’t have the strength to respond.

“It wasn’t loosing you, the only girl I ever loved, to Maryland. It was loosing my best friend and even amongst the guys feeling completely alone.”
Reese couldn’t respond, tears just slipped shamelessly down her cheeks. A part of her wanted to say it, but the walls she’d built, the pride she felt would never let her say it:

I know how you feel.

Until it eventually hits us, it's been there all along. Not in our dreams or our hopes but in the known, the comfortable, the familiar. It’s there that we find true happiness…