Take Me Dancing.

There was this unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach telling me to turn around and walk quietly back up the stairs, down the hallway around the corner and out the front door. But in the bottom of my stomach, right next to the nervousness and the fear, there was this feeling of triumph. I had made it out of my apartment and into my car; I had even managed to drive here without losing focus and getting myself killed, so why should I stop now?

“You know why.”

It was her voice again, but lately I hadn’t been able to tell if it was in my head or if it was actually coming from her mouth. Was this what grieving felt like? I didn’t know how to mourn people, but there was this part of me that kept insisting hearing her voice at the most random and inopportune times as if she were there at that exact moment wasn’t the way of doing things. I felt like I was going insane, but every time I thought about telling someone, she was right there to insist on keeping it a secret. Keegan had always loved secrets, almost as much as I did.

“You’ll ruin everything.”

What was there even left to ruin? She was dead and I wasn’t going to move on by sitting in my apartment avoiding the world. I felt like I could feel her presence everywhere in my own home. Lying in bed and feeling the bed dip under her weight next to me, brushing my teeth at the bathroom sink with my eyes closed because I feared that if I opened them to look in the mirror I would see her reflection washing her face next to me. I needed the company of my family and my friends, but mostly I just needed the reassurance of someone normal to tell me that I wasn’t going crazy, that I was just in pain.

“You’ll regret this,” she whispered and if I wasn’t so hell-bent on pretending nothing was wrong with me I would have admitted to maybe feeling her hot breath hitting my neck and her small hand gripping my shoulder. I shrugged it off, pulling open the basement door and watching as the occupants inside turned to look at me.

There were looks of shock and disbelief all around and the conversation had entirely stopped, the awkward silence lightened only slightly by the music playing in the background. There were too many people crammed into the basement and it felt like I was back in high school, walking into a party that contained too many bodies and illegal substances and thinking to my young self, this is gonna be a good night.

Now my thoughts were exactly the opposite, the feeling of running away still heavily prevalent and itching at me to do so. But it was too late now; they had all seen me, were all staring at me. Did they expect me to break the silence? Surely I had already met everyone’s expectations for the night just by showing up, they couldn’t possibly ask more of me, could they?

“Hey man, it’s been a while...” Jared’s statement would’ve normally ended with the usual “how ya been?” but everyone already knew the answer to that because everyone else had pretty much been the same way: depressed, angry, questioning the world and God and asking “Why her? Why not me?” (Or maybe that last part was just me). So of course asking me how I've been was not an appropriate question whatsoever.

I nodded to Jared, stepping further into the room and letting a sigh of relief leave my lips as everyone awkwardly turned back to whomever they had been engaged in conversation with. I found my way over to a group of familiar faces and they smiled sympathetically, numerous hands reaching out to grasp my shoulder or pat me on the back, as if I had just completed some great task and was in need of congratulations. I would’ve preferred a slap across the face.

“I thought maybe you had forgotten to pay your phone bill with the way you were so adamant on ignoring everyone’s calls and texts.” It was Pat’s poor attempt at a joke and I managed a small smile wile shaking my head good naturedly. Eric caught my eyes and nodded as if to say I’m proud of you. I nodded back even though I knew there was nothing worth him being proud of.

The conversation they were having earlier resumed and I found myself just listening to the sound of their voices rather than actually trying to tune into the conversation, only really speaking to say a polite thank you to the tiny brunette that handed me a beer before taking her place beside Kennedy and letting him wrap his arms around her waist. I tried not to stare at them in jealousy, or I at least tried to not make it blatantly obvious I was staring at them. Not that I had ever been able to wrap my arms around Keegan like that publically anyways, but still, seeing them made a whole different feeling settle into my stomach. A feeling of longing, maybe, but I couldn’t have been sure.

The feeling was interrupted by a tap on my shoulder and I reluctantly turned around to see the petite blonde with a tiny frown on her full lips, a beer cradled in one hand and the other quickly retreating back to her side as if just touching me had caused her physical pain.

“Can we talk?”

I could feel my friends’ eyes burning a hole in my back as I nodded, setting my beer down on a nearby table before following her through the crowd of people and over to the door I had just entered through maybe fifteen minutes ago, at the most, turning to glance around the room one last time. I swore I saw her face in the throng of people, shaking her head at me and pleading with her bright eyes, but it wasn’t possible. She was six feet under and her eyes were dull now.

I turned back then to the actual girl in front of me, closing the door behind me and leaning back against it, relishing in the peace and quiet only to have it broken all too soon.

“You’ve been ignoring me.” She was too forward; she got right to the point whereas Keegan would have beat around the bush for at least five minutes before finally coming to what she wanted to talk about. “I don’t know what I did to upset you, but I love you and I'm willing to forget about this if you just let me help you.”

I chuckled then, disrespectful and undermining as I stood up straight, crossing my arms in front of me as I looked down at her. She wasn’t the right height, too short in comparison to Keegan and it irked me to see her blue eyes (also wrong) looking up at me with such sincerity it made want to gag.

“You didn’t do anything,” at least not intentionally. It wasn’t her fault- nothing was her fault, it was all mine. Comparing her on a daily basis to someone she could never even hope to be, not even as much as I wanted her to be. Her hair was too blonde, her lips too full, her cheekbones too defined and her waist too slim, in that “I've never actually worked out a day in my life but I have natural abs so I just let people think I work hard to take care of my body” kind of way. Keegan and I used to go running together when we were teenagers; I hated running, but I loved spending time with Keegan so I had woken up every day at five am just to drive to her house and run three miles to be in her presence.

“Then what’s wrong?” she asked, her voice wavering a bit and even though any boyfriends first thought would have been to comfort her and make her feel better, all I could do was wish she didn’t start crying because I just did not have the patience for that right now. She reached out to me then, trying to grab my hand and I jerked back, watching as the first couple tears fell from her eyes at the reaction.

“Kylie,” I sighed, rubbing my calloused hands across my face tiredly and hoping by the time I pulled my fingers away from my eyes she would be done crying and I would be off the hook. It was useless though and if anything she was just crying harder, trying to contain the obnoxious sobs that would have usually been leaking from her mouth had we been alone in my apartment, which, thank god ,we weren’t. “Kylie I just need- I can’t do this right now, can we just drop it? Damn.”

I turned back around, reaching my hand out to take hold of the doorknob and turning it in an attempt to leave. She pulled me back and the door slowly crept open but unfortunately I wasn’t walking through it. I was half turned toward Kylie while still partly turned to walk into the room of people.

“We can’t drop it Garrett! This is the first time I've seen you in weeks and you won’t answer my calls and what am I supposed to do? Wait for you to be ready? Well I'm done doing that! We’re talking now or we’re never talking again.”

I was so tempted to just tell her it was fine, that if we never talked again I would be perfectly okay with that, probably even prefer it. However I refused to look like an asshole in front of the twenty or so people that were now listening in on our argument now that the door remained open and I was too stubborn to close it again. If she wanted to argue we would argue, and I would let everyone watch her make a fool out of herself.

“I just need some fucking time, Kylie! You wouldn’t understand,” is what I told her, but not what was the truth. I just didn’t want to talk about it, about anything, couldn’t she respect that?

She scoffed, a disbelieving noise coming from her mouth and making me feel even sicker. She glared up at me before looking past me, a bigger frown taking over her lips.

“I may not understand Garrett, but look at John,” and it was like Moses him-fucking-self had showed up to part the sea of people and put John right in my field of vision. His eyes were wide wit surprise at being brought into something that most definitely didn’t involve him, at least not to his knowledge. “How do you think he feels? That was his fiancée Garrett, but look at how he’s making more of an effort than you are. What the hell is your excuse?”

I locked eyes with John and shook my head, my shoulders slumping with the weight of this conversation. “It’s not the same,” I said. John nodded as if to agree, because of course it wasn’t the same. Keegan was my best friend and although she was John’s fiancée it couldn’t be denied that we shared a stronger and sometimes even more intimate bond than people knew.

Kylie laughed darkly, her knuckles going white around the beer bottle she was gripping too tightly in her hand as she asked, “How? It’s not like you were in love with her too.”

And that was when I should have laughed, should have turned to Kylie and told her she was right, that I was being an asshole and I was just trying to cope, but of course I didn’t do that. I stayed silent, letting the words sink into the atmosphere around us, watching as everyone who had previously been pretending not to listen in were now indubitably trying to hear what I was going to say next. Still I said nothing.

“Were you?”

It wasn’t Kylie’s voice that had asked the question and so I looked at John, trying to muster up the most apologetic look on my face before glancing between him and my girlfriend. Apparently that was answer enough as I felt warm beer splashing over my head, soaking into my hair and running down my forehead, burning my eyes because I refused to close them, choosing instead to lock eyes once more with John. He glared back. And whether Keegan’s voice had been in my head earlier or not, she had been right.

I ruined everything.