Hesitating and Suffocating

“I didn’t belong with him,” Cally said over breakfast one day, looking over the room where John and Jamie were sitting together and John was painting a fake smile over his lips. Kennedy, Garrett, Pat, and Tim looked up at her from their own breakfasts, and raised their brows.

“Whose ‘him’?” Tim asked, who was another member who she had gotten used to and closer to. Cally gave a noncommittal nod in John and Jamie’s direction, and Tim shrugged unhelpfully. Garrett rolled his eyes, tired of this conversation most mornings while Jamie and John cuddled. Garrett had heard what John had said, and although didn’t agree with how he worded it ... was almost glad he said it. Gave room for them both to move on.

“Everything happens for a reason, right?” Garrett said quietly, hardly looking up from his bagel as he covered it in cream cheese. Cally jumped to her feet, grabbing her plate in one hand and her Coke in the other, murmuring under her breath.

“Then what sick bastard decided there was a reason for me to get hit with a semi?” She said loudly as she walked out of the front doors of the hotel, her red can of Coke in one hand and her leather bag in the other, tucking her sunglasses over her eyes as she began to wander.

The streets seemed familiar, and she followed her instincts until she stood at the edge of a cliff overlooking an large body of water, with waves crashing into the rocks. A voice came over her ears as she stood in silence for what felt like moments, but was actually three hours. “I wondered if you’d be here,” John said, and Cally spun around to see him standing there with his hands shoved in his pockets.

Her voice was raw as she spoke, her thoughts racing of nothing except for one thing: her survival was a fluke of karma, and the life she was living now was karma coming back to bite her in the ass. Her fingers were dancing over scars from before and after the accident, and her eyes burned. “What are you doing here, John?” He chuckled suddenly.

“I keep forgetting that you don’t remember.” The irony of the words that left his lips stung Cally. “We came here once. It was actually our last weekend before things started to get crazy and I decided it was time to make you mine.” This was John sober, and it was a John Cally hardly knew or remembered. He came to stand beside her, looking out onto the horizon. “I hardly remembered it, until I noticed how the names on the street signs pulled at my heart, the way all things that remember me of you do.” John shrugged, suddenly perplexed. “How did you get here?”

Cally shrugged, still slightly numb as she tucked her hands into her pockets and kept her eyes on the rocks below, deciding if the fall would kill her. “Wandered. Found myself here.” She shrugged again, her words slurred for lack of speaking. John chuckled again.
“I never thought you’d come back in the flesh, you know,” John said, his Ray Bans covering his eyes, though Cally was sure they were cold. “I only saw you in my dreams for a long time, and well, I stopped looking for you just as you came back.” His voice was warm, though his words were like ice.

“That’s not true,” Cally murmured, her eyes never leaving the horizon as she began to think. “Garrett told me that you kept asking about me, always. Though you were clearly distraught, you found a way to bring me into every conversation without a single doubt.” She met his eyes. “I’m sick of you pretending I mean nothing to you. If I truly mean nothing for you, then stop acting like I do for one moment and actually hate me. Give me a reason, John, and I’ll stick around.” Cally shoved John gently, pushing past him as hot tears fell down her cheeks.

She was so fucking done. She was sick and tired of muddling through it all, wondering who had meant the world to her. She was sick of that look in people’s eyes, the pity and the hurt. The pity because she was such “a beautiful girl” and didn’t deserve to be hit with a semi, but the idea of getting what she deserved caused a rock in her throat. The hurt was from the fact that while they may never forget how they met her or why, she may never remember it. She was just sick and tired of hearing the same old excuses, sick of getting special treatment because she got in an accident.

She realized she was balling her fists up so tightly that blood had begun to pour down her arms, and she sighed, mopping it up with a napkin she found in her bag. She was just getting to that point her therapists told her about - that place where she couldn’t go anywhere. She couldn’t just run away and start over again without wondering what could have happened, and she couldn’t continue on with this life without a memory. She had no options, nowhere to go.

Cally was wondering what was easier. Starting over and regretting it for the rest of her life, or staying here and being consumed by a depression she physically could not control.

Before Cally could comprehend where she was, a van pulled over beside her, Jamie leaning out the passenger window. “Lost?” She asked, her voice dripping with hate Cally could hear. She said nothing, climbing into the van and taking the last available seat, the back middle, where she was squeezed between Tim and Pat, who couldn’t stop fighting.

The whole four hour drive to the venue, Cally didn’t speak a single word. She was wrapped up in thoughts of her past, and kept scratching at that wall that kept everything from her. She was getting so aggravated that she almost started to cry, but held it in long enough so she could cry as she pulled boxes out of the trailer.

People at the venue had begun to scream John’s name, and that made Cally’s heart hurt as she unloaded the boxes onto the trolley. She shallowed her pride, she shallowed everything, and told herself she’d start over. She’d run.