Someone I Used to Know - By Blakney Francis Page 0,22

ruined your life…I just wish the way things turned out didn’t have to ruin the way you felt about me.”

“That’s what’s been bothering you this whole time?” I should have seen it. It felt obvious now, thinking of all the clues I’d been too self-absorbed to pick up on. “I don’t fault you for what you’ve achieved, Cam. I’m so proud of you…The way I feel about you is far from ruined. I’ve never blamed you for anything that happened. I can’t think about it – can’t let myself remember – because if I started, I’d never be able to stop. I’d be paralyzed, forever wallowing in all the things that I can’t change.”

“Why does it have to be remembering the bad? We were family. It was me and you against the world. Don’t you want to get to have those good feelings to hold onto?”

“It was just too big to try and separate. I clumped it all together, shoved it in a drawer, and do everything in my power to never go near it.” I shrugged. It was the truth. I wasn’t proud of it, but it was how I’d gotten out of bed every day for the past three years.

My assurance had nudged him away from the storm behind his eyes, and now he pouted with trepidation.

“What if I could show you that it doesn’t have to hurt to remember everything?”

His mind was made up, I could already tell.

All I could do was agree very, very cautiously.

Six hours later, we were secluded on Cam’s king size bed and ignoring the sun that set outside his closed curtains. I’d reluctantly been lured into his room, away from the safety of my distance, and with the help of three bottles of wine, we’d partaken in our old favorite pastime…mocking 80’s horror movies.

“Okay,” I sighed dramatically as the credits rolled after a truly horrendous monster thriller about leprechauns. “I’ll hand it to you, this was a really good idea.”

“I told you.” His chest puffed out proudly, and he slunk off the fluffy comforter to switch DVD’s. I’d let him talk me into transitioning generations to try a recent flick called Jennifer’s Body next (which he described as ‘highly underrated’). “We used to do this all the time when we lived in the loft, and you don’t seem to be wallowing in misery to me.”

The grey sweatpants he’d changed into slung low off his hips as we walked to the large flat screen, and I quickly wiped away the dribble of wine I’d spilled down my chin at the sight. I resolutely pushed the glass away from me on the bedside table, positive it was the cause of my libidos sudden, gallant return. I didn’t know how much it was going to help, since I’d already finished a bottle by myself, but I had to do something to coil my need to jump on him.

“Well it wasn’t exactly like this.” I pointed out, trying to clear my head.

He looked intrigued as he finished with the DVD player and returned to sprawl across his side of the bed. The thin white t-shirt he was wearing rode up his abdomen, and my eyes glued to the exposed skin. The scar he’d gotten from getting his appendix removed as a child remained, and I remembered tracing the disfigured line of skin so many times as I lazily undressed him.

I shivered and yanked my gaze to safer territory.

“We never used to drink.” I told him, a distracted ramble running along with my words. “Besides the fact that I was only eighteen when I moved in, I was also pregnant. We actually never dated when I wasn’t pregnant if you do the math.”

He hummed thoughtfully.

“I guess I never thought of it that way. You were still so tiny when I came with Thomas for the summer. It’s hard to think of you as being pregnant even then.”

“Ballerina body.” I replied instinctively. Months had gone by without my realizing my condition. My cycles had never been regular, so it hadn’t been strange to me at all to skip periods, and maybe in the back of my mind I knew something was wrong, but I’d always felt defensive about how long it took me to discover my pregnancy. I mean, I should’ve known. It was my own body. I should have realized.

Distracted by my thoughts, I froze with surprise when Cam reached to lay a hand on my stomach like it was the most natural thing in the world.