Someone I Used to Know - By Blakney Francis Page 0,87
– as he excused himself to go find some dry clothes.
And then there were two.
My mind sputtered like a helpless engine, turning over again and again, each time coming up blank. Cold eventually permeated my senses so fully I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I stepped out of the shower, and he moved backwards in retreat. As afraid as I was to confront him, I was even more afraid to let him walk away. I followed him, leaving a puddled map of my movements in the water left in my wake.
He stopped in the kitchen as if suddenly realizing he had nowhere to go. Where do you go to escape when you’re running away from the one person who had always been your escape?
I felt the barrier between us. Betrayal and distrust and a sense of not really knowing each other at all; stacked brick on top of brick, erecting the grandest of separations.
His laugh was unrecognizable as he dropped his head shaking it. Bitterness was a concept so foreign to Cam, that I almost mistook the ugly chuckle for actual amusement.
“And here I was, thinking how great it was going to be to surprise you, and damned if you don’t go and shock the hell out of me.” There was no mistaking the bitterness that time. It bled off of him, the same way water dripped from my soaked clothes.
“What the fuck are you thinking, Adley?”
I was ‘Addy’ and ‘Ads’ no more. I’d earned rage, not pet-names.
His anger didn’t frighten me. I wasn’t used to it, but in the back of my head, I’d always been waiting for it. I’d always known that one day he’d hate me. But I never thought it’d be that day for that reason.
Standing there, shivering, feeling as small and worthless as a piece of dirt, the only place I had to turn was anger.
“It’s really none of your business,” I lied.
Our lives were tangled – thoroughly twisted. The webs spun by our existence had gracefully overlapped and knotted until you could not have one without the other. We were infinitely intertwined. Cam owned me as much as I owned him. My business was his business and the like.
A scoff concaved his cheeks and destroyed the dimples I loved so much. “The spot you left in my bed isn’t cold yet, and you’re off hooking up with some hotshot actor.”
“How can you even think that what you and I share compares to a few harmless mistakes with some guy who won’t even remember my name by the time he starts production on his next movie. He’s just a silly fling.” The words I’d thought I’d meant felt dirty and wrong as they slithered like worms from my mouth. It was worse than licking an ashtray, worse than a mouthful of gasoline.
His unmoving brown eyes watched me with building trepidation, until a look of equal parts horror and realization weighed down his handsome features like drying concrete.
“You actually have feelings for him, don’t you?” he spat the words with disgust.
“I don’t!” My denial was quick, but only stout with volume as I begged my tone for the conviction I didn’t feel.
With the staggering grace of a man who’d been shot, Cam sank into an armchair, his head folded in his hands.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way…You’re supposed to love me,” his words as defeated as his stance.
“I do love you,” I insisted. At least I could pour honesty into that. “We’re family. You’re all I have.”
“But when did you stop being in love with me? I didn’t agree to that…” His face was lost in a puzzle beyond his comprehension. “I let you go. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? If you love someone, then let them go. You were supposed to do what you needed to do, to move on from what happened, and get back to being who you are.” He took a ragged breath. “You weren’t supposed to fall in love with someone else!”
You were supposed to do what you needed to do, to move on from what happened, and get back to being who you are.
But didn’t he know that I’d never be that girl again? I didn’t want to move on. I wanted to carry it with me always, because it was all I had of her. It had just never occurred to me before, that by letting go of the girl I’d been, it also meant letting go of Cam.