Chapter 20: Johnathan

I felt my heart drop. Again, I had known I screwed up. I watched her walk away from me, with her face, streaked with tears, but this time, I wasn’t going to let her get too far.

Since I had made my commitment to her, I wasn’t about to go back on my word. I was going to be genuine in my efforts. I wasn’t going to leave her side until I was sure she was safe.

However, as I started to walk, she quickened her pace, as though she was actively trying to get away from me.

I looked over to Jake, who was sitting between us, giving his usual look of sheer disapproval.

“Yeah, yeah…I know…” I hissed as I passed him, “But you don’t need to shame me into it this time.” I took a few more paces toward her before calling out to her.

She didn’t acknowledge me.

“Please, Carrie, let me at least walk with you. I want to make sure you are safe…”

I tried to quicken my pace again but was sure by her actions that she was trying to stay ahead of me.

While I wasn’t about to leave her, I didn’t want to risk her getting hurt by trying to get away from me. So, I slowed down and kept my distance.

“Fine! I’m just going to stay behind you, then. You can’t do anything about that. I told you I was going to see this through and that’s what I’m going to do.”

Silence was the only response, followed by Jake’s groan as he ran ahead to walk between us.

I wasn’t sure if he did this in an effort to be a link between the two of us, or if he was simply trying to ensure he could watch us both, even when we weren’t together.

However, I knew from the way he was acting toward both of us now, that he wasn’t going to be happy when Carrie and I said goodbye.

I sighed, grumbling with frustration at her stubbornness.

“You know, it seems like I’m being inconsiderate but I’m not. I’m thinking of you too, Carrie. I don’t want to be a burden on you. I don’t want to become someone you wish you’d never met. If you ended up resenting me, for whatever reason, that would be worse than if you left me,” I called, trying to be completely honest with her, even though I wasn’t even sure she could hear me now, considering the distance she had put between us.

“You can’t promise me forever, but I’m afraid that you’ll try, and it’ll make you miserable. If we were together, I would want to help you, bring you up, make you better for knowing me…The kind of things you make me believe about myself, when I think of us together…”

At this, I could’ve sworn I saw her stop and almost turn around, but the moment ended with a shake of her head as she pursued her goal, leaving me to once again, wonder if she had even heard me.

“Carrie, please, come back. I want to talk…I don’t want you to leave angry. I want you to understand, that I am not right for you. I don’t want to try because I can’t be the man you deserve. Despite what you think, I am broken.” I grumbled, stopping to look down at the ground, ashamed of what I had become, “That bitch took everything from me. Not only did she make me distrust everyone, she also made me doubt my ability to be a good partner…A good anything. How can I try to support you, be your lover and your partner, if I can’t even be confident that I am worth the trouble?”

I looked up, to see if anything I had said resonated with her, but if it did, she gave me no indication.

Frustrated, I quickened my pace, seeing that we were running out of time, with the ranger station only a few hundred feet away.

“Please, Carrie! Listen to me! Now, I’m the one pouring my heart out and you’re the one walking away. While I don’t blame you, I want you to listen. I want you to understand. I’m not doing this for me and…I do have feelings for you, which is why I think it’s so damn important that I leave you the hell alone. You don’t deserve this aggravation,” I insisted, “But I don’t want to part on these terms. I want you to understand!”

At this, Carrie turned around, but her eyes were cold and bloodshot from crying. She furrowed her brow at me and leaned against a tree for support as she called back, “Do you think you’re the only person who has ever had a bad breakup?”

“Well, no…” I insisted, backing up slightly, trying to understand exactly where she was going with this. “I just…”

“No. You are not the only one who has a crazy ex. Yes, it sucks, and yes, your situation is particularly shitty, but it isn’t the end of the world, unless you let it. You can recover from this. I have offered to help you recover from it, yet you keep pushing me away.” Carrie stopped speaking then, and looked up at the sky, looking as though she was gathering her thoughts, before looking back at me. “Do you really want to know why I decided to go on this trip? Sure, it was fun, and it was exciting and the idea of it was adventurous, but under all that, is a reason that no one else knows.”

“Why?” I asked, inching toward her, cautiously to ensure that my getting to close wasn’t going to cause her to take off again.

“Because,” she answered, “I’m getting over something too. I tried to hold it in for as long as I could, and, to the credit of this trip, I haven’t thought about it all that much, what with trying to survive, but about a month ago, I got a call. It was from my ex boyfriend’s mother. I hadn’t dated this man for years, but he was my first love. My first…everything. She told me that he had hung himself and mentioned me in the note.”

“Jesus,” I muttered, feeling terrible for her.

However, she shrugged off my comment, before continuing, “Don’t get me wrong…This man was abusive, and he said hurtful things, simply to break me down. It took me years to get over him and to regain my self-worth. I tried my best to get away from him several times and when I finally did, everyone was always afraid I would go back. He was like a drug…He had always had a hold on me that was almost otherworldly. I could be so mad at him, but if he looked at me a certain way, my anger would just melt away.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean…” I replied, empathizing with her. “That’s why I was so blind. I was so in love with Sarah, that I refused to see the signs that something wasn’t right.”

“Anything that happened, would just get forgotten about,” she added, “simply because it was more important to me that he was there.”

I shook my head in understanding.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she continued, “The relationship was toxic. I will never deny that, but there were also good times…And those were some of the best times of my life.” She grinned in a sad way, “He was everything to me and certain places, I still go and think fondly of him.”

“I guess I never got to that point,” I insisted.

“It takes time,” Carrie admitted, looking at me for the first time in a long while, “But once it happens, the next time is easier and while you never forget, you don’t burst into tears, or get angry all over again. You simply enjoy the memory.”

“Is that why you came up here? To the mountain? Is this one of your places?” I urged, hoping that my questioning wouldn’t upset her.

However, seemingly pleased by my interest, she nodded, “It was a long time ago, but he and I took a trip out here and went camping for a few days. It was just him and I. He loved the woods and he knew a lot about them, so I felt safe with him. This trip was before he was abusive…We were probably sixteen or seventeen,” she giggled, “I got in so much trouble when my parents found out, but it was worth it.”

“Oh, so you were a little rebel,” I teased slightly.

Adamantly, Cassie shook her head, “No, not at all. That was probably the only thing I ever did like that…Our relationship was off again, on again, after that, since my parents weren’t too thrilled with his influence.” She rolled her eyes, almost looking like the teenage-self she was referring to. “The day I turned eighteen, he and I got a place of our own together. We worked our asses off and he got a job at his father’s company. Everything was going well, despite the parental disapproval, but then, he hurt himself on the job and had to be let go. He was only nineteen. Pain medicine, mixed with alcohol made him a different person. He never recovered from the addiction. It made him violent and depressed. Eventually, I had enough, and I moved back in with my parents. I started to go to school, more to take up time while I wasn’t working, so that I didn’t have to think about anything. I decided to be a paralegal, because I wanted to help people.”

“Wow…” I replied, unsure of what else I could say to her. I was shocked by what she told me and felt kind of dumb for how I had reacted to my own breakup. However, I didn’t mention any of this. I simply continued to give Carrie my undivided attention.

“So, when I got the call that he had died, and that one of his final thoughts was of me, it was devastating. I hadn’t seen him in years…I hadn’t wanted to see him in years, but in that moment, I wished I had been at his side. I wished I was able to help him…But I had abandoned him, just like he felt everyone else had abandoned him.”

“Carrie, you know that there’s nothing you could’ve done, right?” I insisted.

She nodded weakly, and I got the feeling that she had heard that attempt at comfort a million times before.

“That wasn’t really the worst part. Yeah, I mean, I was shocked, devastated and hurt, but I’m getting over that. What I had a harder time with, was when I told my roommate, my parents, and my friends, everyone gave a collective good riddance.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t in so many words, but through their half-hearted condolences, I knew that’s what they meant. No one would talk to me about it. No one thought I should even care. Everyone, almost seemed happy, that now, I would never go back with him, even though I never had any inclination to. I was a different person than I was then, when I was dating him, and I wouldn’t have put up with his shit anymore. Although, I wasn’t happy that he was gone. For the first time, probably since we were kept apart in high school, I missed him. I wanted to go to the funeral, but his mother, who never liked me much anyway, inadvertently blamed me for his death and was unwelcoming to the idea of me showing up. My parents told me that it would only dig up bad memories and my roommate told me that there was no reason for me to mourn a looser, who was never going to amount to anything anyway.”

“Damn…And you said, your parents were supportive?”

Carrie chuckled slightly, “Trust me, what they said was warranted. They tried to be gentle about it, but they had seen me hurt by him, so many times in so many ways, it took a lot for them to be as kind as they were about it.”

“And, your roommate?”

“That’s just the way she is…and, I mean, in their strange way, they were trying to help me, and give me the support that they thought I needed to move on from him, that wasn’t what I needed. I had already moved on. I was mourning for a life that I knew, better than anyone. I was morning for the man I fell in love with, not the abusive jerk who had shattered my self-esteem. So, I decided to take this trip, to get away from the people who were proving to be unhelpful in my grieving process and be alone with my thoughts. I wanted to create a new memory, where I could do what I wanted, be who I wanted, think how I wanted, without anyone telling me that I shouldn’t feel a certain way.”

“Then, you found me,” I added, feeling terrible and wishing that I could hold her.

“Don’t worry, I’m not rebounding or anything. I actually haven’t thought about him much at all…And you’re nothing like him, besides you know your way around the woods.”

“And, I can be an asshole?”

“Yes, but at least you admit it,” she answered in somewhat of a teasing tone and I wondered if maybe, somewhere deep inside, she had forgiven me, even a little bit.

“Yeah, well, there’s no point in trying to deny it,” I replied, stepping closer to her, and hoping that my next question was something she could even answer. “So, with everything that happened, after everything that happened, how can you even think about dating, or trusting anyone ever again?”

“It took a while, but his death didn’t affect me in that way. I only wanted to be there to support him, so that he might have lived. I didn’t want to date him, ever again. I took a long time to find myself. I had a good support system…and school helped. It gave me a goal besides marriage and kids. It distracted me, so that I could have fun. Now, I’m sure if that didn’t destroy me, and I survived him killing himself, which was a fear I lived with every day at the end of our relationship, I could figure out a way to make it through pretty much anything. I couldn’t stop my life at twenty-three and even now, I can’t stop my life for anyone. I need to do what I want to do, with the people I want to do it with. I tend to be blunt, but that’s only because I spent so much of my life not saying what I wanted to say, for fear of angering someone. Now, while I don’t mean any harm, I say what’s on my mind. If you don’t like it, too bad.”

I grinned at her, feeling an overwhelming sensation of attraction.

“Hey, Cassie, would you mind if I walked closer with you, down to the ranger’s station?”

She paused for a moment, glancing at the building, that now wasn’t too far away, before looking back at me and putting out her hand.

“Thank you, Johnathan, I would be honored.”