LIKE MOST MORNINGS, there was a soft rapping of knuckles at my door. Since my afternoon with Blake, I had thrown myself into my doctor visits and workouts hardcore, anxious to fix myself, seeing a shard of light at the end of this long, dark tunnel.
When I couldn’t work out with Drew, the home gym he had set up was quickly becoming the perfect outlet to get my frustrations out. I would plug music into my ears to try and lull the static that was always in my head, while bashing away at my body, trying to shred my muscles and sweat out my pain. The sun hadn’t risen yet, and my muscles already ached to my bones, but it felt good, like an accomplished ache. I opened the door with a smile and kissed Drew on the cheek.
“Mornin’, Sunshine,” he quipped.
“Morning, Rainbow,” I replied as I did most mornings.
He laughed lightly. “Where’d that nickname come from anyway?”
“I don’t know, it just came out one day.” I placed my hands on my lower back and bent backward. “It suits you, really. You’re always bright and hopeful. You’re a rare find, and you make me smile when I see you.” I pulled the string on his fuchsia hoodie. “And you are very colorful all the time.” I winked.
Drew laughed, deliberately this time. “Well, regardless, I like it, even if it is a bit feminine. Shows you care.” He tapped the edge of my nose. “Come on, show me your muscles.” He did this to me every day, sort of like you would do to a child who just ate their spinach.
I held up both arms and flexed. Drew curled a large hand around my bicep and squeezed. “Impressive.” He raised his brows. “You must have a good teacher.” His boyish grin was contagious, and I couldn’t help but smile along with him.
“Eh, he’s okay. Although sometimes, when he pins me down, he smells. Someone should teach him the value of a deodorant stick.” I pulled my door shut and locked it with a smirk, sensing Drew’s discomfort behind me. I turned as he was sniffing his underarm, confusion swiped across his face. I pushed his arm down. “I’m kidding, Rainbow, you smell like roses. God, you’re easy.” I wasn’t sure where the extra playfulness was coming from today, but I could only hope it was a sign that a change was taking shape inside. A good one.
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Just for that, you’re getting five extra laps.”
“Whatever,” I countered, raising my arms above my head in a stretch as I walked past him.
He hurried along beside me, continuing his goad. “And just wait until we spar later. You’re working for it today, Sunshine.”
Stopping at the bottom of the steps outside my apartment building, I placed my hand on his forearm and pretended to be nervous. “Please take it easy on me. I’m fragile.”
Drew studied me a moment before seeing through my rouse. “Yeah, okay. A month ago I might’ve bought into that fragile crap, but now? Your ass is mine. I want to see action today when we hit those mats.”
“Yes, sir!” I sent him a customary salute and began a slow trot toward the park.
Drew kept pace with me as we meandered the early morning city streets, never coming to a full stop as we waited at the crosswalks. Dusk coated the air, rich with the smell of dew, but we weren’t alone despite the early hour. You could never truly be alone in New York City. That was until you hit the park. Not many lingered there this time of morning. That’s why we had chosen it.
I jogged down the long staircase, Drew at my heels, and turned to face him at the bottom, my feet never stopping all the while. “You ready?”
“Let’s do this.” Drew clapped his hands together and nodded.
With a smirk, I popped my earbuds in. “Eat my dust, Rainbow.”
I pushed play on my iPod and then took off to the trails, seeing Drew scurry to catch up out of the corner of my eye. I laughed to myself, thinking what a good guy he was. I was lucky to have found such a genuine friend. He never made me feel like he was doing this for anything other than my benefit. He’d learned how to read me in the short time we’d spent together, which may be part of his trade. He sensed the need to protect himself and knew how to calculate people's actions before they actually acted.
With me, he knew when to push and when to back away. Like right now. He could easily outrun me, but he remained a few feet back, giving me the space I needed. He had said he wanted my head strong as well, and something about the solitariness of your endorphins waking up as your stride built always aided the cause.
In the beginning, I tried to push away all of the thoughts that would barrel into me. Stomped down on the memories and the feelings they would bring with them. Even the happy ones left a gaping wound inside because they were memories of a past life that didn’t exist anymore. But now, in the face of budding strength, the hurt ached a little less, the pain ebbed a little more. Just like a wound in the process of healing—you know you should take off the Band-Aid, expose it to the air so it could finish curing, but you keep it covered still, trying to shield it as long as possible. That’s the stage I was in. I was protecting my aches, but in doing so, I wasn’t allowing them to fully heal. It was time to rip the Band-Aid off and deal with the raw state of the wound.
My feet hit the pavement pound for pound as my workout playlist trickled into my ears, handpicked to ensure optimal motivation. My heart beat at a steady, quickened rhythm, each lyric bringing added strength to my stride. For the first time, I allowed myself to truly feel it. Allowed myself to absorb the loss, the solitude.
The ache.
The scratch of a record followed by a strong piano began as Linkin Park’s In the End started. The words blasted into my ears, a reminder of all the wasted days of my life—how hard I had tried to pull it all together. So close, I was almost there . . .
Until that prick had ripped away all that I had worked for once again.
And in the end, here I was. Alone still, trying to pick up the shattered wreckage of my existence for the millionth time.
Fuck him.
I sucked in a sharp breath, keeping my stride steady even though my heart was hurting, making it harder to keep up with the unintentional increase in my step. The weight of everything sat like a boulder inside my chest, saturated with hurt, with pain. All that I’d been keeping bottled up inside for so long felt as if it no longer fit in there. Like trying to keep it contained was breaking me from the inside.
I tried.
Damon's boyish smile flashed in front of my eyes. His old face. The one I had trusted, laid all my faith in. With a sparkle in his eye, he sat down on my bed all those years ago, and I wavered, my feet almost tripping at the recollection, the promise that he was there to make my life better. Easier. My nails bit into the palms of my hands to the point of pain, but it only drove me harder, pushed my heels deeper into the ground.
As I remembered my past, his face began to morph, ultimately turning into the Damon I saw when I looked at him now. For as much as I tried to turn off each time he had touched me—to go away somewhere so that I didn’t allow it to seep in—it was all there, loitering under my skin like a pesky vermin.
I sucked in the air that was becoming harder to regulate through gritted teeth. So much time gone. I remembered all that was stolen from me, and I had to fight to remain focused. I wanted to run to his house and pummel him until he no longer existed for taking it all.
But then the reminder came of how far I had come.
If he could see me now, he wouldn’t even recognize what I was becoming. I had trusted that prick with my life. But it was over. It was all over. He’d taken it all and, in the end, none of it fucking mattered. I’d lost it all anyway.
The ending few notes rang in my ears, and I knew what was coming, the playlist engrained in my memory.
Alive.
A slow but determined chord began, followed by Sia’s low, pained voice and I let her words of growing up overnight trickle into my stinging veins. The steady beat of the drum banged through my ears into my chest, fueling me. I had spent my life in the same place she talked about, surrounded by stale air and demons in a barren, lifeless land. Days bleeding into nights, shaking with tears soaking my pillow. But I had survived . . .
Barely.
Her voice cracked with emotion, and I felt it cluster in my throat. My eyes pinched shut as I continued to run, knowing that I had continued to breathe all these years that he had tried to squish me into a quiet little box.
I air-punched my fists, breathing in deep clumps of air through flared nostrils as my eyes reopened. The pattern of my footfalls gained speed as I shook my hands out at my sides, focusing on his face, scenes flashing before me like a movie.
His hands pawing at me.
His ugly fucking eyes.
His lies.
I let the fact that I was still breathing fuel me as my pace quickened.
And then it came.
The song blasted at its peak, creating an ache in my eardrum to match that of my heart, the crack of pain doing its job as the beat rocketed into me. I took off like a bullet in a burst, the balls of my feet breaking pavement as my chest opened, drawing in much-needed oxygen. Synapsis sparked and burned, and my eyes were stinging with the effort of holding it all together.
Every word she screamed slapped me in the face, punched me in the guts.
All that I took.
All I had to face.
Anguish.
Pain.
Despair.
Loss.
Fucking empty.
I wanted it back.
I want it back!
Fuck!
I pushed harder, deeper, the tears an uncontrollable veil in my eyes. I swiped the back of my fist across my cheeks as they poured, fighting against the blur they created. I wanted my muscles to burn like fire. I wanted the pain of it to make me feel.
Fucking feel!
I drove harder, taking turns now at speeds that I couldn’t keep up with, not bothering to stay on the park’s trail. I stumbled onto the grass, dirt flying behind me with the efforts of my feet to gain traction as Sia’s broken voice cracked and screamed along a single guitar strum, and her final resolution to the world that she was alive sent me in a broken heap onto my knees.
“FUCK YOU!” I screeched into the early morning air at the top of my lungs, matching her volume.
Drew landed on his knees in front of me, his chest flying up and down, unable to catch itself. His eyes screamed without words, yelling his panic, his worry. He ripped the earbuds from my ears before another word could pass into them, letting the deafening silence slam into them. All that was heard was the sharp breaths desperate to escape from the both of us. The wheezes as our lungs tried with all their might to expand.
He shot to his feet and backed up, holding out his arms with a slight squat. He clapped. “Come at me.” He bore his eyes into mine, yelling at me to get off the ground. “Now! Get up and come at me—NOW!”
“Ahhh!” I propelled to my feet, blindness and white light exploding behind my eyes as I crashed into him with the force of a herd of elephants. I came at him with fists, teeth bared, pummeling them down. All I saw were snippets of my past. Him. What was gone and the agony that was still there. I wailed and screamed, feeling dizzy. I had no control over what was happening. Drew had completely taken the form of Damon in my mind, and I wanted him dead.
“That’s it. That’s it! Get it the fuck out of you!” he bellowed in my face.
“I hate you! I hate you for what you did to me! Look at me!” I threw a punch to his ribs, and Drew tried to block it but was unsuccessful. He dragged his arm in to protect himself, and I carried on with my assault. I kicked and punched and slapped until pieces of me began to give up, the physical exertion moving past the emotional need. My body tilted forward, my limbs weighing down at my sides.
Strong arms wrapped around me before we both came crashing to the ground in a jumbled wreckage. I clutched at Drew’s shirt, which was soaked with sweat and tears, and held on so tight my fingers cramped. “I’m so fucking broken!” I wailed.
“You're wrong.” He palmed the sides of my face and tilted my head back. “You’re so wrong, Eva. You’ve eradicated him. I don’t know what brought that on, but I’m so fucking proud of you.” He pulled me into his safe cocoon once again.
Familiar blue eyes that never left smiled in the darkness of my mind, a dimple that always greeted me, confirming it was Blake. The hope of him. Of us. The taste of his lips, and the reminder of all that I lost was what triggered such a monumental moment, I was sure of it. I had him to thank for that breakthrough.
Panting, still trying to steady my breath, I spoke into Drew’s moistened hoodie. “Sorry I hurt you.” I sniffled.
His chest began to regulate. “You didn’t hurt me. I’ve never felt better.”
He put his chin on top of my head and pulled me in close, burying my face in his chest. I was grateful because it covered the rest of the pieces that were crumbling from me.