There is something cleansing about finally telling your darkest secrets to someone else, sharing things you had to hide inside, especially when some parts are things you’ve never talked about before. After my breakdown on Saturday, I felt so much lighter, breathed so much easier, and I dove right into the work for the project and finished my tasks with a new determination that I just didn’t have before.

The script, the story, they were pretty good and easy enough to combine from the different writers. I ignored the part where I’d have to talk to B about the setup for the sets, but I was able to get most of my work done in just a couple of hours. Though it’s not all been that easy.

Lizzy stayed at my side all weekend, keeping close, and I knew that it was because she didn’t know how to deal with the things I told her, with the thought of almost having lost me without knowing. Which I get, I really do. But I can’t take it back, not just because I finally talked about what happened, but because I needed to do it. I can’t take my words back because it would mean internalizing ideas and thoughts I can’t keep inside anymore.

And for the first time in years, I started a new story, a story that I knew I had to write. It’s not just any story, but a romance story—second chance, sweet girl, bad boy, and a shared secret. There are many stories and things that I’ve worked on in the last years, but most of them were for college and classes. A couple of them were even written because I knew I had to write, I had to keep that mind muscle working, my fingers moving. But none of those stories were under my real name, none of them shared with people that I knew, mostly just with strangers, and later friends, who I met online.

And that was fine with me, I didn’t need more than that. But I missed the passion, the energy, to write. I wrote because I had to, I’m a storyteller, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stop. So, I wrote insignificant things, chapters to stories that only a handful of people would ever read.

I didn’t lie to B when I told him that I hadn’t published or finished anything in years. I haven’t. All these other stories have just... fizzled out, never finished, forever in that stage of near-completion. I’d hit a hard spot and stop writing, moving on to something new instead of finishing what I was working on.

Maybe because I knew that I couldn’t. I couldn’t finish any of them because they would be done. This way I’d never have to say goodbye to the stories or the characters. Never have to admit that stories end.

Lizzy may have thought that I just kept working, kept writing. But I’ve been lucky that she never actually read any of them. She just listens to me rambling on about my projects. Story after story, world after world. It made me feel normal. It made me feel like nothing was wrong. I could hide my lack of actually finishing any projects, or starting them altogether, by distracting her with a new story I’d come up with. I was able to hide my depression by appearing to always be creating new things. I could hide behind my next burst of ‘inspiration’, even if it was false, fake, just a mask. Just because my brain was always coming up with new things didn’t mean that everything was right. It meant that I was alive, and only that. I breathed, so I created. But getting that creativity on the page was where my real struggle was.

So when I sat down Saturday night, opened a new file and started the first lines—nothing in place, no names, no setting, nothing but the general feeling of the story—it was like some door in my brain finally opened again. It was like I’d been unable to reach that door, the door to determination and blind faith in my own abilities, the door which had led to so many of my earlier works, because there had been boxes with bad memories and pain in front of it. Now that I’ve talked to Lizzy and H about what happened, the boxes are gone, moved to the side, no longer heavy but light as a feather. I was finally able to reach something inside myself that I hadn’t felt in such a long time, that I hadn’t been able to reach. I opened that door again, and the words started coming. A couple of sentences, a feeling of what the shape of the story would look like, enough to start writing. Even for just a couple of paragraphs. One became two, became three, and before I knew it, I had five pages of story.

I spent the rest of the weekend, and all of last night, writing. Creating words and worlds. Creating like I was catching up after being asleep for years.

When my alarm went off this morning, I was exhausted, mentally and physically. Luckily, I didn’t have to do much, most of the work had been done, and I asked Charlotte to make print copies for everyone in the project. So it was just a case of getting everyone in my group on the same page to get them to keep working.

I knew when B left the room not too long after Damon did that something was on his mind. Before he left, Damon told me that the staging group had been talking about H’s stabbing and that some of the girls and others might have some questions for me later, since I’m one of H’s only friends. And of course these people aren’t going to ask H directly—they’re too scared of him for that. H has a bad reputation, supposedly because of his temper, but I think most people just don’t care about the truth, they only want some juicy gossip. And Hunter the bad-boy fighter who got stabbed at a bar fight is much cooler than Hunter the guy who doesn’t know how to control his emotions and got stabbed by a grieving boy. Yeah, sure, his build and height don’t help much with the bad-boy image. But that’s on purpose, has always been. H likes it when people don’t expect much from him, gives him more freedom. What a messed-up group of friends we were...

Luckily, I was able to leave before the girls at my table got wind of what had gone on at the staging table, and I fled to the library. This is one of the few places where I can go without having to worry about who will see me. People don’t come here often, unless it’s exam week, but those weeks I avoid this place anyway. I like the quiet here.

When I reach the table I usually sit at, Hanna, a friend I met through Lizzy, is already sitting at it, reading a book.

“Hey.” I dump my bag on the table and slump down in the chair next to her.

“Morning.” She looks up for a moment.

“Good weekend?” I open my bag, taking out my laptop.

“Meh.” She puts her book on the table. “Wish I could just skip all of this stupid stuff.” She pushes the book away. I recognize it as one she has to read for her literature class this semester. I may be a writer, but the ‘literature’ they teach in class has never appealed to me either.

“I feel you.” I open the file of the story I was working on. “Did something happen?” I can see her shrug from the corner of my eyes.

“Not more than normal.” She sighs. Hanna hasn’t been at college much lately, something about not feeling too well. And each time I see her she seems more exhausted than before. But she won’t tell me what’s going on, so I’m not going to pry. I just stay at her side and hope that she’ll either trust me later or that she’ll get through whatever it is herself. Then she moves a little closer. “What are you working on?”

“New story.” I turn the laptop a little and scroll up to the top, so she can read the first paragraphs.

Hanna is quiet for a while, her eyes flitting over the screen. Then she looks up at me, smiling a little. “Sounds interesting. You gonna put it online?” Unlike Lizzy, Hanna has been reading all my stories. When she found out I was a writer, she kept giving me puppy dog eyes until I’d shown her my work, and she read years’ worth of my writing in just a week. She’s been my biggest fan ever since.

“Nah. Not this one.” This story I want to keep to myself until I’m sure that I can finish it. Until I finally reach the end and can show myself that I can really do it. I can really finish a new story.

“Send me the chapters, though?” She sits up a little, her curiosity now piqued.

“Sure.” I put my fingers to the keys. “Or you can just read along.”

“Nah. Gotta finish this stupid book. Can’t believe they have us take two stupid literature classes.” She grumbles and opens her book. “Oh.” She looks at me, putting the book down again, anything for a distraction. “I heard some girls gossip that you’re dating the hot new guy from your class?” Her eyebrows go up. “Finally breaking the celibacy?”

Breaking the celibacy? Well, yeah, that definitely happened... But I’m more annoyed by the other part, gossip. Gossip about me. Great. I shake my head. “Nah. That’s over and done. Nothing going on anymore.”

“Too bad.” She shrugs, looking disappointed.

“Why?”

“I thought that maybe it could help you get over whatever is preventing you from dating. Like, get over whatever or whoever made you stop looking for someone to have a good time with.” She eyes me like it’s an obvious answer.

“That was B, eh, Blaze.” The words are out of me before I mean to say them.

“Oh.” Her eyebrows go up, then she frowns. “He was...”

“I dated him in high school. We’ve had a couple of slips since he came here.”

“A couple of slips? Like, more than once?” Hanna’s eyes go wide in surprise. “You’re kidding.”

I shake my head. “Twice.” I put my hands in my lap. “The night of Tamara’s party and last Friday.”

Her mouth opens almost comically, and there is a spark in her eyes as she laughs. “Oh, my. Ignoring the whole issue of you not mentioning that you fucked the hottest guy on campus, second to not even Hunter, and you didn’t tell me—he’s your ex and you can’t keep your hands off him? What went wrong the first time? It can’t have been the sex.”

In a way... It was sex that got us into the bad situation in the first place. If we’d been better at keeping our hands off each other, we might never have ended up this broken.

“Sorry.” Hanna puts her hand on my arm. “I shouldn’t pry.” She looks more serious now, all spark gone.

I shake my head. “Something happened, something bad, and our relationship didn’t survive it.” Before she can interpret that the wrong way, I need to keep going. “He didn’t cheat or whatever, neither did I. It was something else. We couldn’t deal with it.”

She nods. “And now he’s back... Do you want him?”

I look around, making sure nobody can hear us. Then I nod. It’s the first time I’ve admitted to wanting B, even with our messed-up past. “We can’t. But yeah.”

A sadness goes over Hanna’s eyes, and she nods too. “Yeah. It can be hard like that.” She taps her fingers on the side of my laptop. “Go back to your story, at least there you can make things happen that don’t happen in this world. Maybe the bad boy will be redeemed at the end of the story.”

“Maybe.” I start reading the last couple of paragraphs I was working on, and then the words start flowing again. I can do this. And Hanna’s right, in the story I can make things happen that normally wouldn’t happen in the real world.

Like redeeming an asshole.

Like redeeming myself...

Writing the new story somehow makes even being in the same room as B easier. Which I need, because we’re sitting down to finalize the schedule for the upcoming weeks. The leaders of all the different groups have come together at B’s place. But being here is already bringing back memories I shouldn’t be thinking of. And when B’s eyes fall on me, I know the same is going through his head. B’s place is closest to the college, and he doesn’t have parents or whatever around. So now we’re here.

In front of us we all have stacks of paper, schedules, things with random notes written on them. I’m sitting at one end of the table, B at the other. With us are Ian from the actors’ group, Cora from the costume group, and Hazel, who is leading the tech and IT group—they’re taking care of the computer stuff but also will be doing posters and other things to promote the release of the movie. It feels really professional, all of us sitting here, getting together to discuss the schedule of our final project.

But because I’ve been writing so much, and have been able to get my emotions and stuff out in a safe way, I’m much calmer than at previous meetings. Whenever I think of B, I force my brain to imagine my story instead, and that helps with focusing back on what we’re doing instead of what I’d like to be doing to B. Ehh... what my character would like to do to the guy she wants to be her boyfriend. Yes, much better. My focus not on B, but on the class and on my story. That’s much better, much saner.

“I was thinking of maybe being able to film one outside location before we do the gym?” Cora looks at me. “I know that there is a scene set in the winter, and looking at our schedule, I think that filming that one outside before we do the gym will probably work better than waiting until later. Because if we follow the current schedule, spring may have already started by then. And if we want to show winter, it would be easier to shoot those scenes when everything still looks wintery instead of having to do that with props or have the computer people do it later.”

I nod, looking at the schedule in front of us. “I’m going to have to ask Charlotte, she’s the one working on that scene primarily. But she’s not involved in the scenes from the gym, so that should be workable. It just depends on the actors mostly.” I look at Ian. “Would they be able to prepare for both of them at the same time?”

Ian looks at the list of actors for each scene. “I think that should work. I don’t see why not. But you’re right on the location shooting. I think it would be better to move it forward.” He looks around. “We all agree?”

I look around the table and find B also looking at me. “Yeah.” I look down at the pages. “This means that those will be filmed when?”

“Wednesday to Saturday of the week before we’re shooting at the gym. Somewhere around the end of March.” B writes it down, and I put it on my own schedule.

I look at the rest. “It would give people more time at the end for the post-production work and things.”

“Yeah,” Hazel agrees. “That would be nice, and we can start working on the outside scene while you’re still filming the gym scenes. Spread out the work a little more.”

“Good.” I go to the next page. “Now, for the roles and scripts, a couple of things we’re still going to have to decide on...”