When Sparks Fly (22 page)

I stare at his two questions and frown because I don’t know the answer to that.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you know?”

“That I miss you, that I’m proud of you, that I understand now, and I want you to forgive me.”

“For?”

“Choosing wrong, for lying, for not saying the words I should have said.”

“Which are?”

“That I don’t regret kissing you that night, not even for a second.”

“What do you regret?”

“Not being honest with you. Not telling you that my heart was still yours.”

“Is it now?”

“Always,” I type.

“And mine yours,” he writes.

My heart aches. “What are you saying?”

“That I never forgot and obviously neither have you.”

“I remember everything,” I admit and the tears begin to fall.

*

Kane’s mom was like my own having taken in my sister and I after our mom died. She was family and she didn’t hesitate to basically adopt us, though not on paper. I was seventeen and Avery almost nineteen when our mom lost her long battle with cancer. Our sperm donor of a father wasn’t present in our life, but he made sure Avery and I were well taken care of financially, even agreed to pay for our college out of guilt I assume. I wanted nothing from him.

My heart at that time was cold, hollow and full of anger. But I had Avery and Kane’s family there to warm me. His mother was my mother’s dear friend and she promised her that we would be loved and she never broke that promise. She held me when I cried at night and she told me stories of healing to give me hope. And Kane watched. He watched me break and then little by little he did what he could to help put me back together. He befriended me when I felt completely alone. Avery had Jeremy, as they were dating at that time and I didn’t really know whom I had, but a part of me believed I had Kane. Though, we had always been friendly, we weren’t exactly close, not until then.

Kane would stop and talk with me while we were at school. Always saying something to make me smile when a smile was the last thing on my mind. He made me laugh at a time where laughter didn’t exist. Rumors began to spread about him and me as we grew closer, and I realized that made me happy. Kane was making me happy. We didn’t really walk in the same circles at school, but he was slowly winding me in.

The one thing that never ceased to exist in my darkness was dancing. It was the one way I could express everything, leave it on the stage—my love, my anger, my warmth and my cold. I could breathe it all out of me, releasing it through my limbs. From my head down to my toes, it left me. I needed that.

I had asked my dance team director if I could use the dance room one day after school when we didn’t have rehearsal and she allowed it. I will never forget that day for as long as I live. Hindsight is 20/20 and looking back on that day, I should have seen the ominous cloud looming overhead, but it seemed as nothing to me.

I plugged my iPhone up to the stereo system in the dance room and began stretching. Once my muscles were warm and stretched, I began to dance. I played Blue by Fjord and let my heart bleed on the floor, right there before the mirror and when that wasn’t enough to expel my demons I put on 101 Vultures by Alex Winston. I danced until I was breathless and my body was weak. My muscle ached and my heart felt so heavy. I kept going because stopping meant feeling. When I couldn’t turn and leap, I stood in the middle of the floor and just moved my body, my hands gliding up my body and in my hair where I just shut my eyes and felt the music. The tears began to fall and I fell to my knees and I cried. Arms were wrapped around me and pulling me into a warm body, I resisted at first, but then his scent was there and I inhaled him.

“Shh… I’ve got you,” Kane said and when I opened my eyes he was there, comforting me, and in the doorway of the dance room stood Ezra, Kane’s friend…witnessing my darkness. I met his eyes in the mirror for just a moment and then I turned into Kane. I had no idea how long they had been standing there watching me. It could have been a few seconds, a few minutes or the entire time. I wasn’t aware.

Kane and I spent nights talking and growing closer. He had become my best friend until one of those nights led to kissing and eventually more. I fell madly in love with Kane West in a year’s time. We began the summer before our senior year of high school and I believed with every fiber of my soul that we would never have an ending.

Avery, having already graduated high school a year before with Jeremy, was going to school locally. She had moved into the dorms and our conversations made me excited for college, but melancholy had set in because I knew Kane and I had zero intentions to remain in Florida. I knew being away from my sister would be hard for me, but Kane and I were set for an adventure. Our plan was to go to college in New York, where he would study Creative Writing and Journalism at NYU while I studied dance at Julliard. My direction wasn’t as set as his. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew I loved dance and I loved him so I wanted to be where he was. In three years time, what we thought would be an amazing adventure together turned into states between us, and the end of what we could be.

Everything was perfect up until it wasn’t two years into our life in New York. Kane began writing, embracing what was clearly a gift and I was so very proud of him, even when he would spend many of nights ignoring me while he was lost in his head.

His teacher suggested that he query agents and I thought it was a wonderful idea. It didn’t take long before he had one. His ideas were incredible. His agent was guiding him in a process that would take his potential and turn it into a success. I just never thought that potential would mean our separation, but I never saw an end to us. That thought hadn’t once crossed my mind, not until that night, the night everything changed. The night Kane decided that looking to be signed by a publishing house had become something else all together.

Kane came home ecstatic one evening. He pitched an idea to someone with connections back in California, someone in the movie industry and they suggested Kane go into screenwriting. Screenwriting wasn’t ever really his plan. But plans change, don’t they? That’s exactly what he had said.

His agent called a few weeks later with a date for a meeting for him to pitch the idea a second time, a meeting that would take place in Los Angeles. I remember being so excited for him, but I had no idea that he would be faced with a decision that would ultimately change our paths forever. Another year had gone by before Kane was faced with that decision. He had already sold his first script to a producer, but there was no guarantee for a second job. So he continued school, taking accelerated courses. He would complete in three years what I would in four. I guess I should have seen that as a red flag, but truly I just believed Kane would sign with a big publisher or a magazine in New York. I never once thought he’d leave his original goal behind and go to L.A. because he never mentioned it. He never once said he thought Los Angeles was where he should be or asked me if I would I be willing to follow him there. But after the second pitch was sold and his agent was being spoken to almost as much as me, I began to worry. He had an attorney, a manager, different friends and an income. He made trips to L.A. without me. He wasn’t going to be a one hit wonder, that much was clear. His writing was good, it was more than good and Hollywood was calling his name.

We broke up after he graduated and I still had a year left. My relationship with Kane was over and he never even talked to me about it. He just left. I think he assumed I would just follow him, but I didn’t. Maybe he even thought I’d end up with him after I graduated and he wouldn’t even have to ask. Or perhaps his new life as a screenwriter was one where I didn’t exist. The last is what it ended up being, at least in my eyes. I felt robbed of my own happiness, like he’d stolen years from me. He wrapped me in a blanket of hope and promise, only to leave me cold when he removed the blanket and took it with him.

It was harder than I ever imagined it would be, being without Kane in the big apple, but when I watched the mood reel of Kane’s third movie, I knew he was in the world meant for him and I was going to be his number one fan, someone he used to know and love. As a reader, I love teasers and book trailers. A mood reel is like the same thing, but for movie pitches. It gives the person watching it a visual feel of what the movie might become. Kane’s movies are amazing.

It wasn’t pretty, my life after Kane West. I fell apart when he moved away, acting impulsively and without regard to anything really. My heart was obliterated and I had no direction whatsoever other than hell. In my heart, I knew Kane was doing amazing things, but I missed him terribly. Though I missed him, he completely had my support to chase his dreams because that is what love is. Letting someone go for the sake of their own happiness, even if it means losing your own. His craft was beautiful and his gift was art. I just wished that I had played a part in those dreams, but I understood his reasons for leaving. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Problem was, he was a once in a lifetime kind of love for me. So moving on wasn’t easily done.

I spiraled quickly, trying things I never would have before just to numb the pieces that were broken inside of me—drugs, sex for the fun of it and alcohol (lots of alcohol). It all caught up to me, though—my partying and living like someone else. One night, the night I never want to speak of again was the nail in my New York coffin and I left that life behind because without Kane, it wasn’t really my life, my life had been broken apart. Shattered across several states.

So there I was, my tail between my legs, coming home, returning in pieces again. It didn’t feel like home because sadly Kane wasn’t there to put me, or us, back together. But Ezra was.

I remembered him from school, but we weren’t ever friends. I lived with Avery and Jeremy, who had moved in together some time before, no longer a couple, but still the best of friends. I envied the two of them, having broken up and still having one another. I ached for Kane, but Ezra was a lovely distraction. Being Jeremy’s brother, he was around quite a bit and slowly we became friends. He asked me if I still danced and I remember smiling because he remembered that about me.

I began teaching dance at the local studio that used to be a home away from home for me, spending hours immersed in a new life so that I wouldn’t think of my old one. It didn’t pay my part of the rent with Avery and Jeremy, though, and I needed more of an income. I mentioned needing a job one evening while we were all out for drinks and Jeremy and Ezra shared a look. Jeremy asked if I had considered becoming a teacher and I laughed. Of course I hadn’t. I was reckless, wild and completely not teacher material.

“Pelican Point needs a dance team director, but you can’t run it unless you’re faculty,” Ezra explained with a pointed look. He was the football coach and taught tenth grade Math.

I decided what the hell and took the steps necessary to get certified, which was a few online courses and tests. I was brought in as an Aide at first, but then eventually hired on full time as the Librarian and dance team director. I was in love with my job, being surrounded by books and performing arts made my heart full. And being around Ezra more and more made me feel like I might survive my heartbreak after all. I thought I was falling in love with him.

Kane and I stayed in touch, remaining great friends, but it was different. He was even supportive when I told him that Ezra had asked me out for the third time and that I considered saying yes. He told me that I should and my heart sank because while I was struggling to make this decision, Kane had already moved on with many or so I had been told. He had movies under his belt and a television show to be debuted in the fall on a major network. His name was attached to stars and models alike. He was in a different realm than me, an alternate universe where my recluse of a friend was now in the spotlight. And I wanted nothing more than to hide in the hole of the dark cave he used to spend days in writing. I had no cave to hide in, though.

Ezra, who insisted on making me feel alive, was pulling on my hand, guiding me into the land of the living. I fell for him because of it. I confided in him the big secret about why I left New York, the night I never wanted to speak of. It was our third date and I don’t know why I opened up to Ezra when I hadn’t to anyone else, not even to Kane, but there I was in his home telling him about my dark evening of terror.

I told him that I went to a party where drugs and alcohol were free flowing, which was like my hobby at the time because my heart was broken after Kane left me empty. I told him how three guys continued to give me drinks, flourish me in attention and that I welcomed them. That I drank and drank until the room began to spin, and when I woke up I knew something terrible had happened to me amidst my blackout. I was afraid Ezra would look at me with disgust because I did, but he didn’t. I had just told him that I had been used and I had no memories of it. My body was their toy, their laughter echoed in my nightmares for nights on end. I told him how I spent nights locked in my apartment in self-hatred and bitterness that eventually the demons were too much and I needed to leave.