Thoughtful(210)

Scoffing, I jerked my arm away and pointed at the table. “I had two.” My words were slightly slurred, but I didn’t care.

Matt skewed his lips as he looked up at the ceiling. He counted something out on his fingers, then lowered his eyes to mine. “Uh, more like nine, Kell.”

Annoyed, I grabbed my jacket. “Whatever, I don’t need you guys babying me. I’m tired of being babied…I can take care of myself.” If I couldn’t drink in peace here, then I would drink in peace somewhere else. Scowling at Matt and Evan, I slipped my jacket on. Or tried to anyway. I couldn’t seem to find the right holes.

Matt stood up when he figured out I was leaving. “You’re not driving.”

Irritated at my guitarist, irritated at my drummer, and irritated at my life, I jerked my head from one band member to the other; the room spun a little. “I’ll do whatever the fuck I want! All of you can leave me the hell alone!” Finally successful, I slipped my jacket over my shoulders. Inexplicably, the leather smelled like Kiera.

Matt rolled his eyes and looked over to Evan. He sighed, then started rifling through my jacket pockets. I batted his hands away, but he was way more coordinated than me at the moment. After fishing my keys out of my pocket, he tossed them down the table, out of my reach. They landed in front of Griffin; he stared at them blankly, then returned his attention to a girl at the next table.

I dove across the table to snatch my keys back, but Matt was quicker and nabbed them first. All I ended up doing was falling onto the table and knocking over Griffin’s beer. That got his attention. Saving his bottle from rolling off the table, he snapped, “Dude! What the fuck?”

Wishing I was anywhere but here, I laid my cheek on the cool surface and stared up at Evan. He was even more concerned than he had been before, if that was possible. Conversations battled in my brain. Some with Kiera, some with Denny. Some of them were good, some really, really bad. All of them made electric pain rocket throughout my body; I felt my chest sizzle, like someone was holding a hot iron to my heart…right over Kiera’s tattoo.

Not wanting to look like an idiot anymore tonight, I carefully stood up. Feeling weak, defeated, and utterly alone, I muttered, “All right…take me home.”

Evan not only took me home, he walked me to my door and unlocked it for me. I scowled at him, but he wasn’t intimidated by my anger. “Hey, if you don’t want to be babied, then stop acting like a baby.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he added, “Now, do I need to tuck you in?”

Grabbing my keys away, I shook my head. The world started spinning, so I stopped. I took a step inside, then looked back at Evan. “I’m sorry about tonight. I just wanted…I wanted to stop feeling like shit.”

Evan sighed, then clapped me on the shoulder. “I know. Get some sleep, okay?”

I nodded and went into the house, but I really wasn’t tired yet. At least, not tired in a lack-of-sleep kind of way. I was sick and tired of a lot of things. Stumbling my way into the kitchen, I poured a glass of water and started drinking it. As the soothing liquid went down, sobering me, I stared at my phone. Making a quick decision, I picked up the receiver and entered a number I knew by heart, since I dialed it almost every single day. The phone picked up on the third ring. “Denny? Hey…it’s Kellan. How are…things?”

I’d started calling Denny right after he left Seattle. At first, only his parents would pick up, and they’d always very nicely tell me to go to hell. I’d kept calling though, and eventually Denny had taken the phone from them and talked to me. He’d seemed mystified by my persistence, but…he was family to me. I’d wronged him, but I’d never stopped caring about him. He was my brother. I didn’t want to give that up.

Our initial conversations hadn’t been much. Denny didn’t want to talk, and I understood. I talked though. I told him how wrong I was, how sorry I was, and that I wished I could do everything over again. If I could, I would have told him about my feelings for Kiera before I acted on them. I would have told him everything from the beginning.

Talking to him every day, while therapeutic for me, wasn’t really getting our relationship anywhere. It wasn’t until I confessed to him that Kiera and I weren’t a couple that he really started talking back to me. He was shocked that we weren’t together. He’d assumed we’d hooked up after the airport. I told him we hadn’t, that I’d said goodbye to her there and hadn’t seen or heard from her since. Surprising me, he’d actually told me that I was an idiot for letting her get away. That had made me laugh. I’d told him that it was for the best that we were apart, but only a part of me agreed with that. The rest of me agreed with him.