Back To Nowhere

“I can’t play anymore, she doesn’t even seem to remember me,” he raged. “What’s the point?”

“Maybe it’s temporary, Gary, we don’t know anything.”

“Would you be able to accept such an explanation under the circumstances?” he asked scathingly. “Less than two weeks ago she remembered everything- every single hateful detail! Now she’s awake and she recalls everyone except her-” he couldn’t even speak he was so upset. He took a deep breath and spoke more calmly, but his voice was still full of grief. “She must have blamed me all along. She has erased me from her life, so don’t even bother trying to remind her that I exist… it’s my fault and this is my punishment.” He stalked out of the hospital to fly out of state the following evening with his coach.

“Hey,” Karen tapped his shoulder, snapping him out of his reverie.

Gary looked at her with a slight frown.

“You’re scowling, handsome. What’s the matter?”

He shook his head and smiled. “I’m fine- nasty recollection.”

Karen knew right away that his mind had taken him back to the events of last year. Only his really close friends knew just how hard it had all been for him. Her smile was sympathetic. “You won’t recover overnight. Neither will we- we still miss our sexy star quarterback.”

With that she went to load Chas’s truck and missed the pain in his eyes. It would be a long trip home.

Gary invited three ladies to ride in his truck and Kris said she didn’t mind. She even opted to sit in the back, but after a while she felt as though she was being deliberately ignored. He kept cracking jokes with Heidi in the front and laughing with Lauren and Kelly and while he never made it obvious he was treating her like a stranger- polite and friendly, Gary had definitely put some distance between them since the previous day.

She just didn’t get it. She actually felt as though she had done something wrong because yesterday everything had been so laid back and happy. Now he wasn’t really talking to her. Before they had left the house in the woods, she had felt like he was distancing himself too.

Was she imagining all this just because there were other girls around, she wondered, frowning slightly. She knew her thought process seemed to be a little different than most people’s but she couldn’t be expecting him to treat her preferentially just because they used to date each other... could she?

That idea made her uncomfortable. Mainly because she didn’t even remember anything about their old relationship. She had no right to feel ignored and neglected.

She was probably just overreacting. Gary was a friendly guy and he was being nice to everyone in his car. That was all there was to it.

When they got back into town, he dropped the other girls off at home, with an easy smile and a wave for each of them.

When they were alone and heading back to their campus, he asked, “Did you have a good time?”

“Yes. Thank you for inviting me,” she replied politely.

He opened his mouth and closed it, clenching his jaw. Pausing at a red light, he actually closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“Are you ok-”

“I’m fine,” he cut her off in a soft, terse voice.

He didn’t want her to be thankful. It felt so foreign and superficial for her to be so formal with him. Gary hated it and what it was doing to him.

He was so close to her but the distance between them was so massive, trying to reach her sometimes felt like he was being pulled in two opposing directions. One day he was afraid he would just find a tear in his chest because it already hurt like physical pain.

The fact that she seemed to have no idea also rubbed him the wrong way. Part of him felt like inviting her away this weekend had been a mistake. It never brought him any joy to feel like he was starting all over again every single time he saw her. And he didn’t like the way other girls even thought they had a chance with him.

There had been a time no one would even waste their breath flirting with him. He had been stamped, branded and totally unavailable. While he could act the same way he used to, it made no sense to do so when he was, in actual fact, not unavailable. At least not really. Emotionally he couldn’t be enticed an inch in any direction, but as far as the world might be concerned, he was single now.

Gary knew Kristina didn’t understand any of this. She didn’t get the strain it put on him to seem so cool with everything. She never heard their friends trying to support him like Karen had that morning. She was just a girl who was trying to find herself again.

The rest of the trip was quiet. They didn’t say anything to each other but there was music playing in the truck.

Every now and then Kris would take out her phone and type something but she didn’t speak to him. And he was ok with that. His mood had gone downhill and he just wanted to get away from her so he could blow off some steam without taking any of it out on her. Days like today he couldn’t really deal with the truth that she wasn’t trying to find her way back to him.

****

With a sigh, Gary finally eased off the gas and onto the brakes. He jumped out and got her bag from the back. When she thought he was going to throw it onto the curb, he stopped at the front door, unlocked it and strode into the house and right up the stairs before her. She ran after him, trying to keep up with his great strides. He went straight to her room and put the bag down.

Gary had moved into the house and gone upstairs and straight to Kristina’s room on autopilot. When he realized what he had done and saw the startled look on Kris’s face, Gary wished he’d been paying a little bit more attention to his actions. He bit off the apology that nearly sprang to his lips. He had absolutely no need to apologize.

“I hope you don’t feel like I intruded,” he said quietly. “It was out of habit but it won’t happen again.”

Kris opened her mouth then closed it when she realized she didn’t know what to say.

“I really,” Gary began in a strained voice, “wish you wouldn’t look at me like that. I used to live here too- that’s why I have keys and that’s how I know where your room is. I’m not some crazy stranger.”

He watched her eyes widen with realization and switched off the part of him that would want to comfort her if she started crying like she looked like she was about to. Turning on his heel he said a cursory goodbye and left immediately, angry with himself.

Kris didn’t stop him. Even if she had, she had no idea what she could say to make him feel any better. The look on Gary’s face as he stormed out of her room would be stuck in her head for a while. She’d only just become conscious of what this could be doing to the third member of the Bodley family and it was like a kick to the stomach.

As soon as Kris heard the front door slam shut, she fell onto her bed and started to cry.

She had never considered how this was affecting him, never even considered him as anything but a new entity to be incorporated into an already existing life. But that was not the reality at all and she felt horrible.