Page 77 of Perfect Chemistry

It wasn’t the way we had planned it. Everything was all wrong. I was no longer the woman their son had chosen, but the woman who had stolen and murdered their child instead. They didn’t know that I left the military. They didn’t know anything about me, nor did they try after the funeral. They just stopped accepting my calls.

I still messaged his mom every year on his birthday and the anniversary of his death. I didn’t even know if my number was blocked, or if she saw them and deleted them. There was no one else to share his memories with. I had no one else to talk about our dreams with.

I sent another message with zero idea on what to do afterward. Would I get a response? Probably not. Too little, too late, Katie.

I sighed and threw my phone back down on the bed, and went to join Andie and her family for dinner. I needed to move forward and I couldn’t do that sitting alone in a room.

“There she is!” Avery called from the table.

I couldn’t help but smile. Andie and Jonas’s kids were absolute sweethearts. Avery was just like her dad, quiet but very observant. When she did get to talking, she was quick as a whip with her comments. It was funny until you became her target. Their son Aiden was just a ball of energy. I had made it home for leave to see his birth.

When I had gotten back to post, I told Ty I wanted to have a baby. He proposed that night, but I turned him down. We didn’t get married until two years later. We had dated for over a year before that. He always wanted to marry me, but I always found reasons to turn him down. Too little, too late.

I sat down at the table between Andie and Avery as Jonas started to pass the plates of food around the table. Aside from visiting with my parents and now at Andie’s, I hadn’t had real food in what seemed like forever.

I usually just snacked on whatever my stomach could tolerate, unless Mandy dragged me down to her place to eat a proper meal. One of the veteran groups had offered group counseling through excursions, but I had turned it down. I didn’t need to fish for peace of mind. I needed closure. I needed my past to be put to rest, and I couldn’t do that with a bunch of vets who seemed content to constantly rehash the worst experiences in our lives.

I picked at the chicken on my plate and ate a few bites of the potatoes and vegetables. I felt restless like I hadn’t in a long time. Andie must have sensed it, because she reached over and took my plate.

“Go,” she told me.

I looked at her confused. “What?”

“Go. Run it off. The trails are all lit up now, so it’s not like it was when we were in school. I’ll put your dinner in the oven to keep warm until you get back.” She patted my hand and then nudged me to leave the table.

I felt my eyes burning with tears that wanted to fall. I just nodded my appreciation for her understanding and went to change into my running gear. This was all that I had right now. I could run.

I grabbed my phone and ear buds, and walked out the back door after I had changed. Seeing the looks that Andie and Jonas gave me made me feel like such a shit friend. They were so understanding and nice to me, and I didn’t deserve their love and acceptance. I wanted to disappear and be forgotten, but they kept me tethered so that I would work through my shit.

I reached the start of the nature trails after a five minute walk. My phone was tucked into a band on my arm, and my ear buds began to play the same music list I always ran to. It was one of the music lists that Ty had created for my long runs. Every song carried a similar beat undertone. It matched my pace perfectly and let me just run on autopilot without thinking too hard or needing to concentrate on my speed. I could just run.

I set off down the trails as the first song began to play. The first and last songs were a bit slower, so that I could warm up and cool down. Ty always thought of things like this. He was always looking after me in the biggest and smallest ways. I ran through the woods and let the rhythm of the music lead my feet.

By the time I made it back to Andie’s back door, it was nearly 10pm. I ran for three hours without batting an eye. Andie used to ask how far I would run, but I honestly couldn’t tell her. I never kept track. I just ran until I started to feel tired, and then I would run back. Keeping track of the distance wasn’t necessary to me. It didn’t matter.

I snuck back into the house, and walked quietly back up to the guest room. I set my phone to charge and grabbed a change of clothes before going to shower. The kids were asleep, but Andie would sit up and wait for me to get back. She was still looking out for me after all of these years. I showered quickly, put on my pajamas and shuffled back to the kitchen to finish my plate of food.

Exhausted, cleaned up, and a belly full of food, I finally crawled into bed to sleep. This was how I slept. So exhausted that my mind couldn’t keep pondering shit. There were no more what if’s or regrets when my head hit that pillow. Like this, I could just crash and sleep through the night.

Sometime later I woke up to my phone ringing. Who the hell was calling me? I reached out to grab my phone and answered it.

“Hello?” my voice came out raspy and hoarse from sleep.

It sounded like someone was calling me from a bar. The noise of people in the background and music made it hard to hear if anyone was trying to actually speak.

“I think you have the wrong number,” I told the unknown caller.

I hadn’t looked at my phone when I grabbed it, and my eyelids were too heavy to look at it even now.

“Are you happy?” a man’s voice asked.

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing and the mystery caller continued.

“If you were happy, I could be happy for you. I could do that,” the words were slurring. This guy must have drunk dialed me by mistake.

“I could be happy for you. I thought I could get a second chance. I know I messed up. I was an idiot, but I thought there was still a chance. I hoped. I really did. I wanted a second chance. But then I saw how happy you looked and I knew…… I was fucked,” the man continued to ramble.

I had no idea who this guy thought I was. I was slowly falling back to sleep listening to this midnight confession. What would it hurt to let him pour his drunken heart out? At least one of us would have some peace tonight.

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