Falling Apart©
By
Meg Galganowicz
(One month later)
Aly let out a tired sigh as
she glanced around. “I so can’t believe
you dragged me here,” she muttered.
“What a minute, since when
did I drag your sorry ass? I thought
you had come begging to me?”
“Kaylie, you were supposed
to say no and then I could nicely decline Lance’s offer!”
“Oh hush, you know you want
to see them perform. Plus, they’ve come
home now, it’ll be an amazing show.”
“It’s always an amazing
show. Do you think Lance told him I was
coming?”
Kaylie shrugged as they stood
in line. “I guess it’s possible. Likelihood is that he didn’t but he’s hoping
you’ll run into each other.”
Aly stared at her
sternly. “And how would we run into
each other when he’s on the stage all night?”
“Oh, um, I don’t know. Nevermind.”
“Kay!”
Kaylie growled at her
friend, “Fine! But you’re going and
you’re not going to drag your heels.”
“What did you do?”
“I talked to Lance and um…we
sorta…well…”
“Just spit it out already.”
“You and I are meeting him
at a club for awhile with Justin and then we’ll follow them back to the place
Johnny’s hooked them up with for the night.”
Aly moaned, leaning her head
back and glaring at the starry sky.
“This is so not turning out to
be a good night.”
“Oh, come on, Al, we’ve got
front seats to the hottest act in the business. You will have fun and you’ll be dancing in the aisle, I promise.”
Aly merely shook her head as
they started to file into the arena.
“Whatever you say.”
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
(At Johnny’s for small get together)
Lance nudged her, “So, you
gonna go find Mr. Attitude?”
“No, Lance, I’m not. This was very nice of you but I really
shouldn’t have come.”
Justin scowled, “You told me
you wouldn’t hurt him, Al. Please, just
talk to him, that’s all we’re asking.”
She finally nodded and
brushed past him toward the bar where she knew she’d find her former
boyfriend. If you only knew that I’d hurt him already, she thought to
herself.
“You look good.”
The voice sent chills down
her spine and she impulsively dropped her purse on the bar. “Um, thanks. Don’t look too bad yourself.”
“I’d buy that if you looked
at me.”
She forced herself to glance
in his direction, but once she did her apprehensions escalated. “You look good, too.”
“Thank you.” He took a drink and scanned the crowd, a
casual and impersonal expression guarding his face. “So what brings you here?”
“Lance and Justin, she
sighed, sitting down on a stool one over from his, careful to maintain a strict
distance.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, they basically teamed
up with Kaylie to get me here so we’d talk.”
“Kaylie came?”
Aly nodded. “She’s off mingling over there somewhere.”
There was silence as they
listened to the song that pumped through the speakers, the bass rumbling in her
toes. JC finally cleared his throat and
turned his gaze on her. “Did you want
to talk?”
“Um, well…I don’t know, if
you want to, since we’re both here…but I mean, we don’t have to.”
“Might as well.”
“Right.”
“Can I go first?”
She nodded hesitantly,
unable to find her voice for the strength she lost under his stare.
“If you knew that I loved
you, then why didn’t you stay and fight for it?” he asked quietly.
“Excuse me?”
“You were right about how I
felt, but you didn’t fight for how you felt.”
Aly’s face turned sour, “I
shouldn’t have had to fight. There was
nothing to prove to you. Then again, I
pushed the situation so far that I made you say what you did.”
“Alison, it isn’t the fault
that’s the problem now.”
“Oh really? Then why didn’t you ever try to get in touch
with me? Why didn’t you fight for me? I don’t understand that, JC. You sit there and ask me why I walked away, yet…you stood there, on Valentine’s Day, and
blatantly lied to me about how you felt.
How was I supposed to believe anything any more?”
“I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“No, and neither did I, but
it did and there must have been some truth to it. Why did you say that, JC?
Why did you rip apart my world with those words?” Her voice was hoarse and she looked away,
afraid.
JC, on the other hand,
couldn’t believe she was accusing him of ruining her life. “Don’t you know what I went through? Do you know how guilty and disgusted I
felt? You couldn’t possibly know what I
went through, Alison, because you didn’t try to find out. You walked away and gave up.”
“I never gave up!” she exclaimed, thick with tears, “I never woke up in the morning without
feeling alone, and I never went to
sleep at night without being sick to the stomach thinking of how I’d screwed
up. I wanted to die, Jez, I really did. I
couldn’t eat, sleep, study…hell I couldn’t pull myself together to get through
tryouts in the spring! Do you know why
I’m in Florida and why I’m going to FSU?
Because I was afraid to be alone.
I was afraid of myself!”
JC stared at her, numb. A few tears began to sting at the corners of
his eyes.
“You took everything from me, Jez, with just those
words. You took my faith, my trust, and
my friends. If it weren’t for Jake I
wouldn’t be here. Was it all a
lie? Was what we had…a lie, JC? Because if it was then you did a damn good
job of acting. I was hooked. But you took that away and it felt like I
went through withdrawal. You said you
felt guilty, that you felt disgusted…but you weren’t alone. Those five guys will stick by you no matter
what you do because they love you.”
“Alison, come here.”
She pulled away from his
outstretched hand, away from the sorrowful eyes. “Don’t touch me. Don’t
expect me to let go, JC, because I don’t even have anything to hold on to. I gave you everything I had, but you turned
it away.”
“Please, Aly.”
Aly pressed her fingers
against her eyes to avoid crying, but too many tears had already begun to
fall. “If there is anything here, JC,
if there is anything at all…we’ll find it again. But don’t expect it to be easy.
I lost control of my life and of myself,” she explained slowly, looking
up at him as she reached for her bag.
“Let me try again on my own, okay?”
JC watched her, studied the
way her hair fell in her face and squeezed his eyes tightly shut as he turned
his head toward the floor. “Whatever it
takes to make your eyes smile,” he replied softly.
Aly walked away, making her
way through the crowd that had gathered and out the front door. To her surprise Lance was right behind her
and held her close only moments before she gave in. She didn’t cry, but her fight was gone.
JC ran a hand over his face
as he signaled to the bartender to get him another round. Too many thoughts and too many frightening
images coursed through his blood, muddling his conscience. The bartender motioned to a piece of paper
that lay in the spot where her purse had landed unceremoniously. “That yours?”
JC picked up and carefully
unfolded it. There was a brief note in
familiar scrawl, followed by lines and lines of what appeared to be lyrics. Heart tight in his throat he clutched the
paper in two hands, his eyes memorizing the words.
I wrote these awhile back…probably close to
November.
You do well writing on your own,
here’s just one of what I’ve been able to pull together.
When
the sun’s going down
My
heart sinks inside
‘Cause
there’s no one around
So
if I start to cry
Just
hold me close
All
I need are loving arms
To
take the fear away
When
I’m down, and want to cry
It’s
your eyes, that save my heart
When
I’m falling apart
(When
I’m falling apart)
So
don’t say good-bye
And
don’t say there’s any fault
‘Cause
I need you here right now
When
it all tears at the seems
When
the rain starts to pour
And
dark clouds fill the skies
My
heart will grow cold
And
I will push you away (Afraid)
It’s
your smile, that gets me by
When
I’m down, and want to cry
It’s
your eyes, that save my heart
When
I’m falling apart
(When
I’m falling apart)
It’s
all I know how to do
All
my heart knows to feel
All
the sorrow deep within –
When
I’m down, and want to cry
It’s
your eyes, that save my heart
When
I’m falling apart
(When
I’m falling apart)
“You write one for me, I’ll
write one for you,” he promised in a hushed whisper.