Читать книгу Aon Ór Crossroads - C.J. Benvol - Страница 8

Crossroads

She never thought in her entire life that she would be in a situation like this. Cally stared up at the ceiling, wondering how something she had learned in a book from forever ago in school could really happen in today’s modern world. It just made no sense. How could the concept of facing a true crossroads ever really happen in real life?

Most people never even faced a monumental decision like this in their whole life, and here she was, facing the biggest and most monumental decision of her life. The road she chose to take would be the road that would forever make her wonder if she had made the right decision or not. How in the world was a fifteen-year-old supposed to make a decision like this and be sure they were doing the right thing?

The phone rang, and she just lay there, hoping and dreading who was on the other end. On one hand, it could be the man that had essentially told her to end it with her boyfriend; or it could be the boyfriend that she was supposed to breakup with. Either way, it wasn’t going to be someone that she really wanted to talk to right now.

A warm, cheerfully familiar voice, the one she was dreading the most today, sounded excessively upbeat as he greeted her with, “I was hoping to see you.”

It felt like the world was collapsing around her as she tried to grasp her next breath from the thick-heavy tension-filled air around her. Cally hesitated as she countered, “Yeah, we should talk, but aren’t you working?” It was the middle of the week, and he was supposed to be at work today. It was also not like him to call in the middle of the day either; something huge was going on, which only seemed to make this worse for her.

“I have the day off. I’ll be there in a few.”

Cally’s hands were shaking uncontrollably as she hung up the phone and started picturing what was coming. She had to do this; it was the right thing to do. Long distant relationships were hard, but she was only fifteen, and it was nearly impossible to know what a real relationship was when the guy she was with lived so far away. She had tried to tell him all of this, but she couldn’t do it over the phone.

Cally had tried to tell him when they had gone out to the beach party last weekend, but she couldn’t find the heart to get the words out. There was just something about him that made her melt every time she was with him. He was so perfect, but at the same time, this relationship was far too hard for her to deal with; at least, that’s what she was told by her friends.

Cally couldn’t help but wonder, How are you supposed to tell someone that you want to break up with them? Dakota was a good guy; well, he was more than that. He was the perfect guy in her eyes. They liked the same things, he never tried to change her or tell her that she needed to grow up, and they could talk for hours without running out of things to say.

Dakota was strong, confident, and he knew what he wanted out of life, whereas Cally was young, scared, and lost most of the time. She was all the opposites of the man he was, and yet, for some strange reason, he still wanted to be with her. He was everything she wasn’t and everything she wanted to be, and yet, she still had to do this. Deep down, she knew it was the right thing to do; at least, it was the right thing to do for him.

Cally slowly walked out of her room to hear the silence of an empty house. Her parents were working, her baby sister was at daycare, and her older sister was heaven only knew where, making the silence and fear build in the pit of her stomach as each second ticked by slower than the last. She could swear that the passing of time had to have completely stopped just to torture her until his arrival drew closer.

Cally’s friends had said this was a good thing. They said it was what she had to do, but they weren’t here right now to help her or support her; no one was here right now to help her end an amazingly complex relationship. Alone, that’s what she was—absolutely and positively alone to face the most difficult thing this world had ever seen; at least, the most difficult thing her world had ever seen.

Cally closed her eyes as she walked outside to the screened porch, and her heart was beating so fast, she could have sworn that it was going to break free from her chest and take off down the road. Deep down, she kind of hoped it would, because it would be easier than dealing with this. It would be easier than looking down all the paths that she could take and deciding on just one.

Cally hoped that it would be easier if she were outside; maybe she wouldn’t feel as trapped or alone or afraid. She looked around at the thin walls of the screened porch, and she felt just as trapped, even more so than she did when she was in the house.

Cally went out the last door that she could and sat down on the cold hard wooden steps, waiting for the inevitable, waiting for the worst moment of her life to come and kill her.

Trying to calm down, she started looking around her. The grass was bright green, even with all the heavily covered trees that hid the sun most of the day. She knew it was ninety-three degrees outside, and there was a light breeze that would make the leaves on the trees speak their words of warning; but to her, the world felt like a freezer trying to warn her of what she was about to do.

The dark patches of shade would hide the hopeful rays of sun, just like the fear was hiding all sane thoughts from her mind. The fear was controlling everything around her, even the weather; or at least, that was how she perceived it. How could fear control the weather around her? It made no sense, and yet it did. Okay, she was officially losing it, and it only seemed like it was going to get worse as the seconds ticked by and her overactive imagination was driving her to lose her mind.

Each breath felt like it was going to be her last. Each second stretched out for what seemed like forever, and her heart was pounding faster than a race car engine racing for the finish line. And yet Cally couldn’t move from these cold hard steps. She was about to face the hardest thing she would ever have to do in her life and just couldn’t move. Everything inside of her was screaming for her to run as far and fast as she could to avoid what was coming.

Something else told her to find the deepest darkest hole and crawl inside and wait for death, because that was definitely one of the roads she was facing right now. But no, she had to sit here, frozen with fear, knowing that there was no way to escape. Cally had to face this, and she had to face this now before she got in any deeper than she already was.

Cally heard his car long before she saw it. This little community she lived in was small and private for the most part, so the traffic was limited to people who were living here, and there were almost no chances that it would be a stray car passing by innocently. The thing that hit home the most was that she was living on the corner of two streets that lead to two dead ends. In front of the house was the only side street on this road, and between the two, there weren’t fifteen houses total. And given that it was one thirty in the afternoon and most people were at work, there was little hope that it wasn’t Dakota driving toward her. In fact, she was pretty sure that it was his car humming loudly down the winding streets.

Cally was looking to the connecting road, waiting for his sky-blue Camaro to break the tree line. She knew the road wasn’t that long, and there wasn’t a single curve in it, but it seemed like forever before she saw the telling evidence that was emerging from the trees blocking her view. Her eyes followed his path as he turned left in front of the house. He drove to the end of the cul-de-sac, turned around before parking in front of the house as the fear and reality of what she was about to do truly set in; and for some reason, she could no longer breathe.

Everything was coming to this exact moment, and she was now looking straight at the three choices in front of her. She could breakup with him and tear his heart out, stay with him and face the wrath of her friends, or fall over dead from the speeds her heart was beating at. At that moment, Cally was leaning toward the latter, because death would be so much easier than either of the other two options she was facing at this point.

At the moment his car stopped, she felt her heart fall into the pit of her stomach. No one ever told her that it would be this hard to breakup with someone. She knew she had to do this—everyone had said that she had to do this—but no one could ever prepare her for this moment, and no one ever said it was going to be easy. Then again, no one ever warned her that it was going to be the most difficult decision she would ever have to make in her life either.

Cally watched as his car door opened, everything inside of her turned to ice as her breath caught painfully in her chest, and her heart seemed to turn to an icy fire that wanted to eat her from the inside out. She wished that someone would have told her how bad fear could get, but she doubted anyone had ever been this afraid before. Why didn’t anyone ever warn her of what was coming? Why didn’t they write a manual on all the things that could possibly happen when you were about to tear a man’s heart out? Why?

Movies and books had nothing on real life! When she saw Dakota step out of his car, everything seemed to blur around him. The once crisp trees and grass and houses were just a blur of colors that mashed together, and the only vivid thing she could see was him. He seemed to radiate with a strange hypnotic energy as he walked toward her. It was like she could see his joy emanating from him as he slowly walked around the back of the car.

The way he moved and the golden energy around him made her heart stop its intensive racing as her erratic heart came to a complete and utter stop inside of her chest. No matter how hard she tried to look away, she couldn’t. Cally had never seen someone’s soul the way she was looking at his right now. It was the most magnificent thing anyone could have ever seen and probably would be the most magnificent thing she would ever see in her life.

Cally was so enveloped by what she was seeing that she had almost completely dismissed Dakota as being a real person and not just the amazing ring of multicolored halos surrounding him, until he stopped in front of her, and she started to realize that he was down on one knee. She almost missed his words completely, because his eyes said so much more than anything he could have said out loud. Their souls seemed to be speaking their own language, something she wasn’t sure of, and yet, she understood the words perfectly. It seemed like the world around them was speaking in ways that she had never known existed, because she was learning to listen to more than just the verbal words that he was saying; and yet, those words were saying something she felt like she had to acknowledge for some reason.

“…I know, it will be hard at first and we won’t have enough to have a fancy wedding, but I love you and don’t want to live without you. Cally, will you marry me?”

She still didn’t know where that black box came from or what he had said before that, but now she just wanted to die because she was now facing a fourth road that she could take; yet, she was seriously considering taking the “death” option if it would only come and wrap it’s claws around her now.

Cally didn’t know where the strange warm aqua light came from, and she really didn’t care as it started to envelop her in its warm embrace and as long as she wasn’t there facing the most difficult decision of her life. Her world and life began flashing before her eyes, like a movie showing her the past and future all jumbled together. She couldn’t believe that she was seeing so many different things swirling around her as time passed and changed, showing her what could be and what would be if she stepped down each path. Yet, she knew that they couldn’t all be real, and at the same time, her heart whispered that they were all real and true options for her mixed-up life.

Her crossroads had finally come to a point, and now she had only one thing left to do. Cally had to make that one single-most difficult decision of her life; the one that would determine which of the many scenes she had seen would be her one true life’s path. The world around her seemed to hinge on this one single solitary decision.

She opened her eyes far too fast, breaking the overwhelming clips of what could be, only to see the old wooden steps beneath her feet stopping the swirling movement that the rest of her body felt from being tugged back from a world of spinning images. Her eyes slowly drifted back to where he was kneeling, and another wave of fear washed over her. She had a choice in this, didn’t she? She didn’t have to do what she knew she should do, did she? Why did life have to be so unfair? So complicated? Why couldn’t someone tell her what the right choice was in this? Why did she have to make this decision all on her own?

Cally looked up at the warmth and joy she saw in front of her, the guaranteed happiness and love that was kneeling there, smiling as bright as the sun. The choice, the road she was facing, looked easy and simple, but in her heart, she knew that it was far from the easiest path. Her life was never easy or simple; it was always far too complicated, and she never seemed to do what she should. Why was this happening to her? Why was she in this position? Why did she have to do this? Why was she being forced to make this choice now? It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair!