When story comes alive

Part 8.

I could not go to sleep. This was the first time I recalled everything after things ended with Aiden. I had tried to push it all away but with the intense narration, it all felt very real now. I tossed and turned for a long time. My eyes finally dropped due to exhaustion but I was up again by 3. After unsuccessfully trying to fall back asleep, I paced around the room for sometime, trying to find something to do, and I did find somethings to do. But I did not want to wake up Jenna who was asleep in the next room, so I found tasks that I could do with as little noise as possible. After achieving a lot of cleaning targets, I tiptoed into the kitchen and made pancakes for breakfast and then went out for a run. I rarely went for runs in the open air and this run, a loop around the lake seemed so refreshing. Usually, I preferred loud music playing in the background in the gym. But today I did not have that loud music in the background and neither did I have my headphones on. I feared that every song would remind me of Aiden. With the cool breeze as my companion, I finally came back to reality. The pain seemed to subside and I finally accepted that Aiden had not been a part of my life for over 6-7 years.

As I entered our apartment and flung the keys into the bowl, I heard the sound of the cup hitting the counter. Jenna was up and having coffee. I entered kitchen and saw her resting her head on her left palm and coffee mug in her right.

'Good morning!' I picked up my cup of coffee and sat down beside her. I had to talk to her about what was happening before I hit the showers.

'Are you sure it's a good morning?' she asked glaring at me.

'What happened?' I asked.

'Nothing happened to me. I meant is it a good morning for you? You have been awake for ...let me see....over 4 hours now,' she said checking time on her phone.

'Sorry! Did I disturb you?'

'I woke up when you were pacing around but I dozed back. So don't worry about it.'

Jenna was a light sleeper which I thought was contradictory to her happy go lucky personality. Someone like her should be a sound sleeper without a care in the world just like her awake self.

'So what did you do all this time?' she asked.

'I cleaned my bookshelf, rearranged clothes, made pancakes and went for a run.'

'To what end?' she asked just as I ended my sentence. She knew me so well.

'I am back to reality now. I was getting too involved with my writing.'

'I read your update today. You are pouring your heart into it. I feel for Emma and Aiden so I understand what you must be going through. But it has to come to an end, don't you think?'

'Hmm...' I dreaded the thought of ending it. It was so much a part of my life for the last month and bigger reason was that I was not ready to end it.

Jenna watched as I left to take a shower and called out over her shoulder 'Procrastinator! You have 4 more days to breakup. I will not allow you to go on your blind date without ending this.'

I waved my arm over my head without looking at her. I was glad I had 4 more days.

Every day, for the next 3 days, I planned to end my story. But whenever I sat down to write, words seemed to just fly out of my head and I would be left staring at the blank screen. Finally on day 4, the morning before the blind date, I knew exactly what I felt and knew exactly what to write.

'I was with Veronica yesterday.' Emma heard Aiden say the most dreaded words. Her mind wondered to the darkest places.