by Natalie Dean
The pastor said something that he didn’t catch, and then she was standing. He must have jerked to attention, startled, because she looked back to him with a smile.
She whispered, “It’s all right. Stay here. There’s just something I have to do.”
“Oh… okay.”
He wracked his brain as he tried to remember what part of the service they were in, but it wasn’t until she was halfway down the aisle to kneel at the altar that he remembered.
Right, it was a call to prayer. Everyone was free to stay in their seat with their heads bowed, but those who felt they needed some extra support and fellowship could go down to the front.
The whole things seemed embarrassing and put-on-the-spot in his opinion, but from what he could see from Keiko’s face, she looked relieved more than anything else.
In fact, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
He watched as she knelt, going from somewhere around five-eight to so much smaller, curled as she was on the cushioned bench. She looked tiny, almost childlike, and completely alone.
Worry bubbled up within him. Concern. He didn’t like how it looked, her completely by herself, but before he could figure out what to do or if he should do anything at all, an older woman stood up and hobbled her way towards Keiko. Assured and comforting, she laid her hand on the young woman’s shoulder and began to pray too.
Almost as soon as she was there, a younger woman stood up and joined them. Then an older man. Then a couple of people that he was pretty sure he had seen at the wedding. Within just moments, there was a crowd around her, all praying, some of them with their hands lifted to heaven, some saying things under their breath.
It was… beautiful, and in that moment, he got it.
He finally, really got it.
There was a connection between all of them. Vibrant and warm and strong. Burning with something untouchable, and yet they were all shrouded in it.
They were all strengthened by it, fueled by it, made stronger. It gave them something to be besides themselves, something greater than just them. They had purpose. They had community.
There really was more to life than partying and getting high and chasing that next rush.
And these people had found it. There was value in building relationships and community.
He sat there, utterly shocked by the revelation he was experiencing. It felt like it was scrubbing out old connections and rules that his mind had made and rebuilding new ones, making theories and asking questions he never thought to ask.
He wasn’t sure what all of it meant, his brain didn’t feel nearly powerful enough to compute all of that out, but all he knew was that he had several different paths in front of him, all wound around her and what they could possibly mean to each other.
But if he moved forward, he was probably going to have to leave the path he was on behind. The one he was comfortable with and knew oh so well.
But he was pretty sure she was worth it.
21
Keiko
Life got better in little increments, so subtle that they were basically unnoticeable at first. But once she started looking back, she realized how far she had come since her most recent low.
She felt less like she was teetering on the brink, her feet growing more and more secure under her every day. And while she didn’t get to see Dani as much, considering her best friend was a newlywed and she and Benji were building a cabin for themselves between the two ranches, she did manage to sync up her schedule with Sophia again.
And despite the fact that Sophia was probably one of the people who had been most inconvenienced by Keiko’s breakdown, she never said anything. In fact, she almost seemed more comfortable during their meals and rides.
Or maybe that was Bradley’s influence, helping Sophia discover herself and move through her recovery.
If Keiko was being honest with herself, she would have to admit that Bryant was helping her too.
In fact, he was helping a whole lot.
She had never expected him to bring her meals regularly, or go grocery shopping with her, but he did. And while their worlds didn’t revolve around each other—he still had his business and she had her friends, work, and the church—they did spend quite a lot of time together.
He started coming to church with her. Not always, and not even every week, but enough that people started to murmur and recognize it. Several times when she visited his family for various reasons, someone would bring him up, but she would always tell them that it was up to him if he initiated contact or not.
But she had hope that he would. And the more time that they spent together, the more she felt like that was a possibility.
And the more she began to feel.
It began as small, sparky things that reminded her of the first thunderstorm of summer or a sparkler after it got dark. Then it grew into something deeper. Something more refined and filling.
Sure, it was still nerve-wracking, that was for certain, but it was a good kind of uncertainty.
Or at least mostly good.
She still was nervous on occasion, or felt pushed into things she wasn’t ready for, overwhelming things, but she tried not to pay the anxiety too much mind. For the moment, she didn’t see a reason why she couldn’t let herself feel.
And she felt a lot, like when Bryant would come over and let her pitch her next Bible study premise to him, or a review that she had written for the slideshow at the library she worked at. Sometimes he came over to just have tea and chat.
She’d never thought she’d ever be alone with an unmarried man in her own place, but he always kept a respectful distance. And while he still flirted plenty, he never tried to cross a line like he had when he was shirtless in her living room.
So naturally, when her phone rang a month after their first church service together, she still felt a thrill of excitement when his name popped up.
“Hey there, what are you up to?”
“You know that it’s my one day without the library or church duties,” she answered, laughing as she stirred her tea. It was a lemon and basil combination this time, one of her newer and more herbal recipes.
“That’s right, I guess I do have a pretty good handle on your schedule. But still, I wanted to be polite and ask if I could take you somewhere.”
Despite all the progress that they had made, her mind instantly flashed to the Bistro. “Um… that’s really nice, but I don’t think I’m mentally ready to go on any sort of date right now. Even a simple one—”
“Whoa, hold on. Who said anything about a date? There’s just something that I want to take you to as a friend. I think it could help you, and I promise there’s absolutely zero romance at all.”
“Really?” she asked suspiciously, raising her eyebrow even though he couldn’t see her. “Zero romance at all?”
“Yup. Zero. A grand sum of nada.”
“All right. I suppose you’ve earned my trust enough for that.”
“Aw, you flatter me so.”
She chuckled, rolling her eyes. “So what time should I be ready by?”
“Give me about two hours. Wear something comfortable.”
“Oh, are you taking me to the paintball field again?”
“As much as I am sure you’d love showing all of us up again, no, it’s not that. You’ll never guess it, not in a million years.”
“A million years is a long time.”
“And still you’re not gonna guess it.”
She laughed, and they finished up the conversation. When they hung up, she felt a thrill of excitement, which really didn’t make sense.
She had meant what she said when she had told Bryant that she wasn’t ready to date. Because she wasn’t. She was still trying to figure out if what she felt was attraction or a crush or anything of that nature. It felt silly to be wondering about such things that most people dealt with during their teenage years, but she had always done things at her own pace.
And yet, despite that trepidation, she
was still filled with anticipation. She looked forward to seeing him and the fizzy warmth that filled her belly whenever he flashed that grin at her.
She spent far too much time figuring out what she wanted to wear, and only a buzz from her phone managed to get her out of her room and rushing towards her door to put on her shoes.
In the doorway she paused, her hands itching and wanting to pat each corner of the entry to make sure everything was safe. It was a new ritual that had manifested since her breakdown, which Dr. Hyleir warned her might happen.
It was frustrating to feel like she was doing better just to have reminders shoehorn themselves into her face that she was sick, and it was a chronic illness that would never be gone. But thankfully, she was distracted from the compulsion by a strong knock from below.
She looked down the stairs and could see Bryant standing outside the door, his upper half visible in the pretty little window. Just like he’d told her to be, he was dressed in casual clothes, a pair of nice jeans and a soft-looking sweatshirt. His hair was slicked back, and he looked both fresh and excited.
“You ready to go?” he asked, shooting her a smile once she came down the stairs.
“That’s why I came down here.”
“Hah, good. I left the car running. Let’s go.”
For perhaps the dozenth time, she slipped into his car and they headed for the city. They’d made the trip so often that it was basically a ritual at that point, and she settled in.
The conversation flowed much easier than it once had, with him asking about her upcoming plans and her asking if he’d had any stories about ridiculous clients and their impossible expectations. It was a give and take, and she let herself relax.
However, that sense of relaxation faded as they pulled up to a building tucked away on a busy city block that she didn’t recognize at all. It was clean, and there was a single business sign with the word “SMASH,” but that was the only indication of what it could possibly be.
“Is this a comic thing?” Keiko asked, thinking back to the times he’d told her about how he would hide under his sheets with a flashlight to read about various superheroes when he was a pre-teen.
Bryant laughed as he moved around to open her door. “Not really, but I see how you made the association.”
“All right, then where are we then?”
“Let’s just say that this is something that might help you turn the other cheek.”
“I didn’t know I had an issue with that.”
“Isn’t that just human nature by this point?”
“Okay, that might be true.”
She dropped her guard and decided to just trust him. That was the whole reason she’d even come, wasn’t it?
But she still wasn’t any closer to understanding where she was even when they did go inside, and Bryant paid for an hour package. They also had to sign some sort of legal waver as well and wasn’t that interesting.
They were led to a “changing room,” and the employee handed them both white jumpsuits that reminded her of what painters wore as well as covers for their shoes.
“What on earth could we possibly need these for?” she asked as they were led down a long hall and to another room.
“You’ll see,” was all he said, and she felt like he was enjoying the suspense way more than he should have.
Eventually, however, they were finally stopped in front of a door and the employee unlocked it for them. “Your timer starts the moment I close this. Please remember to have fun, don’t hurt yourselves, and smash away!”
“Smash away?”
Keiko had questions, that was for certain, but then they were walking forward and into a stark white room with a table with various items on it in the center and… an entire old car?
“What is this place?” she asked, so thoroughly confused.
“This, my friend, is a smash room. Our tools are on the table, and we have an hour to mess up this room however we want.
“You wanna smash all the windows? Then smash the hood? You wanna throw this neon paint all over the white walls? We can do that too. It’s just pure, wanton destruction, with the bonus of everything being recycled once it’s damaged beyond repair.”
Keiko stared at the mass of things. She saw a TV box, a microwave, several cardboard boxes, a tea set on a glass table, just plenty of fragile and shatterable things.
“Why would I want to break these things?” she asked cautiously.
“There’s a whole bunch of reasons. One, a lot of times we have to hold our temper in, even when really terrible, unfair things happen. People who don’t deserve promotions get them, killers get away with murder, and abusers get made into the victim. People lie and cheat and end up successful instead of punished.” Bryant walked around looking at items.
He continued, “Plus, there’s the control aspect.”
“Control?”
“Yeah, from what you’ve told me with your OCD, it’s kinda like your brain is forcing you to think and feel certain things rather than you actively deciding them. With this, you’re in charge of everything.
“Besides…” He picked up a plate and chucked it at the wall, resulting in it exploding into a bunch of ceramic pieces that fell to the covered floor with a pleasant little tinkle. “It’s kind of a fascinating study of how certain objects interact.”
Keiko remembered when she had once put an egg in the microwave just to see what it would do. That was the thing about childhood; there was so much curiosity, so much to learn and observe.
“I suppose I have always wanted to know how much force it would take to shatter an old TV box.” She’d seen it so many times in action and spy movies that she remembered it definitely being a question she asked herself. Especially since the sparks were always so impressive.
“That’s my girl. Now let’s get to smashing.”
Although he emboldened her by throwing another plate, Bryant let her take the lead. She decided what tools they used on what, starting off small and building up higher and higher until she was taking a sledgehammer to the front of the old car.
She wasn’t normally one who took much comfort in destruction. She liked to create and maintain order and just generally make things better. But there was something fun about letting go and doing whatever she wanted to a whole bunch of very breakable things.
For example, she held the teapot high above her head and thought about when she was younger, and everyone in her class but her and Dani got invited to Rachel’s birthday slumber party. She put all of that pain, all of that humiliation into the cheap porcelain then threw it right onto the ground.
And just like that, it felt like the pain was dealt with. Absolved.
Bryant was right. It really was an exercise in catharsis. She splashed red paint all over the walls when she thought about how angry her OCD made her sometimes with losing time and expending energy. She splashed orange when she thought of all those years she wasted hating her body and wishing she could just be thin enough to maybe be beautiful.
She threw a brick through the microwave when she thought about how the girls used to gang up on Dani and how a couple of guys would ask her out as jokes. She flipped over the glass table when she thought about children that didn’t have enough food to eat, or how money had become so much more valuable than human life.
She screamed, she shouted, she laughed, and she cheered giddily. Endorphins rushed through her and for a time in the smash room, she really did feel joyous and free.
By the time the hour ended, she was covered in sweat under her suit and utterly exhausted. All of her limbs felt like jelly. She wobbled as they walked out and returned their suits to a bin that was labeled for it in the hall and then discarded their shoe covers.
“So, what do you think?” Bryant asked, looking much less breathless than her when they reached the parking lot but still had a ruddy-cheeked face.
“I feel like I should probably be worried about how good that was for me, but that was like, really good.”
She playfully joshed his shoulder, although her arm was so tired that it took more effort than she would like to admit. “Just because I’m not an expert like you doesn’t mean that I’ve never been a little naughty myself.”
He made a choking sound at that, which was more than a little bit amusing. “Uh, I think you and I have very different definitions of what the word naughty should be used for.”
“Yeah, I’m sure we do.” It was borderline flirting, and she knew that, but it didn’t make her fearful. No, it just made her feel… safe?
That didn’t make much sense.
But maybe it didn’t need to. Maybe she could just be in the moment with Bryant and enjoy coming down from her adrenaline.
Turning to him, she took in all the detail of his face. The strong lines, the grin, the way his dark hair would sometimes shine red in the direct sunlight. He was handsome, that much had never changed, but there was something more to him now. Something familiar and welcoming.
“Thank you,” she said, a feeling building in her chest again. “Like really, really thank you.”
He looked at her, and the way he tilted his head made her heart pound ridiculously hard. That feeling, strange and alien, burst into bloom as the next words left his mouth.
“Anything for you.”
22
Bryant
Bryant’s life had changed so much in the past three months, so thoroughly that it was almost unrecognizable.
It hadn’t really started as something intentional. Really, his whole goal at first was to just be there for Keiko and repay the kindness that she had shown him. But then he had started attending church more and helping her with her various ministries, and he figured if he wanted to be useful, he needed to know more of what she was talking about.