Broken

“Too late for that,” I insisted with a grin, poking my head out of the closet for a moment before going back to dig a little deeper.

The next box I grabbed seemed strangely familiar. I opened it and sure enough, I found exactly what I was looking for.

I dragged it out and placed it on the bed.

Carrie carefully went through it, eventually looking up at me with a strange expression.

“This cabin wasn’t always an escape for a crazy loner with no friends or family,” I admitted, sitting down on the other side of the box.

“Are these yours?” She asked, before she amended her statement, “I mean, did you bring them from wherever it was that you lived before?”

“Yes,” I insisted in a facetious tone, “I decided that I would try to teach Jake to play. He’s gotten really good at Scrabble. The dog can’t speak a lick of English, but damn, can he spell it.”

I laughed as she narrowed her eyes at me.

Playfully shoving my arm, she insisted, “I don’t know. This just seems like a weird thing for a fishing cabin to have, especially when you’re the one living in it.”

“Yeah, well, before it was mine, it was my grandfathers. My brother and I used to come up here to spend some time with him. At night, we’d play a game with him. He’d cheat, we’d get mad and the game would usually end before there was a true winner…You know, normal family game night.”

Cassie gigged, but her eyes were seriously set upon my gaze, “I’m happy that you’ve started talking about your family.”

“I mentioned I had a grandfather and a brother; only one of those is actually any kind of in site into my past. Everybody has a grandfather.”

“But you knew him?” She urged.

“Yeah, I knew him…Unfortunately, that’s about the only thing worth mentioning about my family. My grandfather isn’t here anymore…”

“And your brother?”

“He grew up to be an even bigger dick than I am.”

“That’s hard to believe,” Carrie teased, and I narrowed my eyes at her, feigning insult.

“Thanks,” I answered, “Real nice. Do you want to play a game or not?” I turned my attention back to the box and shuffled through it, trying to direct her away from the questions about my past.

“Sure! What’s your favorite game?” She insisted, peering into the box again, as though she didn’t know what she was doing.

I glared up at her, “Oh no. You’re the one who wanted to play a game. You pick.”

I was getting a little too chummy with this woman and despite my feelings for her, I couldn’t go spilling my guts to her. It wasn’t something I was ready, prepared, or possibly even able to do, so the point was mute.

She could ask all the crazy personal questions she wanted, there was no way I was going to be answering anything else.

She seemed to understand this from my tone, so she didn’t press the issue.

She ended up choosing the game Sorry!

I had forgotten we even owned that game. Though, I tried my best to pretend that I didn’t have any kind of memory attached to it.

However, once we opened it up, a flood of my past came rushing back. The cabin, in addition to everything in it was a reminder of a time that had long past. It was a time I knew would never be possible again and that bothered me.

Yet, thinking about it, for the first time in years, wasn’t as devastating as I thought it would be. I had spent a good amount of time running from my past; even going as far as locking memories away in a closet I almost forgot was there.

When those memories were unlocked, though, it wasn’t the punch in the gut that I feared it would be. Instead, it was comforting, to remember that I had a past, before it all went haywire.

Playing the game reminded me that I was normal, at one time.

Maybe I can be normal again? I thought, though I severely doubted it. I wasn’t the kind of person to be normal; at least, not anymore.