Chapter 31 Don't Stop Believing
As a writer, I could hyper-fixate on one song, playing it over and over again as I wrote, since it fed my creative senses and helped me keep my emotions in sync with the music. Flowing just as the music went.
The emotions for my next book were soft and romantic, with a bit of sexy storm here and there.
So as I stood from the bed, abandoning the list of things for the orphanage on my bed, I walked to my large MP3 player and played my new song obsession—Don’t Stop Believing by a band called Journey.
I relaxed at my writing desk, turned on my computer just as the beginning tune of the song began playing.
"Just a small town girl
Living in a lonely world
She took the midnight train going anywhere
Just a city boy
Born and raised
in South Detroit
He took the midnight train going anywhere
A singer in a smokey room
A smell of wine and cheap perfume
For a smile they could share the night
It went on and on and on and on…
Strangers waiting
Up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searching in the night
Streetlights, people
Living just to find emotions
Hiding somewhere in the night…"
When it got to the first words of the chorus, “Strangers waiting,” I typed even faster.
The words flowed from my head to my fingers as they tapped on the keys of the keyboard.
The subtle excitement of seeing the words that were previously just in my head appear on the screen spurred me on to write more and more.
My imagination ran off gasoline and fire.
Creating worlds and scenarios had always been therapeutic for me.
Except when I tried to see myself in my books and was sorely disappointed when I didn’t fit in.
My worlds were always grand and magnificent. Even when there was a crisis or impending doom, my heroines always somehow found a way to save the day, to cure a disease, to eradicate the enemy.
But in real life, I could hardly tackle a list of things to get for an event in honor of my own mother. I was a stark opposite of my heroines. So, I stuck to real life. To roughing out life, one issue at a time and surviving—not conquering, just surviving.
Conquering, for me, would be becoming a New York best-selling author. It was a dream I worked toward that always seemed to elude me somehow.
Conquering, I thought as I paused my typing, my hands hovering over the keyboard, would be having my father more involved in my life. Having someone I truly trusted to rely on, other than Maria.
Maria was a darn good friend, but as a twenty-four-year-old, I knew I needed more.
Which was why Cole infuriated me.
He didn’t know what he was doing. He did not need to sit back in my dark room and re-evaluate everyone and everything that happened in one day.
He surely did not understand how much stress his interest in me caused. It made me… imagine.
It made me feel like some wack, retold version of Cinderella. Only my Cinderella had a broken ankle and could barely fit her feet in the glass slipper.
It wasn’t a nice feeling.
People like Cole Ryder should be admired from afar. Liked from afar, knowing you really couldn’t touch them, and that it was alright. But when he came too close for comfort, I could not help my mind from wandering.
I compared myself to him constantly. I wouldn’t go all out and call my life bad or anything, but when I put myself side by side with him, I just couldn’t see it.
There was no connection. I knew I sounded cliché, but we were worlds apart.
He looked like he could finish a press conference, close a business deal, break my heart and hurt me, and still go home to freshly made dinner all in the same day.
As I sat in silence in front of my computer, the words of the looping song began to grate on my mind, annoying me.
The words of the song kept soellimg oit like a karaoke screen in my head.
“Don’t stop believing… Hold on to that feeling
Streetlights, people…”
Kept going over and over, reminding me of Cole.
What was he doing now? Was he okay with the sudden change in his life? When I had seen him, he always looked like he preferred the quiet life.
He was always on his own, in quiet solitude.
I caught myself worrying about Cole.
What was I doing?
Resigning for the night, I saved my progress on my computer before turning it off. I then turned off the song and changed into my nightdress.
I didn’t remember when I had gotten it, but I had found it at the back of my closet a while ago, jumbled with a lot of other things. It was definitely my style, and I loved how it felt on me and how it made me feel.
I wondered how long it had just been sitting at the back of my closet, how many of my clothes that I could not remember were just chilling there.
I settled into bed, the tiredness and aches of the day catching up with me quickly.
It had been a while since I had to count sheep before sleeping. It was strange. I made a short mental note to track the reason for my lack of sleep next time it came back.
Before long, I settled into a steady breathing pattern, my head fully nodding backward as the waves of sleep slammed into me steadily.
I heard footsteps in my room, but I was too tired and too deep in sleep to figure out why my imagination was wandering again.