Just Remember to Breathe (Thompson Sisters)

Brewer was in front of us right now, Randy would end up in the hospital. And Dylan… would end up in jail.
    “You really have changed a lot,” I whispered.
    “What?” he asked.
    “I’ve known you… in a lot of different ways. But the one thing I’ve never thought about you was that you might be dangerous. Except to me.”
    He blinked. “Alex. Listen… whatever our history is, doesn’t change the way I feel about you. The way I’ve always felt about you. I’d do anything to…”
    He stopped. Was he struggling over a word again? Or holding back? Or was there a difference? And he didn’t even say a word about me telling him he was dangerous for me. Because really, he knew that, didn’t he? That we were dangerous for each other. Where was the big surprise in me saying that? I turned back to his stall.
    “You’d do anything to what?”
    He almost growled in frustration. “To… go back… go back and prevent that from happening to you. To protect you.”
    Was he about to say, to go back and change things? To go back and not hang up on me that night? To not disappear like he did?
    “Listen to me, Dylan. This is important.”
    He was still staring at me, his eyes crazy intense. He nodded. “Okay.”
    “Forget about it. It’s past. Okay? We don’t need that. We don’t need… this. Eat your breakfast. All right? Time for a change of subject.”
    He looked at me, calm, his gaze cool. Concentrating. I felt a bead of sweat in my hair, and took a deep breath.
    “All right,” he said. His voice had fallen back into that low growl that used to drive me insane. “It’s your turn.”
    “My turn for what?”
    “Your game.”
    I closed my eyes. This was playful four years ago. Now it was… frightening. Time to turn to something more cheerful.
    “I’m not sure I want to play any more.”
    He practically collapsed in his seat, no longer intense, no longer staring. He closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, and said, “I’m sorry. Christ, I’m sorry. Alex, I’ve got some… let’s just say, anger issues.”
    “I can see that,” I said, desperately trying to regain the light tone we’d had before.
    “So ask me a question,” he said. “But try to pick something not so intense, and I’ll do the same.”
    I shook my head, then said, “All right. Your favorite memory, ever.”
    He smiled bitterly. “I can’t answer that. It’s against the rules.”
    “Oh, screw the rules. Tell me.”
    He took a deep, shuddering breath. “My favorite memory, was sleeping with you in my arms in the Tel Aviv hostel the night before we left. It was… bittersweet, but wonderful. I didn’t actually sleep that night. I just watched you. All that night, and then again, all the way home on the plane. We only had a few hours left, and I didn’t want to lose a second of it sleeping. I was up about forty-eight hours I think, finally crashed hard on the plane back to Atlanta from New York.”
    I gave him a small, tentative smile. “Mine is the night we first kissed.”
    “Near the Dead Sea,” he replied.
    “It was dark, and the wind was blowing,” I said, “and it was cool, and we were alone.”
    “You said, ‘This could get complicated.’”
    I suddenly laughed out loud, trying to hold back tears at the same time. I remembered saying that. I’d never been more right in my life. “It sure did.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “It did.”
    “Where did we go wrong?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s because we couldn’t let go, or because we let go too much.”
    I shook my head. “I don’t either.”
    He looked at the table, and didn’t reply.
    Finally, I said in a near whisper, “Dylan… do you ever think…” I couldn’t finish the question.
    He kept looking at the table, and then replied, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him. “Always,” he said.
    I swallowed. “We should go.”
    “Yeah,” he replied.

    Run Away Fast (Dylan)
    Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that we’d crossed a line here, and I didn’t know how to go back. Both of us had more or less admitted that we still loved each other. Both of us were so screwed up I hardly knew what to think or say.
    I went to class in a fog. On Tuesdays I take college algebra at nine a.m. I’m already struggling with it, to be honest. It drives me nuts, because it ought to be an easy A. I took calculus in high school for God’s sake; this was practically high school freshman stuff for me, and when I was in high school, I was really good