Breaking Walls

Breaking Walls

Breaking #
2

Tracie Puckett

Prologue

“You never answered my question back at the diner.”

“And what question was that?”

“What’s with the—”

“Chip on my shoulder?”

“Yeah.”

I closed my eyes and let Gabe’s single word resonate.
Yeah
. Somewhere between the static and the buzz humming through my headphones, I could still hear the way my breath caught in my throat. He’d taken me off guard with one, tiny word, a word enriched with curiosity—curiosity that nearly compelled me to answer without pause.

Thankfully, though, I took that breath.

The evening at Shae’s had started casually enough. Gabe was conscious of my uneasiness going into the dinner, so he kept the mood light with a few goofy jokes to help kill the tension. I was supposed interview him for the
Herald
, and he was supposed to give me some insight on the Raddick Initiative—his lifeline, his passion, the charity-focused foundation he’d built from the ground up. Instead, though, the tables had turned, and he’d been the one asking the questions. For thirty minutes leading up to the interview, we sat and talked about everything but the paper, the article, or RI, and I’d recorded every moment of our dinner conversation on the small, digital recorder Dad bought me for my sixteenth birthday.

Even after the weeks passed, I still kept listening to that same, familiar exchange. Time after time, I listened, unable to resist the temptation to keep going back to that day. I hadn’t known it then, but pressing the record button just a little too soon
gave me something precious—a moment in time, a remnant of the friendship we’d started to build . . . a reminder of the relationship we’d never even had a chance to begin.

It felt like so long ago that he’d walked away, and it’d only been a matter of days.

“Are we really going to do this?”

The recording suspended my reflection. I steadied my breath and listened to the white noise, closing my eyes as if it would somehow help me
hear things a little clearer.

Are we really going to do this?
There was a playful quality in my tone, a liveliness I hadn’t anticipated even when I’d first asked the question. It surprised me then, and it surprised me every time I heard it upon replay. So much had changed since the first time he’d brought up the subject of my bad attitude.
You have a chip on your shoulder, Mandy. Big time.

Back then, back when we’d first met and the sheer idea of Gabe was enough to induce a full-on panic attack, I’d gotten defensive and angry. I viewed his observation as an attack, and I did what any girl as closed off as me would do—I sat back and wallowed in my own self-pity.

This time, though, I knew better than to believe he was attacking me. I knew
him
better. It wasn’t an attack; it was genuine curiosity. His eyes softened with his tone, and my defenses barreled down. Yet again, as they always did in his presence, my lips took on a mind of their own, and I found myself answering his question before I had time to talk myself out of it.

“I’d say it’s less of a chip and more like a guard. A wall if you will.”

“A wall?”

“Yeah.
And it’s not just me; we all have one—some have just learned to build them a little higher and thicker than others, that’s all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Walls act as barriers—they protect the good and keep out the bad. We’re all a little damaged; each one of us has a history. Sometimes that history’s good, and sometimes it’s not so great. So just like our skin, our hearts, and the blood pumping through our veins, the wall becomes a necessary part of our make-up. It’s crucial to our survival. It’s there to serve and protect our emotional well-being.”

“So they’re good?” he asked.
“Or bad? I don’t follow.”

“They are what we make them. Sometimes we forget what’s worth protecting versus what needs to be
released.”

Or at least I thought so. It was just my intuition. While I suspected that everyone shared that one commonality, I had no concrete evidence to support my belief—nothing besides years of observation, anyway. And when you shut yourself out for
so long, observation becomes the only way of getting to know the people around you.

I wasn’t concerned that my belief was too far off, and with the way Gabe listened so intently to what I said, I wondered if maybe he thought I was right, too.

Having the gift of perspective, I kept listening to that recording, going back over our conversation and wondering if maybe Gabe had only asked those questions because he was trying to justify his insecurities—the ones he hid behind his own wall, the ones that made him run from me.

“So how do you maintain it?” he asked. “What keeps your wall from crashing down?”

“I live by the rules.”

“The rules?”

There was a catch in his voice, one I hadn’t been shocked to hear. Other than Bailey, Gabe was the only person I’d ever mentioned the rules to and for a good reason. It was that very catch, the pause, the awkward silence that I dreaded. That quiet moment in time created a terrifying opportunity of exposure, a chance of letting someone too close to my means of stability.

He’d narrowed his gaze and looked at me in just the way I’d predicted—mouth ajar, eyebrows forced low. I’d confused him.

“What do you mean?”

“The rules,”
I repeated myself.
“They’re just. . . something I made up—a set of guidelines to live by, to follow—to make sure that everything stays in order and that nothing comes between me and that lovely wall of mine.”

There was another pause, and I opened my eyes as I listened to the static hiss from the recording and through my ear buds.

Gabe cleared his throat, and the static faded away.

“Care to elaborate?”

I squeezed my eyes shut again, savoring the sound of his voice until the moment slipped away.

“Do I care to elaborate?”
I asked, trying to mask my nervous laughter.
“No. Not even a little.”

Knowing that I need
ed to move things along—for the sake of my sanity
and
the article Georgia had assigned—my eyes slanted down to the digital recorder positioned between us on the table. Gabe finished eating ten minutes prior to all things walls and rules, and I picked up my sandwich once or twice only to set it right back down.

After a minute of silence, I said,
“Okay, this is weird.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re just sitting there watching me eat.”

“I’m not
, though,” he said. “You haven’t taken a bite in over twenty minutes.”

I clicked the button to stop the playback and sat up straight in my bed. I didn’t need to hear any more. The rest of the recording would only reveal a long list of questions about RI, an uncomfortable conversation about Bailey, and a few too many awkward pauses as I tried relentlessly to learn more about the man on the opposite side of the table.

It was the third time I’d listened to the recording since we’d walked away from each other on Wednesday. Each time, as I sat there and analyzed every word, every breath, every change of tone, I felt my heart grow heavier with sadness.

I missed Gabe.

Chapter One

“You’re still not talking to me, then?” I ignored the voice behind me, not bothering to turn around as I pulled the headphones from my ears, twisted the cord around the digital recorder, and deposited both into the front pocket of my purse. “It’s been three days. Talk to me, Amanda!”

My back arched. I didn’t know why he insisted on calling me that, especially if he wanted to change the decrepit dynamic of our father-daughter relationship. After eighteen years, he should have known me better. I was fairly low-maintenance, I didn’t make many demands, and there were very few things anyone would have to do to keep me in their good graces:

1. Call me Mandy,
not
Amanda.

2. Treat me with common decency and respect.

3. Tell me the truth.

Dad was in trouble for violating all three, so he was carrying out the sentence of a lifetime.

“Enough with the silent treatment, already.
Talk to me
.”

I stopped in front of my full-length mirror, ignoring the peripheral image of my father as he leaned
against the door frame.
Don’t look at him, Mandy. Don’t lose focus.
Fixing my gaze on the mirror, I ran a comb through my hair one last time before pulling it into a ponytail.

“I know you’re angry with me,” he said, and this time I turned to give him a huge smile paired
with a sarcastic thumbs up.
Real mature.
Dad didn’t feel the urge to comment on my infantile reaction. He just powered through with his daily argument.

“This is absurd! If you won’t talk to me, if you won’t even tell me what I did, then how am I supposed to fix it?”

Smoothing the wrinkles from my work shirt, I studied my reflection one last time. I twisted back to the bed and grabbed my purse, tossing it over my shoulder as I left the room. He turned to follow me as I brushed by him.
Careful
!