“No, I -” Jenny shook her head. “I don’t.”

Shane nodded. “If you change you’re mind…”

“I know,” Jenny replied.

“I’m serious Jen. You’re not alone. You have me.”

Jenny took Shane’s hand and kissed it softly. “I know I do Shane.”

The room got quiet as they both become lost in their own dark thoughts.

“I used to have nightmares when I was kid,” Shane said, breaking the silence.

“Really?” Jenny replied.

Shane gave a small nod. “Yeah, they uh, they got pretty bad.”

“How did you make them stop?”

“Well, I didn’t. Not really…” Shane said, not knowing why she had
even brought it up. “I mean how do you fight something that’s inside
you??”
Jenny started tracing circles on the back of Shane’s hand with her thumb. “I wish I knew.”

“Yeah…  Shane said, her voice full of sadness. “Me too. ”

“Do you still have them?”

Shane stared at the coffee table, at the ash tray that was overfilling
with cigarette butts, at the empty beer bottles and old newspapers. She
regretted having started this conversation. What had been the point of
it? So they could talk about how they both had trouble sleeping at
night because of the fucked up shit that had happened to them in the
past? As if that was going to help…  as if that was going to
change anything.
“Shane?”

Jenny’s voice brought Shane out of her thoughts, and for some reason that she couldn’t fathom, she began to speak.

“Sometimes…” Shane said, answering her question. “If I let myself go
back there, if I let myself remember…  I just try to remind
myself that I can’t change the things that happened. It’s done, and
thinking about it… it doesn’t help…”
Jenny turned onto her back so she could see Shane’s face.

“Every time I do,” Shane went on, her eyes staring across the room at
some invisible object. “Every time I let myself… I get pulled into
this, abyss, that I can’t get out of…  and if I stay there long
enough, I disintegrate. ”

“Is that what you want Shane? To disintegrate?”

“Sometimes,” Shane replied, surprised by her own honesty.

Jenny closed her eyes. “Sometimes I wonder if the things I remember really happened, or if I’m just making it all up.”

Shane looked down at her. “What things?”