Chapter 27: Mending the Pieces

The Sunday night I returned home from Winnemucca was a very long drive. You want to talk about butterflies in your stomach...well I had elephants running around in there. I was so nervous about how things were going to go between me and Dave. Was he going to believe Kenny? Was he going to trust that I really wouldn't do that kind of thing to him? Aside from the nervousness in my stomach, I was still reeling with anger towards Kenny. I talked to Elizabeth most of the ride home. She decided that the only explanation for something like this was that Kenny liked me and he was going to sabotage what Dave and I had. She pointed out that when Dave would go home on the weekends, Kenny would stay. Whether or not she was right we will never know, but it was her theory and she stuck by it.

I pulled up to Dave's house in Fernley and went inside. We made brief conversation and when I tried to bring anything up, he just seemed to want to ignore it. I am not the kind of person to just brush something under the rug, especially not something as serious as this so we were going to get to the bottom of this. At the same time, I knew I had to give in a little to what he wanted because if I pushed him away here I might lose him forever. We talked for a while about our weekend and just simple small talk. It got late and I told him that I was going to head home. Since it was a Sunday, he usually drove in and stayed the week at our house. Of course I wanted this more then ever, but I didn't want to push. I asked if he wanted to come and he didn't say anything. I sat there for a minute on the verge of tears, truly believing that I was losing him. Then he got up and got all of his stuff and said he would follow me in. I smiled and went outside to wait for him. While I was calm in the house I was doing the victory dance and a big fist pump in my head!

Once we got to the apartment we went straight to bed. Once in his little comfort zone of my room, that's when he started to talk to me. He told me that he didn't want to believe anything that Kenny told him, but that was his cousin and he couldn't believe that he would just make something up. At the same time, he wanted to believe me because he really did like me. Again, I never said it didn't happen because I honestly didn't know for sure. I told him that all I knew was that I really cared for him, I was in love with him, and that was all I could tell him with certainty. Obviously he chose to believe me. At times, I often wonder if in the back of his head if he questions and still wonders if I am lying to him. It hurts my feelings to think that he would think that I would lie to him about something like this and it hurts even more to wonder if he really does have the doubt. I wonder if at times he wonders if he made the right decision to believe me because it hurt his and Kenny's relationship greatly. You see after this night of talking, Dave never went back to stay weekends in Fernley. He permenantly lived with Elizabeth and I until the end of the school year and then when she left for Washington, it was just he and I living there. He made his choice and chose his sides in this argument. And Kenny realized that. Dave cut all ties with Kenny for a long time. After almost a year, he finally started to talk to Kenny again and I had to learn to respect that. Dave understands my uncomfortable feeling when I am around Kenny and he respected that and chose to push Kenny away for a while.

Once Kenny wasn't staying with us anymore and he was also out of the picture, Dave was able to work on a "relationship". We spent all of our time together doing very couply things. We went to Arizona for my spring break and spent more time with his family. Again, Darrell could tell that we had something special but when someone asked if we actually dating, he never seemed to have an answer for that. Rather he would just smile or change the subject. After all we had been through, he was still hung up on this stupid label!