Can't Let Go Read Online Free

can't dance that to
this. Are you sure you've got it right? Maybe you've got
the wrong number of steps. That dance sounds like it
needs three beats. Or six-eight? This song is four-four.'
    He stood still for a moment and I could tell that he was
mentally counting out the steps. He pulled a face. 'Oh,
what the hell. Let's dance anyway. It's a great song.'
    So we bobbed around the room awkwardly and
unrhythmically, laughing like idiots, as Lucinda sang her
song of jaunty pain: a song about a relationship that was
over, a man whom she couldn't forget, couldn't let go.
    I had my left arm around Danny. His right hand was
pressed reassuringly into the small of my back. Our other
hands were clasped together. Our hips started swaying
together. There was an instrumental break in the middle
of the song, as two or more guitars duelled with each
other, and Danny took the opportunity to swing me
around and dip me over his knee. Back together again,
tighter clinch as the song ended, and he picked up his
remote with one hand and clicked it to replay the song.
    And I found myself remembering another clinch,
another dance: slow-dancing with Rivers Carillo in the
cabin of that tiny cramped houseboat in Sausalito as the
afternoon sun poured in through the big windows. Round
and round we danced to Bob Dylan, or whatever it was
that was playing on the stereo, repeatedly knocking our
shins on the low bed. He nuzzled his stubbly chin against
my cheek and held me close. How easy it was to let
yourself go, to fall into the warmth of a man's arms when
you were dancing with him.
    'Can't let go,' Lucinda Williams sang. But that night
with Danny, as we clumsily two-stepped around his living
room, I was thinking that those words could mean
something entirely different. I said to myself: I can't let go;
I can't let myself let go. I can't succumb. It would be so easy
to fall in love with Danny, so lovely and warm and
comforting, but I couldn't let myself go. I couldn't let
myself fall in love. Not again. Not after what had
happened last time. Bad things happened to people I
loved. If you made sure you had no one in your life then
there was no one who could hurt you. And no one you
could hurt.
    But it got so lonely. Maybe now was the time to risk it.
    Maybe now was the time to change.

Three
    'What are you scared of?'
    Danny had meant his question as a
sort of joke, a cliché. It was what you
said to people in those circumstances. 'Come on, what are
you scared of?'
    And the usual answer, the expected answer, the answer
most people would give was, of course, 'Nothing.' But not
me. What was I scared of? I could have given him a list. I
had a list, an actual written list.
    I knew all about fear. I lived with fear the whole time,
and it was manageable, mostly. It wasn't much fun, but
that was okay. I killed someone: I couldn't expect my life
to be a bed of roses. But I could cope with the fear, most
of the time. I could live with it. I had it down to a fine art.
    The best way to manage fear was to analyse it; to divide
it into categories and to deal with each little bit of it
separately. I did this quite often. I would sit down and I
would make a list – a physical list, pen and paper. I wrote
down what I was afraid of, and I wrote down reasons why
I should or shouldn't be afraid, and what I could do about
it. I would keep the list. I would fold it up small and carry
it about me somewhere: in the back pocket of my jeans, in
the zipped compartment of my handbag; in the inside
pocket of my jacket. Sometimes when I needed
reassurance I'd pull it out and read it. I would usually keep
it until the paper was falling apart, and then I would write
a new one.
    The list usually fell under three major headings. The
first thing I was afraid of was Rivers Carillo; or, more
correctly, his ghost – his apparition. That one was easy to
deal with, to neutralise. I knew he was dead because I had
killed him. The dead didn't walk again except in my
imagination. I could usually