Chasing Alys

by Morgana Bevan

  There was no “might” about it. It was definitely time for bed.

  I hummed, too tired to operate my voice box.

  I’d get up in a minute.

  My eyes grew heavier.

  Any minute now…

  “Up you get.”

  I frowned. Someone was shaking me. “Five more minutes,” I groaned.

  “You’ll have a much better sleep in your own bed. Up,” my father ordered, taking my hands and pulling me off the sofa.

  I blinked, trying to clear the sleepy heaviness. I met my dad’s clear eyes. How was he so awake? Laughter creased his face.

  “Are you with me now?” he asked.

  I nodded and he released his grip.

  A shrill noise sounded from the side table. Who’s calling at this hour?

  “What time is it?” I wondered.

  “After midnight, I think. Get that, will you? It could be an emergency.”

  We each stared at the phone, he with confusion, me with suspicion. Neither of us moved.

  A heavy rock settled in my stomach. Intuition said I should not pick up that phone. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  But Dad thought otherwise. He lifted the handset and pressed the receive button. I watched him with wide eyes as he raised it to his ear.

  “Hello?” His gaze met mine. I strained my ears to hear the conversation, but the phone wasn’t loud enough. Unexpected anger flashed in my father’s eyes.

  “I don’t know what you did, boy, but no one makes my daughter cry and gets off that lightly.” He paused, his lips pursing as he listened. “Why the hell are you apologising to me? You broke her trust. You fix it.”

  He hung up with a thunderous clamour then stormed out of the room, grumbling to himself about hopeless boys.

  I went to bed frowning, all traces of exhaustion having evaporated. Every time I looked at the clock, another hour had passed. A blackbird outside my window started singing around 3AM. It was taunting me.

  Had Ryan apologised to my dad?

  More importantly, why had he apologised to him? It wasn’t like he’d broken his heart.

  And what did Dad mean about “fixing my trust”? I didn’t know if it was possible to fix broken trust. I’d never felt the inclination to try. Did people just pretend the problem didn’t exist until they believed it, or was there some secret I didn’t know?

  I drifted off with Ryan’s earnest, sad eyes stuck in my head.

  The next night, the phone rang again, and this time my dad pressed it into my hand and forced me to sit on the sofa. And then he left me. Without a word. With someone calling my name from the handset.

  My pulse raced as I lifted it to my ear. Sitting was a good idea. At least it wouldn’t hurt when I passed out from lack of air.

  “Alys?” Ryan called a little too loudly. His words were slightly slurred, like he’d come off stage and chased the bottom of a bottle.

  My throat dried. If I could remember how to form words, they wouldn’t have made it out of my Sahara of a mouth.

  He sighed. “I wish you hadn’t left. I miss you, Red, so fucking much.”

  Silence. My eyes fell shut, savouring the sound of his voice before I could truly register the action.

  “I didn’t… I didn’t do anything. I promise. I wouldn’t ever. You’re the only woman for me. Why don’t you see that?” His sadness drifted down the line despite the distance. Tears pooled in my eyes.

  “It’s just a mis – uh, a mis-standing. A misunderstanding,” he repeated, enunciating the word carefully. “We could have cleared this up and you’d be here, and the guys wouldn’t – fuck! Come back to me, please. We’re in Bucharest. I need you here. I love you so much, just give me a chance to explain. I can make this right. I know I can.”

  My breath caught painfully in my chest. He loved me? Did that mean I wasn’t over exaggerating the emotions?

  Hearing his voice hurt, but not because of the picture. One day, he’d replace me. He’d be begging another girl to trust him, and she would. I wanted to be his sounding board. I wanted him to wrap his arms around me after a bad day on the job. I wanted a do-over Christmas dinner with him.

  He was someone I wanted around always.

  Tears flowed down my face as the facts cemented.

  I did love him. But how could it change anything? I didn’t know how to trust him again.

  “Please talk to me, Red.”

  I could feel my resolve weakening.

  Taking a deep breath, I cleared my throat. “I don’t know if you can make it right. Good night, Ryan.”

  Chapter Forty

  “Is there something interesting happening in the garden I need to know about?” my dad asked, curiosity ringing in his tone. I felt more than saw him stop beside me. I was too busy chasing threads inside my head.

  I’d been right to tell Ryan he couldn’t make us right. I knew I had. Yet it had been bothering me all morning. I freely admitted the photo was most likely fake and I loved him, missed him more than I could bear. That didn’t change the fact that his star was rising, and this kind of crap could happen again.

  Hell, if they had one fan who’d do something so malicious at this point, they’d definitely gain more.

  And Ryan would find someone else who could handle it, who would trust him and believe him first. That, in a nutshell, was the reason for the dark circles under my eyes.

  “Those are some deep thoughts,” my dad muttered. He touched my arm, pulling my attention from the kitchen window. “Come have a cup of tea with your old man.”

  He guided me to the table. While I’d been stuck in my head, he’d boiled the kettle and laid out cups and cake on the table. Once he’d placed a huge chunk of banana bread on a plate and poured me a cup of tea, he sat back and considered me over the rim of his cup. “Penny for your thoughts.”

  My lips quirked at the old saying. He used to literally bribe me with pennies when I was a kid. I’d quickly grown out of it, but it had been an interesting way to earn pocket money until I turned six and stopped sharing.

  I met his patient gaze, and the urge to have someone else make sense of my problems took over. I’d spent long enough drowning in contradictions; I needed fresh eyes.

  Taking my hand, he squeezed it reassuringly. “I know something happened in Italy that broke your heart. I’ve never seen you like that, love. It was like you forgot how to breathe. Even when that rat hurt you when you were a kid, you shook it off and moved on to the next adventure. This was different,” he whispered, his sombre eyes fixed on me as he patiently waited for me to open up.

  Taking a deep breath, I jumped in head-first. I recounted my fears about the distance cooling his interest, how great things had been for those couple of moments and capped it off with the soul-destroying picture.

  “It looked like he cheated?” My father queried, eyebrows quirked.

  “It looked so real. It looked like he was fully into it.” And I would know; I’d spent far too many late-night hours dissecting that picture. “Every worry I had ever had came to life and I broke. Me! I’ve been through so many shitty men, and I should have been able to keep it together.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with how you reacted, love. You’re allowed to be heartbroken when someone hurts you,” he said, giving my hand another squeeze. “I’ve watched you build those walls so high no one stood a chance of touching you. I thought it meant you were strong and could handle anything the world threw at you, but now I see that all it did was buffer you from taking a real chance. Have you considered why this one – this man – was able to tear your walls down? Yes, he chased you. But I know you. That wouldn’t have made you hand him your heart. Something about him must have cracked those impenetrable walls. Try and remember what that was. You might find life without it more unbearable than life safe from risk.”

  I held my untouched teacup to my cheek, letting the steam sooth my puffy skin.

  He was right: Ryan was different. From the very beginning, I seemed to
mean something to him. Most men would have taken one rejection and disappeared, but he saw something I hadn’t, and I couldn’t make myself regret choosing to give him a chance.

  “I don’t know what to do. I miss him and I don’t believe he cheated, but it feels like there’s always going to be a risk with his fans. I don’t know how to trust him,” I said, my voice small.

  “I understand your hesitation, but do you think that’s fair?” he asked, plucking the teacup from my fingers. “As much as I’m annoyed that he’s hurt you, a lot of this is of your own making. He can’t control his fans. He can’t predict where the future will lead. But he can choose the person he shares the ups and downs with. And he chose you.”

  “I know all of this,” I murmured, unshed tears deepening my voice. “But he doesn’t deserve to spend his life worrying if the next crazy stunt will be the one that sends me packing.”

  “Hypothetically, if you don’t take a chance, you’re choosing a future filled with regret without Ryan. If you choose to be brave, it’ll be hard, but you get him. You need to decide if you’re willing to take another chance.”

  “But how?”

  He stood, smoothing out his t-shirt. Smiling down at me, he shrugged. “That’s for you to figure out. We’re all only human, love. At the end of the day, all we can do is be vulnerable and try to trust people.” He patted me on the head as I stared at him with a frown. “Sometimes we can only be sure of what we need when we lose it. Figure out what you need and how far you’re willing to go to get it.”

  After those parting words, he abandoned me in the kitchen with my untouched plate of banana bread. What a shame I didn’t feel like eating it. His were always spectacular.

  I already knew what I wanted, that part was easy: I wanted Ryan.

  It was the rest I wasn’t sure of.

  But my father was right. I could never be happy knowing I’d passed up my chance at something meaningful. The happiness I’d get from being with Ryan far outweighed the risk that he’d stray for real.

  Chapter Forty-One

  “Why don’t eggs tell jokes?” Dad asked as he made himself an omelette without so much as a grumble about the lack of bacon. This was a daily routine for him, sharing some new corny joke he’d figured out.

  I rolled my eyes and my lips twitched despite myself. “I don’t know.”

  “Because they’d crack each other up.” For the first time in a week, I laughed. He stared at me, stunned. His shoulders sagged and the tension around his eyes eased.

  “You look much better, love.”

  I woke up this morning and the tears had dried. My mind was clearer, and I felt lighter. My chest no longer felt crushed by debilitating pain. I thanked yesterday’s realisation for it all. I hadn’t plucked up the courage to call Ryan yet, but it would come. Maybe when I was more awake.

  “Your omelette, Dad,” I shouted as smoke billowed from the pan.

  Spell broken, he spun around and turned the heat off. The omelette looked and felt like coal.

  “Don’t suppose this means I get bacon now?” he asked, his lips pursed and a sly glint in his grey gaze.

  I gave him side eye. “You did that on purpose.”

  He chuckled. “Right, right. I’ll make another.”

  “That would be best.”

  “You know, I’m feeling much better. If you wanted to go out and about, I can fend for myself,” he assured me, removing the box of eggs from the fridge yet again.

  “Says the man who just burnt an omelette?”

  “Hey now! That wasn’t my fault,” he cried, trying for serious but failing miserably as his eyes creased. “I just mean, if you wanted to go back to work, socialise – I don’t know, be a normal twenty-six-year-old who doesn’t have to care for her elderly father – you could. I’m good.”

  I scoffed. “You’re hardly elderly.”

  He shrugged. His piece said, he poured the fresh egg batter into the pan. As he did so, he hummed along to a song on the radio, pretending to ignore me. I wasn’t fooled, though. I’d become used to his need to keep an eye on me these last two weeks.

  But he did have a point: He was better. He probably didn’t need a full-time nursemaid anymore. I could put out feelers for work. I could go back to Cardiff and get my life back on track. Yet despite my new, clearer state of mind, I hit a wall when I tried to consider leaving.

  “You’ve said no a thousand times, but would you please move closer to Cardiff? I would feel a lot better if you were within easy reach.”

  Setting his new omelette on a plate, he joined me at the kitchen table with a serious frown. “I’ve thought about it a lot since Christmas, and I can’t see any benefit in it.”

  “What! But you’d be closer to me. I could look after you if something happens again – that’s the benefit.”

  Before I’d even finished speaking, he was shaking his head and holding up his hand for me to stop. “I wouldn’t see you any more than I do normally, love.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Yes, it is. When you work, you work long hours and have one day off every six, if at all. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” I answered, my tone sullen.

  “And when you’re not working, you’ll be travelling the world.” He licked his lips, ploughing on. “I wouldn’t see you any more than I did before. Here, I have memories, I’m surrounded by the things I love, and I have good friends who can and have come to my aid. If I sold this place and moved, I’d be alone and I’d be miserable.”

  He stared back at me with earnest, calm eyes, determined to make me understand. My eyes dropped to my tea, unable to hold his gaze. His decision made me sad, but I could shake that off. I wanted him to be happy, even if I’d worry about him here alone. And he was right. I did and would work long hours for most of the year. I barely saw Emily when filming was in full swing and we lived together.

  The sound of the front door banging open startled us both. And then Emily’s joyful shriek reached us. “I’m home!”

  My father smiled and released my hand. “And that’s my cue to leave. I’ll be at the pub.” He kissed me on the cheek and marched into the hall to greet Emily.

  They whispered furiously. I strained to hear them but couldn’t pick up a word. Silence briefly fell, only to be interrupted by the front door opening and closing again. I frowned. What’s going on?

  “Alys?” Emily shouted.

  “In here.”

  Emily shoved the kitchen door open so hard it bounced against the wall. With a crazed grin, she ran at me, screaming.

  I braced myself for impact, but it helped neither of us. The chair went over and I found myself on the floor with Emily crushing me, her arms wrapped around my waist.

  “I’ve missed you.” She laughed, showering my face with kisses. What the hell had they done to my best friend? I squirmed, trying to free myself from her.

  “Enough! What’s got into you?”

  “Can’t a girl show her bestie how much she’s missed her?”

  “Not if it means another concussion and you kissing me!”

  She snorted and scrambled off me. “Fair enough. You look much better than I was expecting,” she admitted, studying my face for the slightest hint of emotional instability, I assumed. “I’m relieved to find you out of bed. I was all prepared to kick your butt. Now what am I going to do with all this energy?” She pouted.

  “Persuade my father to give up dairy?” I suggested, standing and taking a cautious step back in case she changed her mind. She’d taken kickboxing in uni; I wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Nah, we’ve got catching up to do. We’re going out tonight and we’re getting smashed. St Osian won’t know what’s hit it.” She hooted.

  My smile was strained. There was only one bar in St Osian. How much damage could she actually do?

  “Not that I’m not really happy to see you,” I told her, “but I thought there was another week to the tour.”

  “There was,” Emily said, pulling a
face.

  “What does that mean?”

  “They rearranged the dates. Turns out Ryan’s not so good at compartmentalising.”

  Guilt slithered through me. What had I done?

  Her face morphed. An uneasy mixture of guilt and determination shone back at me. “Before we go anywhere, there’s someone here to see you.”

  The kitchen door opened again and my stomach dropped.

  My eyes clashed with a familiar pair of deep blue ones. My body reacted like nothing had happened. Electricity buzzed through my veins. I had an overwhelming urge to throw my arms around his waist and breathe him in.

  Dad’s voice rang in my ears. Something about him must have cracked those impenetrable walls. Try and remember what that was. You might find life without it more unbearable than life safe from risk.

  I swallowed hard, willing away any lingering nervous energy.

  He looked tired. Dark bruises shadowed his eyes, and it looked like he’d run his hands through his hair one too many times.

  “I’ll be upstairs if you need me,” Emily said, a smirk pulling at her lips as she took us in. She turned to leave, pausing to give Ryan a sharp look. “If she’s not ready, if chasing Alys fails this time, remember, you asked for this.”

  I frowned. Was that encouragement or a threat?

  Emily left, and the beginnings of a smile worked over Ryan’s lips. Despite the sadness bleeding from him, he looked hopeful.

  God, I’d missed him.

  He shifted his weight. “Is this okay? I would have called first but…” His lips flatlined.

  “But you didn’t think I’d answer the phone.”

  He tensed, searching my face before nodding.

  He still hadn’t approached me, and I hated it. My Ryan couldn’t keep his hands to himself. In the beginning, it annoyed me. Now, I craved it.

  I’d done that: made him doubt himself, made him hesitate. If I’d waited, let him explain, taken a second to think, the last few weeks would have been so different. The sad thing was I knew there was nothing he could have done to change any of it. I needed time alone, needed to figure out how to live with the excessive crazy that came with his career.