“I did. It’s nothin’.”
I move out of her reach to pick up the books. They are all along the same lines, but then I have to smile. “English for Idiots.” I look at the books again. “I thought you were doin’ a course on fables?”
“Me too,” she sighs, and reaches for the books. “Turned out I was wrong. Turned out I’m doing one on literature, and British English is very different from American English. I need to learn how to spell all over again, just so I can finish a bloody assignment before next week.”
She disappears into her room and I follow, for the first time in a while.
“What do you mean, you have to learn to spell all over?”
“Some of your words are different to ours. So I’m back to learning another language,” she explains.
“Like what?” This is new to me.
She opens the book on top and scans the page. “Color. We spell it with a ‘u’. C-o-l-o-u-r,” she spells it out for me. She flops down on the bed, looking miserable. “Some words you spell with a ‘z’ where we use a ‘s’. I’ve been trying to study the bloody dictionary for the past two weeks. I need to get this thing in next week, or the professor is going to fail me because I came in late, and that’s just not helping, and I can’t get my laptop changed to US spelling, it keeps switching back. My friend tried to talk me through it, but that was disastrous.” Her shoulders slump, and if it’s at all possible, I feel even more like an ass.
Here I’ve been thinking she’s trying to avoid me, and she’s just been stressed out of her mind with her studies.
“Didn’t I tell you to come to me if you need anythin’,” I say, feeling highly irritated with myself. I walk into her room and sit down next to her. “Where’s your laptop?”
“Why?” She glances at me nervously. I wish we could go back to how we were. I want her to trust me again and not have to phone some friend if she needs help. Friend, the word sinks in – what kind of friend are we talking here? I need to get my act together so she doesn’t have to run to some friend.
“Let me look at it so I can change your settings to US,” I explain patiently.
“Oh.” She reaches down to retrieve it from her bag and her shirt inches up, exposing her waist. I take a breath when she comes back up. I’m here to win back her trust, not destroy it even more by grabbing her again. “Just give me one second.” She sounds flustered.
She couldn’t have seen me staring. I glance over her shoulder in time to see the words monthly expenses at the top of the page. It’s a neat table showing her expenses for the next six months. The page disappears and she quickly clicks on another.
While we wait for the document to come up, I read the words on her background screen, and something twists deep inside of me.
Don’t depend too much on anyone in this world because even your own shadow leaves you when you are in darkness - Ibn Taymiyyah.
“Do you really believe that?”
“What?” She doesn’t look at me, because the words are replaced with a blank document, taking up her concentration for the moment.
She hands me her laptop. I change the settings for her, and then bring her background screen back.
“This. These words, do you really believe them?” I ask again.
She reads them over and nods.
“I do. Trust just sets you up for disappointment.” She says it as if we’re talking about the damn weather. “Thank you for helping with the setting. You saved me hours of studying. Now I can get going on the paper.” She smiles, but it hovers around her lips, never reaching her eyes.
“My pleasure. I’m going to run out in a minute. Can I bring you something to eat?” I try again.
“I’m good, thank you for asking,” she declines again.
“What have you been eatin’?” I ask as I get up.
She doesn’t answer me and she doesn’t look up. Not immediately. And I don’t know why, maybe it’s the gut-instinct I was born with, but I go for the bathroom and she jumps up.
“No, Aiden!” Her voice is drenched with panic as I open the cabinet. There’s only three bottles.
“If you tell me you’ve been flushing them I’ll believe you,” I say. But her mother isn’t here and there’s really no need for her to flush them. “Tell me, Emma.”
“I haven’t,” she says.
I take them out and open the bottles. I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand around and let her waste away because of some lunatic on the other side of the damn planet. Anger rolls over me in waves as I empty the first one into the toilet.
Emma grabs at my arm. “No!” She tries to get past me, but being twice her size makes it easy to just step in front of her. She slams into my back as the other two go into the toilet and I flush. “No,” she whispers. I hear her breath catch in her throat as she pushes away from me.
When I get back into the room she’s pacing up and down like a caged animal.
“Why are you takin’ them again?”
I have to remind myself to stay calm. It doesn’t help to get all heated up when one of us is already emotional.
“Because,” she mumbles. She keeps pacing and I stalk to her. Taking hold of her shoulders, I make her stop.
“Why are you takin’ them?” I ask again, my patience is slipping. Normally I’m a very patient man, but with matters concerning Emma it’s very hard.
“Because,” she whimpers. She doesn’t make eye contact, instead she ducks her head low, staring at her feet. “They help. They help me sleep, I don’t dream then! I don’t have to eat. I don’t have to think. They just help.” She looks utterly hopeless and tired. She steps back from under my hands. “I’d like to start on my paper now.”
I nod, and leave, because I don’t have words at the moment. I’m too edgy. I need to calm down first.
I need to go see Zac.
~*~
Relief floods me when Zac opens the door and I look into his blue eyes. Laurie always said they made her think of heaven. Well I need some advice, so he better call on some divine intervention for this one.
“You look like crap,” Zac says, as he opens the door wider for me to go in.
“Thanks,” I growl. “I missed you too.” I step inside and sink down on his couch.
“You gonna tell me why you look like crap?” he asks, as he takes a seat on the couch opposite me.
“She’s turned my damn world upside down. I don’t know my front from my back,” I admit.
I tell him everything, from start to finish, and then I want to slap him upside the head, because he’s staring at me with a huge grin.
“Oh, you’ve got her bad,” is all he says. My brother, who is always packed full of wisdom, now has nothing but a crappy comment for me.
Feeling irritated, I get up and stalk to the window.
“Seriously, Zac. I need some advice right about now,” I say. I don’t like feeling like this. I like to be in control and with Emma I don’t have control.
“Go back to the apartment and have make-up sex,” he says.
I swing around. “Y’all gone and lost ya bloody mind.” And then I laugh, because I’m starting to sound like her.
“Bloody? Aiden … bloody?” he laughs.
“I know, I know.” I look at Zac and shake my head. “This conversation helped nothin’.” It was the weirdest one we ever had.
“Cause you should be talking to her, not me,” he says, grinning wider because he is finally giving me advice. “Just go tell her how you feel. You win some, you lose some.”
He’s right. He’s always right.
~*~
Chapter Eleven
Emma~
Fear brings your mind to the edge of insanity, where everything is so frighteningly crystal clear you can take in every little thing that’s happening around you. Your body runs purely on adrenaline, with not a drop of blood pumping through your veins.
But eventually your body runs out of adrenaline, and then it starts to feed off your emotions, and the onl
y one strong enough to keep you going is hate. Hate is powerful.
Sigmund Freud defined hate as an ego state that wishes to destroy the source of its unhappiness.
I stare at my laptop and the piece I’ve started to write on my paper. We have to write on the subject of life. Either what adds to it or takes from it. I’m not sure what adds to it, so I’m writing about hate. I know all about hating someone.
The last two weeks have been so hard. I can’t look at myself. It feels like I’m being sucked into a black hole – one that is called my mother. I’m scared of what’s waiting for me back home. But, most of all I’m scared that she is right. I’m good for nothing, just cheap and stupid. I’ve even been avoiding Chloe, and that makes me feel more miserable.
I bring up my email screen. I have to talk to her, it’s not right hiding from her as well.
Chloe,
I’m sorry for my disappearing act. I’m a horrible mate to have. It’s just hard at the moment. I know you want details, but what woman begs a man four times to shag her? And he confirmed it again when I asked him why he agreed, it was only because of his sense of duty. Lord knows, he doesn’t find me attractive.
I don’t feel like Sunshine any more, I feel like Darth Vader.
Her reponse comes through not even a minute later.
SUNSHINE!!!
Hold on … reverse for me, he agreed? What does that mean, did you finally do it? And what sense of duty are you on about?
PS. Don’t you dare ignore me again!
And regardless of how miserable I feel, I smile and reply.
He did, we did. We did IT. You know … it.
I told him I wouldn’t, but I need to tell at least you. Aiden’s a bloody copper and not a student! He’s working some undercover case here. You know my luck, I choose a bloody copper, and then he said the first time he agreed because he didn’t want to see my face on some daft missing screen. Like my mother said: I have a face only a mother can find beautiful. He certainly didn’t do it because he found me attractive in any way.
Everything is just falling to pieces. My mother froze the credit card.
I drop the other bomb on Chloe while I’m at it. She doesn’t reply, my phone rings instead.
“She didn’t!” she squeals in my ear.
“She did.”
“She can’t,” she says, “you’re over twenty-one.”
“She can, she gave it to me when I turned eighteen. It was just another way for her to have control over me. I’d do whatever job she ordered me to do, and she’d pay a monthly allowance in there for me to buy my necessities with.”
“What? I hate that woman. Ugh!”
I can hear my mother now, one of her favorite lines. “It’s so you’ll learn how money works, Emma. I won’t be there forever to pick up after you when you bodge up.”
“So yeah, she went ahead and cut me off. I only have the savings account my gran set up for me in Africa, and when the US exchange rate is done with it, there’s not much left,” I say.
Yeah, my finances are a disaster just like me. For once I really do have to watch what I eat, or I won’t last six months. Winter is coming and I didn’t pack everything, because I thought I’d be going home for Christmas, which I’m not, so it’s going to be a very cold winter wearing t-shirts and a jacket.
“I’ll figure something out,” she says.
“No, you won’t! You’ve done more than enough. I’ll come home if I have no other choice.”
I can’t allow Chloe to do a single thing more, she’s done so much already. I refuse to be a burden to someone. I still have my pride, well, at least some of it.
“You can’t do that, Sunshine. You’ve not even been gone three weeks. Don’t let her win so easily.” She doesn’t have to tell me this, it’s been on my mind quite a bit.
“And now Aiden really hates me because he thinks I’m a drug addict, which I’m not. Oh, wait, I didn’t tell you.” I’m starting to talk in circles, “He caught me with the bloody tablets, and I’m only taking them because they keep the nightmares away.” I cringe, because I know admitting the next part is going to upset Chloe, ‘and so it will help with my appetite, but they’re all gone. Now I’ll have to deal with the withdrawal symptoms all over again. I should just come home.”
“Have you finished?” she asks, and I can hear she’s unhappy.
“Yeah,” I say carefully.
“Are you mental? Why did you take them again? You’re letting her control you from across the bloody ocean,” she starts to snap at me. “You’d better be eating or so help me, I’ll come and feed you myself!”
“Don’t you get upset, as well,” I say, curling up on the bed. I’m upsetting everyone.
“I’m upset with your mother, Sunshine, not you. Please eat properly. Deal with the dreams. Phone me when you have them, I’m awake. But, as for your dishy flatmate, was it at least worth it?” she changes the subject, and for a second I stare, stunned, at the cream bedspread.
I burst out laughing, not because it’s funny, but because, throughout our whole conversation, Chloe still manages to remember that.
“He’s perfect, Chloe. He comes from a perfect life. Everything about him is just the opposite of my life.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. You have a lot to offer-”
“Like what? A family who are completely nutters? I have no idea where my life is going. I’m twenty-two and I have nothing. You at least have something,” I argue.
“Appearances can be deceiving,” she says, and I hear the twinge of sadness.
“What’s wrong? I’m really an awful mate. I haven’t even asked about you. How are things at home?”
“What home,” she snorts. “You have enough to deal with, I’m not going to bog you down with my nonsense, too.”
“Chloe, come on, talk to me,” I say softly, and it’s like I’ve opened a tap.
I hear her breath shuddering on the other side, and my heart clenches. Chloe is my rock. How am I going to be one for her?
“You know I told you I have the best parents, right?” Her voice sounds small.
“Yeah?”
“I love them both so much, but they’re destroying each other, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. My dad shacked up with two other women, Sunshine – TWO!” I hear the heartache, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t keep back the tears. Chloe is hurting, and that means I hurt. “My mum’s just given up.”
“Aww, love, maybe they’ll sort it out still.” I should’ve kept quiet, because Chloe starts to cry, making me cry even more – so now we are both crying, but at least she can’t hear me.
“It’s been going on forever, Sunshine. And when I say my mum’s given up, I mean she’s sick. She’s doesn’t want to live any more. It looks like she’s bloody dying of heartache and my dad’s too daft to see it. The doctors can’t find anything wrong.”
I sit stunned, for a second or so. “And you let me bugger off to America?” I shriek. “You need me and you let me fly halfway around the world? Why didn’t you tell me this sooner? I could’ve at least tried to help you in some way.”
Things are not getting any better. I have to be there for Chloe, she needs me to be the strong one now.
“You can’t change anything, and getting you away from your mother made me feel better.”
“You know you’re the best, right?” I don’t know what else to say.
“No, you are the best,” she says back. “Sunshine, you know you mean a lot to me, right?”
I smile. Besides Gran, Chloe is the closest I’ll ever have to a family. “And you mean a lot to me, around the world and back.”
I hold the phone to my chest long after we’ve said goodbye. I’m tired. When will life stop shit-storming on me and give me a break?
~*~
I must have dozed off, because I wake up with a start. It’s dark in the room, except for the light shining from my laptop’s screen. It’s already getting colder in the evenings, and I shiver. I rub
my arms to get some warmth into them, as the fuzziness of sleep lifts.
“Where’s your jacket?” Aiden says, and the bed shifts as he gets up.
I dart up from my curled-up position, and watch him walk over to the cupboard.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, confused, and then go after him to get to the cupboard first.
I squeeze past him and take out my jacket, slipping it on. I should actually just shower and get back into bed. Work on my paper some more until I pass out.
I grab my pj’s and start toward the bathroom.
“Emma, I’m-”
Shaking my head, I turn back to him.
“No,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady, as all the emotions threaten to swamp me. “If I’m not allowed to say it, then you’re not. What counts for me counts for you, as well. What’s done is done. I threw myself at you and you are a decent enough bloke to not hurt my feelings and reject me four times in a row. I learned my lesson.”
I walk into the bathroom and throw my clothes on the floor. I shimmy out of the jacket and turn to close the door, but Aiden is standing in the way, looking as upset as I feel.
“Don’t start with your ‘we are adults’ thing, Aiden. I understand everything, loud and clear. Can I shower?”
“Go ahead, but I’m gonna to talk,” he says, as he comes in and lifts himself to sit on the counter.
“Alright,” I say, hoping desperately that I’m coming across more confident than I feel. He meets my stare. It’s obvious he’s being serious about having this talk while I shower. “Fine,” I snap, but he still doesn’t move. I turn the water on and strip my shirt and jeans off. “This is un-bloody-believable,” I mutter. This night is not getting any better.
“Emma,” he starts his talk. “When we met in the bar and-”
I take off my underwear. It’s not like he hasn’t seen me naked. When he doesn’t say anything else, I glance at him over my shoulder. His eyes are glued to my body. Some of my bravery flees the bathroom, and heat creeps up my neck.
I lift my chin in a last attempt to salvage the little pride I have left – naked, in front of him. It’s not working. How do I manage to get myself into these situations? He must be thinking I’m trying to throw myself at him again.
Wake Me Up (Love Knows No Boundaries) Page 12