Lottie Loves

by Samie Sands

  I despised seeing her dressed like that because it was Malcolm’s version of her. The mum that I knew, the mum I actually felt close to, was more comfortable in her bohemian style of clothing. I always considered her a hippy, and I loved that version of Mum. She worked hard to give us a life, but as soon as we became settled, her attitude towards life became much more laid back—and I loved that. It gave me the freedom I needed to grow up, but I always knew she would be there if I needed her.

  Now, I wasn’t so sure.

  “Hi Mum.” I grinned at her, wondering what she would say if I told her about my current problems. How would she feel if said I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get married, and the reason behind that was Joe? Would she listen and actually be understanding, or would she brush over it as if it were nothing?

  The knowledge that it certainly wouldn’t be the first option was enough for me to keep it all inside.

  I felt bad that all the time she would have listened to me, I blew her off, because now that I needed her, she wouldn’t give me anything.

  “I got you a latte,” she replied, through thin, pursed lips. I nodded, not liking to tell her that I didn’t actually really like coffee. I drank it, because it made me look more like an adult, but if I were given the choice I would choose a milkshake or hot chocolate. I took a tentative sip, whilst looking at her through my eyelashes, wondering where this meeting would take us. “So…how are you?”

  “Fine,” I answered blandly, overriding all of my currently life chaos. “How about you?”

  She droned on about the estate agent business that she ran with Malcolm before dipping into what sounded like an incredibly dull trip to the Cotswolds. I nodded and made agreeable noises where needed, but mostly I tuned her out and I allowed my mind to wander, until she shot a question to me that had me stunned.

  “So, how are things with…Danny?” It was almost painful for her to say his name, I could see it in her eyes, which proved how few times she’d actually asked about him. I wasn’t sure why she never talked about him, she had never actively protested against us being together, so I just allowed her to continue on in her weird ways, burying her head in the sand against real life.

  Maybe she didn’t like him because he was a rock star, maybe it was because she didn’t know him very well, or maybe it was because he wasn’t Joe. Whatever it was, it was bizarre to hear her speak his name. In the three years that we’d been together, they had kind of met a handful of times, but it had become so awkward that I made the active choice to keep them apart. Luckily, Danny was so busy that he didn’t actually notice, making it much easier for me to separate my life into categories.

  “Erm…yeah, he’s fine,” I told her with a curious look on my face. “He’s on tour at the moment…”

  Ring, ring.

  Before I could get too into detail about my boyfriend, her phone blasted out, and from the look on her face as she glanced at the screen, I could already tell it was Malcolm on the other end. That would quickly kybosh our catch up, as she would leave right away to see him. I slumped back into my seat, mentally preparing the rest of the day in the scary knowledge that I almost had something of an honest conversation with my mother…

  Chapter Six

  The walk back to my home was a long and arduous one. The entire time I couldn’t help but wonder what things would have been like if everything was different. What would I be like if I was still close to my mum? Would I be more open? More emotionally available? The last couple days had got me tied up in knots and my mind reeled with a meeting that wasn’t entirely dissimilar to every other time I was with my mother. The sort I normally didn’t think twice about.

  It was as if something had shifted deeply within me, and it wasn’t quite satisfied with anything anymore.

  Ring, ring.

  I yanked my phone angrily out of my pocket, not at all in the mood to talk to anyone, least of all the name that I saw plastered across the screen.

  Danny.

  I rolled my eyes, almost stuffing the phone back in my pocket, really not wanting to speak to him. My mum had put me in the worst mood, and for the first time ever I wasn’t excited to talk to the man I loved.

  Just as my hand slid into my jeans, my heart pounded uncomfortably against my chest, and I rapidly changed my mind. I couldn’t ignore Danny, not when he’d done nothing wrong. Just because I was all shook up and pissed off, it wasn’t his fault. Plus I had no idea when he would call again, so I shouldn’t miss this opportunity.

  “Hi…” I started, but Danny jumped in almost instantly, not letting me get a word in edgeways.

  “Lottie? Are you okay? It isn’t true, I promise you. I didn’t…it isn’t what it looks like…I…” He sounded panicked and stressed, which meant he wasn’t making any sense, causing everything within me to halt in shock. Danny was a pretty laid back person when it came to most things, so to hear him like that meant that something really bad had happened. I just couldn’t work out what it was…

  “Woah, slow down.” I tried to sound calm, but even I could hear the hollow twinge to my tone. “What the hell are you going on about?” I stood outside the front door to my home, unable to even think about hunting through my bag for the key when something so potentially life changing was about to happen.

  “You mean you haven’t seen it yet?” He gasped weakly, his words cracking painfully with emotion. I shook my head silently, waiting for him to continue. “I…I thought you hated me already. I thought you knew.” He panted a few times, and I noticed my breaths becoming as ragged as his, as if my body was trying to prepare me for what was to come next. “The newspapers…they’re saying some things. Some awful things…but they aren’t true, I promise you.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, everything swirling around inside of me until I almost felt sick with it all. My brain wasn’t quite processing any of Danny’s words, but my body had already come to its own, very unwelcome, conclusion. “What the fuck are you saying, Danny?”

  “At the industry party last night…there was this girl…”

  My heart sunk right down into my feet as I heard the words that every girl dreaded most. I had certainly never been in that position before, but I knew many other girls who had—particularly the girls dating Craig—and I’d always looked on with a distant sympathy, not even slightly knowing what they were going through. I always knew without any uncertainty that the papers were printing the truth, yet when I found myself on the wrong end of it, I had no idea what to think.

  “She…it wasn’t…it’s all lies, Lottie, I swear.”

  His words trailed off while he waited sadly for me to respond, and I really wanted to. A million and one things flew through my mind, but none of them felt right. None of them expressed exactly how I felt at that moment. How was I supposed to tell him he’d just whipped the foundation of my life out from under me, and that I now felt like I was freefalling into some crazy abyss?

  I couldn’t.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  So instead, I clicked my phone off, and I allowed it to drop to the ground with an intrusive clatter.

  A numbness quickly overcame me as I slumped to the cold, hard floor beneath me, as if my body had just given up. Had Danny really cheated? Had that actually happened? Maybe we had spent such a long time coasting along happily that it had finally come crumbling down around us.

  Or maybe Danny was innocent, and I was jumping onto something because I needed something negative about him to grasp on to. Just to justify my uncertainty about his proposal, and everything that had come after.

  The proposal…what the hell would happen about that now?

  When I thought back over our time together, remembering how caring, and sweet, and utterly romantic he was, it seemed impossible. The Danny Boreom that was just for me, the one only I knew could never be capable of doing that to me. He just didn’t have that sort of quality within him, I was confident of that. But what if there was a side of him I didn’t really know? I never went o
ut on the road with the band, so there was no way I could be sure. In front of his friends, he could be a totally different version of himself that I would know nothing about.

  Maybe he did this sort of thing all the time, and this was the only time he’d been caught.

  Maybe it was a moment of madness, one that he instantly regretted.

  Or maybe he was telling the truth, and he really hadn’t done anything wrong.

  Why did I feel like I was leaning more towards the first option? Why was I suddenly so distrusting of him? I felt like deep down I knew the answer to that question, but I wasn’t quite ready to accept it yet.

  “Shit,” I muttered, as a stray tear rolled down my cheek. I was empty, lost, and extremely icy. I almost felt completely disconnected from the situation, as if my emotions had completely shut down to give me some time to think it through…but my brain wasn’t taking full advantage of that. It was more of a mess than it had ever been before.

  As I rubbed the wetness from my eyes, I realised I was acting a little like a crazy person, sitting in my driveway with tears falling down my face, and I didn’t want to do that anymore. I didn’t want to sit there, meekly letting things happen to me, I wanted to find out what the fuck was going on. I needed to do something, to take back at least some of the control.

  I jumped up, a fiery determination now consuming me, and I stomped down to the nearest news agents, wanting to see this newspaper article for myself. I didn’t even consider the humiliation factor of being faced with people who knew more about my relationship troubles than I did, I simply focused on my one end goal. If I didn’t see this for myself, I would never be able to make a rational judgment, and I didn’t think I could ever be able to simply trust Danny’s words—as much as I knew I probably should.

  I slammed the shop door open, looked around wildly, and I grabbed a handful of different newspapers to pay for. I couldn’t look at them there, with random eyes staring at me, thinking the worst about me. I needed to wait until I was home before I could fully embrace it.

  “Fourteen sixty,” the guy behind the desk told me, with a morose grumpiness to his tone.

  I handed the money over, keeping my eyes fixed on my feet. Now that I was here, and the fire had dimmed, a cold shame was creeping its way in instead. This was awful, the worst position I’d ever been in, and I hated it had come to this. Even if Danny was innocent, why had he forced me to suffer through this…and where could we go from here?

  Okay…so the first thing I noticed when I was finally back in the comfort of my own home, confronting my biggest fear, was that there were good points and bad points to this. Both of which needed to be considered with equal seriousness.

  Good points: the serious newspapers didn’t even mention the story, which meant that while this was the end of the world to me, it wasn’t quite so dramatic as far as the rest of the country was concerned. Also, the papers that did contain the story, didn’t show it on the front page. Danny might have been a famous rock star, but even he didn’t beat out the likes of political scandals and the well-publicized affair of that sportsman no one is supposed to know the name of—but everyone does. The earliest he’s mentioned is page four, but most of them saved it until much nearer the end with the fluffier news. So, it might have been there, for the rest of the world to see, but it wasn’t the easiest information to find, which I had chosen to take as good news.

  The bad news, where did I begin with that one? Well, there was the title:

  Danny Boreom from Jax is caught kissing mystery blonde.

  Then, there were the enlarged quotes from the text that told me under no uncertain terms that they ‘grew closer as the evening progressed’ and that ‘they didn’t seem to care who was watching them.’ But the worst part of it all had to be the photographs. I stared at them for a few moments, feeling myself die inside.

  There certainly was a mystery blonde, perched on the end of Danny’s knee, her lips dangerously close to his neck. An intense dizzying heat crept over me as I looked at the expression on his face. One of sheer laughter and joy. I honestly might have felt less if they were actually kissing—this was too personal, too close, too intense for words. It actually made my heart ache with a longing. In that moment I missed him more than I ever had done before. I wanted him to be looking at me like that, enjoying something I had said. It wasn’t exactly like we had gone for years without that connection, which may have explained why he went looking for it somewhere else, but somehow that made it hurt even more.

  Why wasn’t I enough?

  All my self-doubt, all my self-consciousness flooded to the surface as I did the inevitable and I compared myself to that woman. She was tall, long-legged, sophisticated, and glamorous—the sort of woman who should be dating a rock star. I was short, red-haired, normal, ordinary, boring…

  Of course my name wasn’t even mentioned in the story, not even to pass comment on the fact that Danny was cheating on me. I shouldn’t have been surprised considering I did all that I could to keep out of the public eye, but it did sting painfully inside. I felt my organs squish together under the knowledge that I wasn’t even worth mentioning.

  I almost put the newspaper down, unable to even look at it for another second longer.

  That was until my eyes fell on the photograph a little lower down on the page, which showed the same girl wearing an oversized hoodie, which covered the same outfit depicted in the image above. The caption ‘she was caught leaving his room at 4 a.m.’ made me want to scream aloud with a horrifying frustration, but I was far too in shock to actually act on that sensation. Was the hoodie Danny’s? I couldn’t quite tell however hard I studied it, the image was far too blurry for that, but the fact that I didn’t know for sure was enough to have me dying inside.

  I’d been betrayed, of that I was sure. I just didn’t know exactly how.

  I stared at my phone for a few moments, drinking in the now-cracked screen. I didn’t know whether the smart move would be to call up Danny, to ask him to explain it all to me again now that he had likely calmed down enough to speak coherently, and I knew more of the truth to the story. But then I imagined myself actually having to speak to him, and I gagged a little on the vomit that threatened to spill from my mouth if I did so.

  I couldn’t, no way. I wasn’t ready yet, and I honestly didn’t know if I ever would be.

  Chapter Seven

  Because my brain didn’t know how to deal with what was going on with Danny, it completely shut that out, as if it had locked it away into a thick steel box to deal with at a later date. Instead, I started to think about another time I’d experienced a deep emotional pain like this one, almost as if I was searching for the answers I so desperately needed in my past.

  The camping trip.

  Urgh, that damn camping trip. I couldn’t help but feel that if that hadn’t happened, things could have been different between me and Joe—maybe we could even still be friends. Maybe none of the romance would have happened at all, and maybe that would have been better for us in the end. Of course I wouldn’t have felt that way at the time, but with hindsight, I could see that the way things had turned out wasn’t great anyway, so maybe it would have been better if I could have saved myself that heartache.

  I was excited for the camping trip a long time before it happened. The entire class was. All of a sudden, because of our age and the crazy teenage hormones surrounding us, the air became filled with an intense sexual electricity. No one was interested in learning anymore, and the gossip changed completely from what was going on, to what could happen, and the potential was exhilarating.

  Who was going to kiss who?

  Who would be sharing a tent? How did that make room for any potential fooling around what may or may not happen?

  What would happen with those relationships when we got back?

  Of course there was no way I could share a tent with Joe, much as I wanted to, which meant I ended up with one of the very quiet, studious girls who also didn’t really have
any friends—Emily. I liked her well enough, but she didn’t seem to care too much for me. Maybe I wasn’t intelligent enough for her, or maybe she was too socially inept to find a way to connect with me. Either way, we didn’t really speak, we only hung out awkwardly when we really had to.

  But at the time, I didn’t care. All I wanted was to be with my friend anyway, the one I was terrified would slip away from me. The one I felt I might be losing to everyone else…

  On the first day of the trip, I spent as much of my time beside Joe as I could. He ditched me once or twice to hang out with the guys, but apart from that, we were in one another’s pockets. We completed some ridiculous, mandatory tasks, such as white water rafting and building a camp fire, just to satisfy the teacher, but none of that was important to me. It was all background noise compared to what was going on internally.

  All I could really focus on was the fact that something had irrevocably shifted inside of me, and I had no idea what to do about that.

  Suddenly, Joe’s presence filled me with butterflies, his smell made me feel a weird squishiness inside, and as he spoke, all I could focus on was his lips. I had no idea what had sparked it—maybe it was puberty well and truly hitting me—but I no longer thought of him as only my buddy. I wanted to kiss him, to hug him, to claim him as my own in a fiercely intense, all-consuming way.

  Although imagining that was fine, actually considering doing it was something else entirely—something absolutely petrifying. In all honesty, I was a messy ball of confusion. It amazed me that I managed to get anything done at all.

  The face that I had become so accustomed to was somehow different. It suddenly meant a whole lot more to me, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I wasn’t sure if I was acting strange or different in any way, but Joe didn’t treat me any differently, which somehow made it even more challenging to come to terms with. Why did I have to be the only one experiencing this change? How the hell did he manage to remain completely unaffected? It didn’t feel fair.