by Samie Sands
“It’ll be fine, stop panicking, will you?” As Joe’s lips crashed against mine, I did my best to follow his request. After all, this was supposed to be the happiest day of my life, not something to freak out about. “We’re happy, we’re in love, we’re going to get married. That’s all we need to be concerned about.”
“Yeah, okay.” I nodded, doing my best to agree with him. “You’re right, I know you are…this is just so huge! I can’t believe you planned this!” The fact that Joe had done this for me made my brain totally gloss over any less-than-perfect times we’d had, any moments I’d doubted what we had. How could any of it be bad when he’d gone out of his way to make me his fiancée? He had to be in it as deeply as me, his feelings had to be as strong as mine. Finally, after all that time, I could start to relax and feel more confident in us.
In that moment, Joe made me feel safe, he made me feel special. I liked being a part of our club—the Lotts-and-Joe club, which had become much better now that we were older—and I relished the fact it was going to last forever.
Of course, circumstances changed, we didn’t end up getting our happy ever after and I couldn’t help but wonder how much our age had to do with that. Maybe we put too much pressure on ourselves by making such a huge commitment at such a young age. Maybe it made a lovely relationship something to be so concerned about, maybe if we hadn’t, we could have dealt with what came next much better…
Chapter Twenty-One
Luckily, after a few drinks, the conversation was flowing much easier. We were slowly shaking off the awkwardness and becoming more ourselves. The knot in my chest had loosened, my mind was unwinding, even my body language looked more relaxed.
This was good, this was fun, this was what I wanted our reunion to be like.
“Oh my God.” He giggled, acting just like the school kid I remembered well. I couldn’t keep the beaming smile off my face as I stared at him. “Do you remember that night I tried to sneak into your bedroom window, just like the guy in that film…oh I can’t remember its name…”
“Oh and you fell. We thought you’d broken your arm!” I was howling with joy at the happy memory, a time when things were really good between us. Just before the proposal we were both on cloud nine, high on love, feeling like our relationship was invincible. I missed that. I felt secure then, for a while, like nothing could wreck what we had.
Had I ever felt that safe since? I wasn’t totally sure.
“Yeah, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to tell my mum…”
Shit, the memory of when we actually told Joe’s mum came flooding back hard. Deep down we both assumed our families already knew and that the conversation would be more of a formality than anything else, but we were very wrong. We thought it would be a nice time, that they would all be happy for us, but we were in for a massive shock.
Joe’s mum went mental. She yelled at us for being careless and spending so much alone time together. She seemed to think I was already pregnant and about to marry her precious son, leading him into a life of drudgery. Her immediate defence nature made me feel sick to my stomach, did she not know me at all? I had my own ambitions, thank you very much. I didn’t want to end up with nothing. Her reaction terrified the living hell out of us, and made us both reconsider everything, but then his dad and my mum were totally okay with it—happy even—which put everything right back on track. They reacted in the calm, pleasant way we’d been expecting. It did make us both wonder why Joe’s mum hated the idea so much, but with at least some support behind us we kept on going, assuming we were invincible.
Looking back, it seemed silly to put so much stock in the opinions of our parents—I certainly didn’t care what my mum thought of my boyfriend or life now—but we were so young, and we assumed back then that they knew better. Of course we were wrong to put so much faith into them, but that revelation didn’t come until later on.
“Another?” I asked, sticking to our unspoken plan. Every time we teetered into an area of conversation that had the potential to become explosive, we bought another drink. It had made us stick to our original idea of getting stinking drunk—I was far more wasted than I planned to be—but it felt okay. It was helping us get through.
“Yeah, yeah, another.” There was something behind his eyes, a look that suggested he wasn’t going to be able to keep this wall up forever. It was crumbling down around him, which meant all kinds of terrible things could potentially come out. If I’d been sober I would have been freaking the hell out right about now, but any rationality had been numbed by the booze, so I was ignoring it instead. We could do it, we didn’t have to deal with anything right now. The time for talking over the horrible parts of our lives could come much later. We would be in each other’s lives forever now…
I got us a couple of drinks and headed back over to the table with a new conversation topic in mind. I wanted to know what direction his love life had taken, and I was finally in a state where I could just ask him outright. I wasn’t sure how well I’d be able to handle the answers, but we would soon find out. It was better than the alternative chat, anyway.
“So, Joe Davies,” I said with a grin as I chose to slide into the chair next to him this time. “You’ll have to tell me about all the wonderful women that have been in your life.” Urgh, I sounded like an idiot, but my brain was no longer in control of my mouth.
“What? Really?” He furrowed his eyebrows in shock at me, which to be honest, was a reaction I was expecting. It was odd to be discussing this with him, but if we didn’t do it now, then we never would. This really was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Even if we did stay friends, or whatever, it would eventually become one of those unspoken topics that we never touched upon, just because it was so awkward.
“Yes.” I nudged him playfully. “Come on, tell me everything. I’m sure you’ve had an exotic, wonderful time.”
Uh oh, the smile had become fake. My heart was aching painfully in my chest, this was a mistake, but unfortunately that revelation had come far too late. The words were out there now. I had to hear it whether I wanted to or not.
“Well, not really,” he admitted in a truthful tone of voice. “I was with one girl called Claudia for six months, but things…didn’t work out.” Well, that sounded like a heartbreak story if ever I’d heard one, but I didn’t press him for more information. If he didn’t want to tell me, then I probably didn’t want to know. “Then a few short-term flings. Most recently was Anika, but that fizzled out when she went back home to Sweden. I never did see myself as the long-distance relationship type.”
In my mind, those two women were the most beautiful creatures known to man. Claudia had long, dark hair, with sexy tattoos running up and down her back. Her painted red lips, and rounded cleavage made her a male wet dream. Then Anika turned into a skinny, blonde, model-looking woman. The sort with a hardened face, making her impossible to even consider approaching.
Compared to these two fantasy women, I looked like a bag of crap. I felt even worse about my outfit than I had done when I left the house. How could I compete with such beauties?
Not that I wanted to compete, of course…
“And what about you? Or has it always been Danny?” he asked, turning the spotlight back onto me. I gulped the massive ball of emotion that lodged itself firmly in my throat, just to allow me to speak.
“Erm, yeah…it’s always been Danny.” Danny with his big heart and his caring nature, Danny that had possibly betrayed me in the worst way possible. Frustrated tears pricked my eyes as it all became a bit too much for me. “From not long after…everything.”
Sensing that I was more ready to talk about things now, he delved into more questioning. “And…he treats you well? You’ve not thought about, I don’t know, leaving him over all of this?”
That took me back completely. Sure, my thoughts hadn’t been positive over this whole mess, but I hadn’t thought about breaking up with Danny, not before I’d spoken to him. We were in limbo at the moment, but I
wasn’t quite ready to make a dive either way without more information. “Oh, I…I don’t know,” I stammered, feeling my whole body heat up with shame. “I want to wait until he comes home to discuss it all with him before I make any choices…”
“What? Where is he?” Joe sounded so incredulous that it actually made me shiver. I wanted to take the words back and stuff them into my mouth. “Why isn’t he home, fighting for you?”
“I don’t know, okay?” I snapped back. “I don’t know anything, and I really don’t think—”
“Okay, okay.” He held his hand up in defeated gesture. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I just can’t stand you getting hurt.”
Just as I was about to retort that was an ironic statement coming from him, he wrapped his arms around me and made me feel far too safe. I rested against him, allowing the anger to ebb away and the bad feeling to subside. He’d always had that effect on me, and it seemed that time hadn’t altered that one bit.
“I’m sorry, Lotts, I just care about you, that’s all.”
“Drink?” I muffled into his chest, causing him to giggle. “I definitely think it’s time for another drink, don’t you?”
As he made his way to the bar, I raced into the bathroom, needing a time out. For a few seconds, tears rolled down my cheeks, until I brushed them angrily away. Then I stared at my slightly blurry reflection for a couple of seconds, noticing a madness there. I thought I’d spent the whole night acting like the teenage version of me, but now I could see I was totally unrecognisable. I didn’t look like me one bit. I’d become someone else entirely.
I was going to have to really pull it together, if I didn’t want to do anything stupid.
Just be normal, I tried to tell myself. Stop freaking out, stop thinking about the past. Stop thinking about the present. Maybe just stop thinking altogether…
I sucked in a few deep breaths of air, and tried to calm down my racing heart before forcing myself back into the bar and the minefield that was tonight. We were doing okay…at least I thought we were. It could have gone a lot worse, anyway.
“Lotts,” Joe mused thoughtfully, cocking his head to one side in a way that proved he was thinking deeply. I didn’t like this one bit. I felt scrutinized under his gaze. “What do you think would have happened?”
No, no, no. Were we really doing this? I wasn’t ready, he didn’t seem ready, why the hell were we going there?
I grabbed my glass and took a massive swig of the now foul-tasting drink to give me a moment to think. But there weren’t really any thoughts there, it seemed like my brain had taken the whole ‘no more thinking’ thing a little too seriously.
“Erm, I…” I stammered hoarsely. “I don’t…I don’t know…”
“Yeah, me neither.”
He fiddled with his glass for a moment, not making eye contact with me while thoughts washed over his brain. I felt frozen in the moment, completely stuck until he spoke again. I was even holding my breath.
“Lotts,” he eventually met my gaze. “I’m sorry.”
Sorry…a word I didn’t ever think I would hear from Joe, a word that was so loaded. I couldn’t hold it in anymore, the tears started flowing. I gripped onto the table so tightly that my knuckles went white. The room span around me as my breaths finally started to come out in a ragged way, far from normal. Despite the fact I was so obviously falling apart, Joe didn’t seem to notice my inner turmoil at all.
“I’m sorry for what happened, and I apologise for how I acted too. That was wrong.”
Wrong. That seemed like such an innocuous word to describe the past. I didn’t even know how to take it, especially now that we were going to have to talk about it. ‘Sorry’ wasn’t going to be enough, now we were going to have to relive the whole damn thing…
Chapter Twenty-Two
When the phone rang at 3:17 a.m., it didn’t take a genius to work out that something bad had happened, no sound at that hour could be a positive one. The shrill ring bulldozed through the house like a tornado, causing me to jump out of bed like a bolt of lightning, with a pure unadulterated terror in my heart. I heard Mum tearing down the stairs first, so safe in the knowledge that she was about to deal with whatever the immediate issue was, I took a second to calm down the ice cold fear that had encompassed every single part of me.
As I focused hard on my breathing, hoping that by calming that, I could also cool down my heart too, a million-and-one possible horrifying scenarios danced through my brain, however hard I tried to make them stop. Someone had to be ill, or missing, or in some sort of accident. The police would be involved, whatever the case, and I didn’t like the idea of that one bit.
I could hear the muffled tones of my mum speaking, but nothing was coming through clear enough for me to make it out. I was going to have to go down there to face my current biggest fear, because not being in the know had to be a whole lot worse. The tension, plus my crazy imagination, was potentially making everything into a much bigger drama than it needed to be.
I creaked my door open lightly, and tiptoed through the hallway as if I feared I was about to be caught. My heart was in my throat, my calming breathing having done absolutely nothing to slow it down. My mouth felt like I’d been chewing on cotton, and my fingers were actually stinging from fear.
I should have known the second I found happiness, something would come along to tear it all apart. I was never destined to be that lucky.
I peered over the bannister to see my mum clutching the telephone receiver so hard her knuckles had gone white. An air bubble got right in the way of me gasping down air, so while I did my best to overcome that, I listened intently.
“Oh my God, Alex, that’s…I don’t even know what to say.” My mind was so stuck it took me a lot longer than it should have done to realize that Alex was Joe’s father, and this dire situation had something to do with him. “We’ll come now…are you sure? Is there anything…? Well, please let me know.”
She slammed the phone down hard, and sobs racked through her body. I watched her cling onto the wall like she was utterly desperate for some support, which was where I needed to come into the equation. The only problem was my legs had turned to lead, and there was no moving them however hard I tried.
“Mum?” I rasped, far too quietly for her to hear me. “Mum, what’s going on?”
Alex meant Joe, Joe meant—I didn’t want to think about what that meant. I didn’t even want to consider the possibilities. I gripped tightly onto the engagement ring sitting on my left hand, hoping that through sheer wishing I could make him okay. Anyone but him…anything but Joe…
“Mum,” I called, sheer terror causing me to yell a lot louder this time. “Mum, please tell me what’s happening.”
She span around to look up at me, tears etched into her cheeks. Her red eyes, filled with sorrow, her despondent body language, all told me to expect the worst. I physically braced myself in preparation for what was about to come. She shrugged, flicked her eyes from side to side, and stuck a knife into my heart with her next words. “It’s Marie,” she gasped. “She…she’s in hospital. Suicide attempt, from what I can gather. Alex wasn’t exactly coherent, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
I was ashamed to admit it, but the knowledge that Joe hadn’t been affected released the claim terror had on me, and I finally made it down the stairs. I pulled Mum close into me, offering her some comfort with my embrace. “It’ll be okay,” I cooed. “That doesn’t sound as bad as Alex probably thinks it is, and at least now she’s going to get the help she needs.”
I considered Marie, really thinking about her for the first time in my life. I’d never noticed any sign of depression or suicidal tendencies—not that I had any idea what either of those things looked like—but then she’d never really featured on my radar, to be perfectly honest. I’d just never seen her. She was always there, in the background, but Joe was so magnetic he always drew me in, no matter what. I felt bad she’d been so low that she had wanted to do that to herself, but
it did sound like she was in the best place now. She clearly needed medical help.
“So, are we going to the hospital?” I pulled back to look in Mum’s eyes. “I know Alex told you not to, but they will probably need us, right?”
“Oh no.” She shook her head far too sharply. “No, we can’t go. This is a sensitive time, and if the family don’t want us there, then we must keep away.”
“But…we’re always there, for everything.” I moved back, totally dumbfounded by her statement. Good or bad, we were the sort of families that supported one another. In a totally selfish, teenage way, I wanted to be the one to comfort Joe, to help him get through it all. “We have to go. Don’t be crazy, Mum. What if they need us?”
She grabbed hold of my shoulders and stared deeply into my eyes, giving me a really serious look. “We need to respect their wishes, Lottie. We have to do what they’ve asked of us. Now I know that neither of us will be able to sleep, so why don’t we go and get a drink or something?”
I nodded, silenced by the cool passion in her statement—she really meant that, there was no changing her mind however hard I argued the case—then I followed behind her like a scared little puppy afraid to be away from its mother. As we grasped our mugs of hot cocoa, that neither of us had any intention of drinking, we were both too shell-shocked to speak, so we simply sat there in a stilted silence instead. Our eyes kept travelling over to the phone, and every now and again one of us would attempt something like a conversation, but in reality time just stilled. We remained in a weird twilight zone, just waiting…endlessly waiting…
Ring, ring…
Ring, ring…
It wasn’t until the sun started to shine through the curtains that the phone actually blared out, and by the time it did, neither of us knew what to do about it. We stared at one another in shock until I shoved Mum towards it. She was the adult, she knew best, there was no way I could tackle this one.