by Samie Sands
Of course, it dented me, however much I tried to act like it didn’t. It took chunks out of my confidence like there was no tomorrow. Having Joe and his idiot friends calling me stupid and ugly, hearing them constantly laughing behind my back, hurt my fragile ego more than I cared to admit. I hadn’t fully built myself up into a strong enough person by that point anyway, my hormones and insecurities ran rife through me every single day. The words those boys spoke only confirmed the horrible things that I already thought about myself.
It hurt, I was crushed, I cried myself to sleep every single night, but I held onto the one dream that me and Joe would get our engagement back on track before long. When things got too hard, I’d twist the ring on the fourth finger on my left hand and picture what our big day would be like. I’d ignore the hot pain in my heart by mentally writing out my vows. I’d dial down the nausea in my stomach by thinking about my wedding dress…I acted a little crazy, but it was the only way I could survive.
Well, I did, until he took that from me too…
I’d just suffered a particularly horrible English class, where I could hear one of Joe’s friends making snide little comments about me. I held it together by balling up my fists with every single word, my blood boiled up, but I took in sharp, deep breaths to get past it. I tried to convince myself I was growing stronger, that this would only build up my character, but it didn’t make me feel much better at the time.
Then I had to walk past Joe loudly flirting with a group of the more popular girls right outside my classroom, almost as if he’d done it purposely just to torment me. I kept my head down as I moved forwards, I focused my gaze on my feet, acted like it wasn’t happening, but there was no chance of me getting away that easily.
“Hey!” he yelled above the crowd, using that sharp tone of voice I’d become very familiar with recently. My heart flapped, my tummy churned, I wanted to throw up. I knew his words were being directed at me, but I couldn’t face him just yet. I hoped that if I just ploughed on, he’d forget all about me…but of course he wouldn’t. “Hey, Charlotte.”
I cringed visibly. Charlotte…the only other time he’d used my full name was when he proposed to me, but this was nothing like that. This was bad, really bad. I span on my feet, ice cold nerves darting and dancing around in my body. I didn’t want to look at him, not now, not after that, but my eyes were drawn to him regardless. The magnetism was there, however much I didn’t want it to be.
Maybe I thought that despite everything I was going to find some niceness, maybe I assumed he was finally coming back around, but what I actually found myself staring at was spite and anger like no other. My feet actually staggered back a little under the weight of it. I felt truly detested, and that was awful. I hadn’t ever done anything to deserve hate. Even if I had taken Joe’s focus off of his sister, even if that part was my fault, it was never intentional. He knew that, didn’t he? He didn’t honestly think I wanted any of this to happen?
“What do you want?” I rasped, hating how scared my voice sounded. The bitchy girls giggled cattily at me, but the sound didn’t filter into my brain. I was only focused on him. They were nothing to me, I had no intention of keeping them in my life for much longer, but Joe I did. Joe mattered.
“That,” he pointed down at my finger, smirking as he saw me playing with my ring. “I want that back. I don’t think you need it anymore, do you?”
His words were loaded, he was ending everything with me, taking away my last element of hope. And the way he was doing it was as if I was totally worthless, as if I meant nothing to him at all. My mouth hung open, a guttural groan threatened to escape, and it took all that I had to keep it inside. Was he really doing this in front of everyone? If we’d been alone I’d have stepped closer to him, I’d have begged him to open up to me, I’d have told him that no matter what we could get things back to where they were. But we weren’t, we were in the worst place in the world; the school hallway. I barely had any dignity left as it was, I didn’t want to make that worse by begging him to still love me. Especially when he was making it perfectly clear that he had no intention of doing so. My eyes were brimming up with tears already, so I rapidly stepped forwards and slammed the ring into his palm, before they could fall.
For a second, we shared something. All our past flooded through us both, and I distinctly felt the future we’d built up in our minds evaporate. Whether he regretted it or not, I wasn’t sure, but the damage was done. He’d made his feelings perfectly clear.
We were over.
I stalked off, their twittering far behind me, hoping that I, at least, still had some pride. I suffered the worst thing that could’ve ever happened to me and I didn’t fall apart. I had to be proud of that, right? Maybe I was stronger than I first assumed.
Of course that wasn’t the case when I got home later that night. I truly lost it then. I fell apart, I sobbed, I lay on the couch and cried until I felt like there was nothing left inside. It was done now, we really were over, and there was no going back on that. The realization punched me in the face that Joe wasn’t just taking out his stress on me, that he simply didn’t want me anymore.
“Oh my God, what’s wrong?” Mum came rushing through the door as she heard me weeping. “What can I do?”
As she rubbed my back I wanted to flip out, to take my temper out on her, to continue the vicious cycle, but I really needed her comfort. I wanted to tell her that this was partly her fault too, that she should’ve just kept it in her pants and everything might have been all right, but instead I wailed loudly and turned around to cling to her.
“Joe…doesn’t love me…” I sobbed into her shoulder. “He doesn’t want to be with me anymore.”
Mum held me close and rocked me back and forth for a few moments. “Joe’s hurting,” she tried her best to rationalize. “He’s in a lot of pain, he’s feeling things we can’t even begin to understand…” Her words hung thickly in the air, I almost felt like she was testing me, waiting for me to ask about her and Joe’s dad. I almost took it, for a second I nearly went there, but I needed her advice more than I needed to know the truth. “You just need to give him time. He might be acting unlike himself at the moment, but soon enough he’ll come back around. Grief manifests itself in the weirdest of ways.”
Was she right? Was I being too irrational? I did decide to stick by Joe no matter what, I had been doing okay ignoring his shitty comments up until now, maybe I just needed to stick it out a little while longer.
“You guys will be done with school soon enough, then life will really change. Maybe once you’ve moved on to college you’ll start to see things very differently.”
I nodded slowly, deciding to agree with her. She might’ve done wrong, but she’d still lived longer than me. She knew much more about life than I did. I just had to find some positivity to get me through the last few months of school. It was going to be fine…
***
But it wasn’t. In fact, things just went from bad to worse. It became so awful that I couldn’t concentrate on my education at all. I ended up missing some of my exams, and failing hard at the ones I did take. I didn’t need to wait for the results to know that, I hadn’t even tried. I just couldn’t focus on anything but Joe. Nothing seemed as important.
Because of that failure I spent the majority of my summer in school, studying to retake the exams at the first opportunity. I still wanted to attend the same college as Joe, to do my photography course. That part of my plan hadn’t changed, even if everything else had. I figured that Mum was right, as soon as we left the claustrophobic atmosphere of school, and once Joe had been given the space he so clearly needed, we’d have something to work on.
But I was wrong, so very wrong.
I’d just finished my last retake, I was feeling positive for the future. I felt like everything was finally coming together when I walked through the door to see my mum with a tear-stained face. My heart sunk into my shoes, I just knew this was going to be bad. The last time I’d seen
Mum looking so sad was the night Marie died.
“Joe’s gone,” she gasped loudly before I even had a chance to ask. “His parents didn’t even know, he just upped and left with his passport. They’ve just lost one child and he’s run off leaving a note. An ‘around the world trip to find himself’ apparently. How selfish could he be? Doesn’t he think about anyone else at all?”
“But…college?” My brain wasn’t totally getting it yet. “That’s soon.”
“He isn’t going to college, sweetie, he’s gone.”
Gone…
In that moment, there was no more hope, things really were done. Joe could’ve been anywhere else in the whole world, he’d run off, he was gone forever, this really was over for good. My life as I knew it had ended.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I sensed Joe turning around to face me, so I loosened my arms around his neck a little, my pulse rate bulldozing through my body as I did. My mind was still stuck in the past, my emotions mushed up at the memory of him saying those awful things to me, of him leaving me behind without any explanation, which meant I didn’t know what to do.
“Are…are you…?” I didn’t know what I was trying to say, I just wanted my mouth to form words. “Is everything…?”
Joe didn’t say anything, he simply kept his eyes fixed on mine with a misty-like quality to them. I gulped down, trying desperately to keep my emotions from floating to the surface, as my limbs turned into a jellified mess. A part of me wanted to step back, to analyse this situation from a distance, to work out exactly what was happening, but the biggest part of me didn’t even know how to move.
Something was happening here, and I needed to know what it was.
A loud buzzing sound filled my ears, a cotton-like sensation filled my mouth, I could feel a shiver running up and down my spine. “What…?” Why couldn’t I think of anything to say? What the hell was wrong with me? Even if I brought up all the horrible memories in my brain, it’d be better than me saying absolutely nothing!
“I like you,” Joe whispered, mesmerising me. My eyes zoned in on his moist lips, and I tried to feel…something, but my iced over insides weren’t doing anything. “You know that I like you.”
Oh my God.
He was leaning forwards, I could sense his body curving in towards mine. The ‘something’ that I’d been worrying about before was happening, and I had no idea how to feel about it. If he was coming closer, if his face was nearing mine, then maybe…maybe…oh God, was he about to kiss me?
At the thought of his lips crashing into mine, everything that I’d ever felt for Joe came out all at once. The unrequited lust, the love, the heartbreak, the disappointment…it confused me so much that it actually took me a minute to react, and in that time I felt his mouth brush up against mine for just a split second.
“Wait. Joe, no.” I stepped back from him, holding my palm flat against his chest. “No, this isn’t right.”
“What do you mean?” he exclaimed, the frustration dripping off his tongue. “Why are you so dead against this?”
“It isn’t right…”
As soon as I said those words I realised how accurate they were. None of this was right, I didn’t even know what I was doing anymore. I was using this ill-advised trip down memory lane as a way to escape my real problems. Joe wasn’t my issue any longer, he hadn’t been for many years. He was the one who left my life, he made it quite clear he didn’t want anything to do with me anymore, and he’d had years to go back on that choice.
He hadn’t done any of that, I’d reached out to him…again, just like always, this felt like it was on Joe’s terms.
“How can this not be right?” Joe slid his hands in mine. This time as his eyes met mine, I could see a desperate neediness there. “This is me and you, Lotts and Joe. It’s always supposed to have been us, can’t you see that?”
I cocked my head to one side, my chest heating up and swelling with that romantic concept. Who wouldn’t be blown away by the idea of making things work with their childhood sweetheart? Especially with our unique situation, the factors that had torn us apart were intense and unexpected, without them we really could’ve been…
But we weren’t, and there had to be a reason for that.
“No, no, we aren’t.” My eyes welled up as I put the final nail in the coffin of a dream that had always secretly been there, just a little bit. It was extremely difficult to say the words that set my future in stone, but the sensible part of me knew it was the right thing to do. “No, we aren’t meant to be, we can’t be.”
“Just because we got derailed…”
“This is so much more than getting derailed.” I shook my head and moved further away. “You left, you ran away and left me behind. I’ve had a whole life without you. You can’t just rock back into my life and expect me to forget all of that for you. We aren’t eighteen-years-old anymore, we’re adults.”
“Your life can’t be that good.” He stood up to meet me, moving so close that my personal space was definitely being invaded. My breath hitched in my throat, my heart practically stopped beating, time simply stopped ticking. “You work a boring job, your boyfriend cheats on you, that’s why you reached out to me. You wouldn’t have wanted to speak to me again if things were perfect.”
I didn’t like the way his words made me feel. I didn’t enjoy the fact they were potentially more honest than I’d care to admit. Not about everything, he had no idea what my life was like, but I wouldn’t have contacted him if I was totally happy, would I?
“I actually really love my job,” I eventually shot back angrily, my blood bubbling with all kinds of uneasy feelings. “Just because you don’t see it as something important, I do. I love working at the library, I enjoy working with books—it’s awesome—and my students love me. Maybe I’m not taking photographs, but that’s okay. I never really wanted to do that anyway.”
That dream was always way more about Joe than me. Now that I’d ripped the pedestal out from underneath him I could see that so clearly.
“But, you were always so good at it…” His face had fallen, his expression was sagging, all the life deflating out of him. I didn’t want Joe to feel bad, even after all that he’d done to me. That was never my intention, but I had to be clear.
We were done now, there was no coming back from that.
“Just because I was good at it when I was young, doesn’t make it right for me now.”
The meaning was loaded now, I wasn’t just referring to the photography, and that seemed to be just about registering. Just because we’d always worked when we were teens, didn’t mean we could now. We were completely different people, our lives had gone in totally different directions, plus I wasn’t even convinced I wanted to.
To be honest, maybe the hole in my chest had been lack of closure, rather than anything else.
“But…didn’t you feel anything just now? When I kissed you?” His eyes flickered all over my face, he was looking for something, but I really didn’t feel like there was anything for me to express. “I know it was only for a second, but my heart fluttered like mad. It confirmed how much I’ve always wanted to be with you.”
But as he gripped onto my arms, fixing me in place, I was forced to admit I really didn’t. There were no emotions rushing to the surface, I didn’t reminisce, there wasn’t any spark. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t even freak out…I simply felt nothing. I was numb inside, and that spoke volumes.
“Joe.” I gently removed his hands from me and spoke in what I hoped was a tactile manner. “Maybe I loved you once, maybe you did make me feel things, and yes, maybe I did believe that we’d be together forever, but that was a very long time ago. Now, I have someone in my life, someone I love.”
Why was it only just becoming crystal clear to me that what I had with Danny was better than anything with Joe? It might not have been so dramatic, or intense, but it was more powerful and real. With Joe, I was never truly myself; I didn’t speak out when things weren’t rig
ht, and I allowed him to run rings around me. I was so wrapped up in puppy love that I let Joe run absolute circles around me. Danny never did that. He was kind, and sweet, and caring…
“What, the guy who cheated on you?” Joe sneered, bringing me back down to the Earth with a thump.
Of course, I’d almost forgotten about that. In all of my excitement to finally move on from Joe I forgot all about my current problems.
“Danny didn’t cheat on me.” I was almost being aggressive with my words, but I just needed him to shut up. “Just because it says so in the media doesn’t make it true. He told me he didn’t do it and I believe him.”
Did I? Was I being honest there? I wasn’t totally sure.
“Okay, so if you believe him, and he didn’t cheat on you, then why isn’t he here?” He folded his arms across his chest and smirked in my direction, only serving to rile my temper up even further. “If it was me, I’d be by your side fighting for you, proving to you I was a good man…”
“Oh would you?” Yep, I was officially yelling. I had no doubt that everyone was looking at us now, but I didn’t care. Let them look, in a way this was my proudest moment. Me finally telling Joe how I really felt was unexpected, but really good. “You’d be by my side, would you? Like you were after school, when you’d been a dick to me for months? You made me fail my exams because I was so upset, but all I did was defend you. Even to myself, I let myself believe that you were hurting and you just needed to get it off your chest. I decided to be your punching bag because I stupidly thought you cared about me.” His face was growing paler with every word, it seemed like I was actually getting through. “Then you vanished, and that was that.”