Bad Days

by A. S. Kelly

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  A Four Days Novel

  The book

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  Playlist

  Biography

  Copyright © 2018 A. S. Kelly

  Translation by Kathleen Fitzgerald

  Bad Days

  A. S. Kelly

  English Edition

  Literary and artistic property reserved.

  All rights reserved. Unauthorised reproduction prohibited.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and storyline are the fruit of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictional sense. Any similarity to facts, places or people living or deceased is purely coincidental.

  Cover design and formatting by Shanoff Designs

  Photography by Wander Augiar Photography

  A Four Days Novel

  book 3

  A . S . K E L L Y

  THE BOOK

  Jason Lee is the friend everyone would like to have. He’s loyal, sensitive and generous and kind to those he loves. He has dedicated himself completely to his work at the pub that he manages with his friends, who have by now become a second family to him. He is trying to make sense out of a life that is damaged by loss and pain, closing himself into his safe haven of a world that is far removed from his previous suffering, and he is determined not to lose any more than he already has.

  Alex McBride returns to Dublin, having been away for five years. She finds her old house, goes to places familiar to her when she grew up there with her friends, but nothing is like it used to be. Coming back is never easy, especially if your absence is responsible for the slow destruction of someone else’s life, someone you had hoped to forget but who actually remained exactly where he was, like an open wound that continues to bleed.

  Jason and Alex find each other together again after a long separation: they’ve been friends, confidants and conspirators but now they’re forced to reconcile a past that has never stopped hurting and a future impossible for them to live out together, because there’s something that could separate them, and this time, they might be parted for ever.

  PROLOGUE

  JASON

  I don’t feel like studying, I can’t think about exams right now. The truth is I don’t care about anything anymore.

  My mother has gone, and with her my family, or the idea of having one.

  I can’t make it, we can’t make it on our own, just me and him, we’re just not able. She was the one who kept everything together.

  I feel so alone, and I’m angry at the world, with everyone—with him...everyone except her.

  I could never be angry with her.

  We’ve been friends since we were born. Our mothers were close, we’ve been doing things together since they came to live here on Pearse Street before we were born. She and I were always together, almost like siblings. I was with her every day of school and every afternoon. Inseparable friends, two very different souls, yet so close.

  My whole life is music, and she...well, she’s always got her nose in a book.

  I like watching her read, as she wrinkles her brow or bites her lip when she gets to a critical point in the story.

  I’ve studied her expressions for years—sometimes funny, sometimes sweet. I’d also swear I’ve seen her eyes fill with tears, but she is embarrassed to be moved by certain things and so I pretend not to notice.

  Just looking at her gives me warmth and confidence, which I am really in need of now, more than ever. I miss it like I miss air to breathe.

  I observe her as she scratches her nose as she tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, trying to hold back her emotions. She’s wonderful, so shy, so fragile, but not as fragile as I am, not like I feel right now.

  I am crippled with pain and I feel like I’m about to do something I may regret for the rest of my life, but I can’t resist.

  I need to. I need it right now.

  I know we’re just two kids and that sooner or later she’s going to start going out for real with someone, even though I keep every guy who comes near her at a distance of ten kilometers; but soon, she’s going to look around and start to understand that other guys admire her because she is beautiful, smart and one of a kind. And when she understands that too, it’s all over for me.

  I could be satisfied just looking at her like I always do, but now, I want more.

  Now I want to know what it feels like to be in her arms.

  So I get up and walk towards her and she stops reading without lifting her eyes from the book. I know she senses me, she understands I am drawing closer, but she doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t grant me this satisfaction, nor any advantage.

  I sit next to her forcing her to look at me, to removing the pencil from her mouth.

  Now I’ve got her attention and she slowly loses herself in my eyes which will never stop looking at her because she’s the only person that doesn’t hurt me right now.

  I place my lips on hers and it’s just a second, but I feel this sentiment rise and beat within my heart, which I thought felt nothing, insulated as it was from the pain of my loss.

  And instead, it starts beating again, for her, for my friend.

  For my Alex.

  After a few seconds of hesitation, she lets herself go and timidly opens her lips, allowing me to play with her tongue. I run my fingers through her magnificent golden hair and caress her nape, drawing her closer to me.

  I feel her body turn me on and warm me up, freeing my heart from its unbearable pain that until just a few minutes ago, I thought would destroy me without mercy.

  I let my hands slide down her face, along her arms until arriving at her waist. I sigh and slip them under her shirt to feel her hot, soft skin, it’s a touch that snaps me out of my stupor and my suffering and instantly brings me back to life.

  I try to transform this light, intimate kiss into something more, and she shyly lets me and I can feel something is wrong.

  My Alex is no longer with me.

  —

  ALEX

  We’re in my bedroom the same as every other day that I can remember. This is our place, our refuge: it’s here we go to hide, it’s here where our friendship has grown year after year.

  We’ve known each other since we were children, we’ve shared everything and now here we are sharing this pain, which is his, of course it is, but I feel it as if it were mine.

  His mother isn’t here anymore and the hole in his heart is something that cannot be filled. I’d like to help him, but I don’t know how to.

  We sit in silence. He tries to study for our upcoming test and I try to help him the best I can but I know he’s not really reading that book just like I’m not able to concentrate on anything else.

  All my thoughts are for him.

  The silence that wraps itself around us is grueling. I’m afraid he’ll break down in tears suddenly and I won’t know how to console him.

  Or maybe I’ll be the first to cry. I can’t stand to see him like this.

  He is my best friend, my right hand man, my guiding force and now I feel like it’s not like that—it’s that our roles have been reversed an
d I’m not able to help him get over all this.

  I’ve got to try, for his sake, because I don’t want him to get lost, lost in himself.

  Jason is happy, he’s always smiling, just like his mom. He is open and jovial, the life and soul of the party, the guy who makes you feel better after a terrible day.

  His eyes are clear, and sincere; they shine and blind you with their brilliance, like two stars falling from heaven to illuminate the night.

  And yet, they seem different now. They’re deeper, and they mask an uncontainable suffering and they are tinted with a shadow of a tear pushing its way to the surface but which remains repressed, held back by something that will not allow him to free them.

  I’d do anything to take away his pain, so that he doesn’t feel alone and abandoned.

  And then I feel him moving in the room and coming closer to me.

  My heart stops for a second because something’s about to happen, something that could change our relationship and our lives definitively. I don’t know if I’m ready, but he’s Jason and I’m not afraid of what could happen. I trust him.

  He sits on my bed, I know this because I can feel the mattress sink under his weight. I don’t take my eyes off my book even though by now I haven’t been reading it for a few minutes.

  I’m not able to look him in the eyes.

  Then he takes my face in his hands and gives me a weak smile.

  I see his eyes light up again and his lips move in towards mine. I hold my breath and my heart starts beating like crazy, provoking a frantic feeling in my chest that I’m barely able to control.

  And he kisses me tenderly. It’s not a kiss you give to a friend. It’s something completely different, it’s a real kiss.

  My first kiss.

  I’ve never kissed anyone before now, guys never approach me and now I’m starting to understand why. Jason is always around me: he holds my hand, he hugs me, and walks with me by his side every day as if...as if I were his.

  I let go of my initial discomfort and try to bring myself back to what’s happening right here right now in this room, which has witnessed us together a thousand times but has never seen beyond appearances, just like me.

  My tongue brushes his and a shiver runs down my spine, giving me goosebumps. Jason pulls me into him and for the first time I feel his heat mix with mine.

  He runs his hands through my hair, across my face and my shoulders. He goes down slowly along my arms and stops a moment at my waist. He takes a deep breath and lets his fingers slide under my shirt. His touch makes me shudder with embarrassment and pure emotion, but it’s something nice, something I desire.

  Something right.

  Suddenly however the pain in my chest becomes too much and as I try to slowly pull away from this kiss which is confusing me and taking away his friendship, I feel like I’m losing something, something important.

  My vision goes hazy, I close my eyes and then there’s nothing else.

  I’m losing myself.

  I’m lost.

  1

  JASON

  Five years later

  I can’t believe I’m back in this house. It’s been years since I’ve set foot in here, but he called me, he begged me and I didn’t feel like I could refuse.

  I abandoned him to escape the memory of the pain. I took the first chance I got to get out of here with the hope to leave this all behind.

  After my mother’s death my father couldn’t swing it, he imploded. I always thought of him as a strong man, an unclimbable, inaccessible mountain, except for my mother.

  And yet when she left, she brought every memory, every joy, every smile with her.

  She brought it all with her.

  She brought him too.

  My father was a fair musician. It seemed like he enjoyed it, that it was something important in his life, but when his career started to seriously take off he gave it all up suddenly and completely, like a drug addict going cold turkey. I couldn’t understand the reason then, I was just a boy too hung up on the idea of success, applause, and the adoring crowd. My father was cool, and when he came to collect me from school, the other moms melted under his glance.

  And yet, he wasn’t interested.

  He just wanted her.

  He decided to give up the road he was on and left music behind and instead opened a recording studio. He stopped traveling for his music to stay close to us, to make her happy and so that she would not be lonely without him.

  Then, it all happened: she left and he died with her. I have never since then seen that sparkle in his eyes. I haven’t seen any sign of love in him or indeed any other sentiment other than rage.

  He tried to be a father to me but he just wasn’t very good at it. Of course, I wasn’t a young boy at the time, I was about twenty when Mama died, but I needed him—I needed his support. I wanted him to share my grief, but he wasn’t able to. He was a broken man, half a man.

  And I wasn’t able to bear it: I left everything behind.

  An escape from the past, from the absence created in my life.

  Her absence.

  I missed her terribly, God, how I missed her. Still do. I remember everything about her, I’ve got her face branded in my mind and sometimes I can still conjure up the scent of her perfume, or her shampoo that cascaded over me every night as she came to tuck me in, even if I was too big for such attention.

  I found refuge in Aaron’s house, he’s one of my best friends, especially after he and his sister Rain ended up alone. They had lost their parents a few years back and I went to live with them. We helped each other out in every way possible.

  They welcomed me into their lives and allowed me to have a life of my own.

  They became my family.

  It’s been five long years since I’ve set foot in this house, a place that reminds me of everything I wanted to forget.

  And here I am back at the start. I’m tired of having to keep my distance. I miss my childhood memories which are here, between these walls where I grew up.

  I miss her.

  My dad wants to put the pieces of this family back together. Now. Now that I’ve learned to live with this bitterness and the solitude. Now that I don’t need it anymore.

  He wants us to go back to how we once were, to rebuild a relationship with me.

  And so here we are. Starting over, as he says, where everything started. I don’t know if he’s really serious this time, but there’s nothing left for me to do but find out.

  Life hasn’t been fair to him or me, but I’m trying to make the best of it: I want to breathe in some fresh air without the memories dragging me into the shadows. I certainly don’t want to end up like him, I know I can do better than that.

  Control, that’s what I need. Control over everything. Over my life, how I behave and especially my emotions.

  No weakness, no implications.

  All I have is my music, which is my only escape, and of course my friends.

  The rest of it can’t touch me.

  —

  ALEX

  I’m back in Dublin, my city and the place I’ve always wanted to live. I’ve missed it terribly in these years, missed the streets that saw me grow up, the city smells, the sky and its thousand varying shades.

  I applied for a part-time job in the Trinity College library and will be starting in a few days.

  I love books, and I’ve been reading since I was a girl. I got started on comics, then graduated to love stories for teenagers before growing to appreciate the classics.

  I threw myself into books to escape reality, a reality that I cannot accept.

  I don’t go out much and I don’t have a big group of friends. It’s not that I’m antisocial, it’s just hard to have friends when the majority of things people of your age do and dream about doing are off limits to you.

  I lived with my mother in Limerick for the last few years but I always wanted to come back here. My mom wasn’t very enthusiastic about me moving back here, she would hav
e preferred for me to continue living with her, but my health brought me back; here I can have everything I need.

  My father is very apprehensive: he sends me an sms every two hours to make sure I’ve eaten, that I’ve taken my medicine, to make sure I’m still breathing.

  If it was up to him, I’d be living under his careful watch twenty-four hours a day, I never would have gone to university and gotten my degree and more than anything, I would not have gotten a job. But in the end he had to give up those ideas in the face of my stubbornness to live my life as I wanted to, even though he had this desperate desire to keep me close by.

  Despite everything, I’m not a sad or depressed person, nor am I one who roars with laughter. I just try to remain active as much as I can.

  And live.

  My dad is fantastic, even if he can be a bit suffocating at times. He can’t help it. I’m his little girl and always will be and he can’t accept that there’s something wrong with me.

  In his eyes, I’m perfect and he lets me feel that approving love every day, in every instant of my life. It’s not bad having a dad like that, but sometimes I can’t breathe under the weight of it, especially when he forces me to respond to his messages; if I didn’t reply, he would call all of the hospitals in the city, the police and maybe even the fire department.

  My mother was more understanding and let me have more freedom. She tried to leave me my space and not to be excessive in either her affection or her concern for me, and I was grateful for that.

  The truth is that she was the strong one in the family. She never lost the faith, never went into panic mode when I wasn’t well, didn’t cry all night, was not hidden away like my father was.

  She listened to him, consoled him and reassured him. She encouraged him to let me go, to let me live my life my way, so that if some day something unfixable happened to me, she didn’t want me to have any regrets.

  My parents hadn’t loved each other for a while and when I went through what I did, it was just about the final straw in their breaking relationship. She left and took me with her and he remained here, alone. She then met someone who didn’t know anything about this aspect of her life, a person who didn’t cry constantly or spend the night standing in front of my door. Someone who put her above everyone else, and who didn’t invest all his energy into taking charge of his daughter’s life and her needs.