by J. S. Brent
‘It’s hit me.’ I deliberately slurred. ‘I. Am. Drunk.’
I lurched towards the bouncer and thrust my ID into his face. He took it off me and inspected it, before nodding towards the entrance. I walked in, paid the fee, and entered the darkness of the club.
‘Drink?’ She asked me.
‘Need a piss.’ I said, rushing off to the scummiest toilets in Great Britain.
When I returned she stood at the bar, stroking the arm of someone much taller and well-built than me. He had probably bought her a drink. I froze a moment before walking outside to the smoking area.
I pulled out John’s cigarettes and his lighter and smoked. I almost passed out from the rush. It hit me like a train, I was just lucky that I was sitting down. The world around me slowed down slightly. It was less frantic, less tense.
She walked out a moment later, alone.
‘I thought you quit.’ She said, softly. There was something different about how she held herself. How she spoke.
‘Relapse is a part of recovery.’ I shook my head.
She began to roll her own cigarette. I watched her as her brow furrowed and her eyes tightened to concentrate on what she was doing. I’d forgotten about that look. Everything began to seep back into me. All of her small facial expressions. All of our small talks. All of the small moments when our eyes had met.
I took the cigarette out of my mouth. She looked up from what she was doing. Our eyes met.
‘Tom.’ She whispered as I moved in.
Our lips met softly. I put my hand on those soft cheeks as she grasped both sides of my leather jacket. Her tobacco and rolling paper slid off her knees and onto the floor beneath us. I could almost feel her heart beating under her dress. We pulled away from each other, our foreheads touching.
‘How about that drink?’ I whispered, my eyes still closed.
She laughed, regaining her composure. She nodded, that familiar smile shining on.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I felt the sunlight on me before I saw it. Then my pulsing head surfaced. I squinted as my eyes slowly opened. It felt like there had been drought in my dry mouth. When I tried to open it my lips split slightly.
She lay next to me. Her eyes were closed. Her arm lay rested on my stomach. I looked at her. She looked so peaceful that it brought me great pain.
All I wore was the shirt from last night and my boxers. There were clothes strewn across my floor. I wasn’t looking forward to cleaning my sheets.
I checked my phone. The sight of it was blurred and out of focus, but my eyes began to adjust. Eight missed calls from my home phone.
‘Morning.’ She said lightly as I sat up, putting my hands to my temples. There was nothing I needed more in the world than a coffee.
This was a mistake. She wasn’t supposed to be lying next to me. She looked like fragile petals on a summer morning. I sighed. I wanted to break into tears. I had no idea what to say to her.
‘Did we…?’ I asked.
‘Well, you tried.’ She laughed. ‘Maybe you could…’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ I wanted to, but my inhibitions had rushed back to me, beating on my temples and my eyelids and my mouth. She looked upset. ‘I need to call home.’
‘I get it.’ She got out of bed. I saw her figure in the sunlight. She was more beautiful than I had remembered. I tried to look away, but she was like the sunset, blinding, and yet captivating in all its silent prettiness. ‘I might see you later.’ She kissed me on the forehead and walked out of the door. I noticed that she had left her lighter on my bedside table.
I picked up my guitar when she had gone and tried to play, but my mind was hazy and my hands were shaking. I grew angry at the sounds that emanated from it. I thrust it away from me on the verge of hot tears.
This is how it had started last time. A drunken mistake. Two people that were never meant to be together sailing across stormy rivers with only one making it out to the other side.
My phone felt heavy in my hands. I dialled home. It rang a moment. Somebody picked up. The house was supposed to be empty.
‘Are you there Dad?’ I waited. There was silence. ‘It’s me, Tom.’
‘Hi, Tom.’ It was his voice. There was a softness to it that I had never heard before.
‘Why aren’t you at work?’ I was met with a pause.
‘I have a day off.’ His voice sounded tender. It was as it hurt for him to speak.
‘Are you ok, Dad?’
‘Yeah, I’m coping.’ I thought that I heard him sigh on the other line.
‘Did you call last night?’
‘I think so.’ He said. ‘How is everything, Tom?’ I heard fear in his voice.
She walked back in out of the darkness of the corridor. I would have locked my door but I couldn’t. She walked over to me.
‘Forgot my lighter.’ She said softly into my unoccupied ear.
‘Who’s that?’ My Father asked.
‘Sorry, I’ll just go.’ She said.
‘Is that her? Is that the girl?’ He asked. I didn’t recognise his tone. I grasped her arm as she tried to leave, pleading with my eyes. She sat on the bed next to me.
‘Dad…’ I didn’t know what to say.
‘It’s fine if it is, Tom.’
‘Yes.’ I didn’t want to lie to him, not anymore. I thought that he was going to hang up but he just stayed on the line, not saying a word.
‘Be good to her.’ He eventually said. ‘You might want to call your mother. You know what she’s like.’ He said, forcing a laugh.
‘Love you, Dad.’ He hung up.
‘What was that about?’ She asked me, putting her hand on my shoulder. ‘It looked intense.’
‘Nothing. It was nothing.’ I said, still clutching my phone. ‘D’you want a coffee?’ I stood up. I was in a place where I wanted to be alone and didn’t at the same time. I felt like, right now, she was the only one that I could talk to. She nodded, smiling, unaware of the sadness that was surrounding her.
It was back to a slow kettle. I was glad. I could stand there and watch as the steam got heavier and heavier until the kettle had boiled, the switch flicked off, and the steam dissipated into the air around it.
I poured her coffee into the mug I had once bought her. She used to be up here all the time.
‘I’m doing an open-mic competition in a couple of weeks.’ I said as I re-entered the room.
‘What are you going to perform?’ She asked. I passed her the coffee. She smiled as she saw the mug she once knew.
‘Because of copyright and all that I need to perform my own stuff.’ I put my coffee on my desk without sipping it.
‘Have you got anything?’ She asked.
‘Nothing good.’
‘Why don’t we write something now?’ She leant forwards. I smiled a pathetic smile and nodded.
‘What could we do it about?’
‘Coffee. But maybe not coffee, maybe like if it was the last time you were ever going to drink coffee. You’d sleep a lot easier but there’d still be thought in the back of your mind about what life was like when you could wake up in the morning, tired and weary, and just drink yourself awake.’ She said, excited.
‘What about if you swapped coffee for alcohol? It helps you sleep, sure, but it’s worse for you.’
She nodded in silent admiration. I still couldn’t tell if she was putting it on or not.
‘So do we start with the chorus?’ She asked.
‘I can sleep at night without you Because I can sleep with someone new But she tears my insides up She’s tearing me in two…’
‘Did you just come up with that?’ She asked.
‘It’s shit, isn’t it?’
‘No, no. I like it.’ I smiled, unconvinced.
We finished our coffees in a familiar silence. She checked her watch. She had somewhere to be.
I now know the difference between love and emotional dependence. One’s mutual. One’s unbalanced.
It w
asn’t long before Flora knocked on my door.
‘I was wrong about you.’ She looked upset. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I don’t know.’ I looked at my hands.
‘Same thing’s going to happen.’
‘I know.’
‘Is it worth it?’
‘I don’t know.’
Flora shook her head at me, her hands rested on her hips.
‘Tom. There is someone out there for you, I promise. It’s just we both know it’s not her.’ Her tone grew softer as she sat down next to me. ‘Have you talked to your parents since…?’
‘Not properly. I think I should just wait until the dust settles.’
‘You can’t wait forever.’ She seemed to think about something for a moment. ‘Coffee?’
‘Nah, I just had one.’
‘I’m making you a coffee. You look like shit.’
‘Thanks.’
‘No, that’s a good thing.’ She said, I looked confused. ‘It means you must have been hammered before you took her home. It means it’s not totally your fault.’ I shrugged. ‘Coffee. Then we can chat.’
‘Ok.’
Flora always made better coffees than I did. They seemed to do more than wake me up. They seemed to warm my insides and fix the parts of the world that were askew. My sister had always suggested tea in a crisis, but coffee was just tea with an edge when it came to trying to fix things.
Flora put on some music that she said she always studied to in the background. We talked for hours. For once she did most of the talking. She always seemed to know what questions to ask. She was never afraid to ask something controversial if it would help. It was one of the first times I had been completely open. It was one of the first times I hadn’t been afraid to speak of my fears and my hopes and my dreams. It was one of the first times that I wasn’t afraid of judgement.
After we had talked we debriefed by watching television on my laptop with chocolate and coffee. A lot of tensions seemed to be lifting off my shoulders. Back home, however, unbeknownst to me, my parents stood shivering in the eye of the storm. As I was being lifted up, as I was being healed, they were being dragged down by fear and worry. If I knew the state they were getting into I would have called sooner. Hannah had gone back to university and their conversations with each other in that big empty house were only perpetuating their deeply engrained fears about my life, my mental state, my happiness. The time they slept was pushed forward minute by minute every night.
The sun was beginning to set when she left. The sky here was beautiful. It was clear and cloudless.
‘You need to talk to her.’ She said, before she walked out of the door. I nodded in agreement.
Time seemed to speed up from that moment. The sun began to rise and fall in a perfect cycle. My reality became a loop. The days were filled with waking up before mid-day, writing, not messing about on whatever device happened to be within my grasp, not smoking, and going to bed. My parents’ days were very different.
It was like there was a mirror between the North and the South of England. On one side there was sun, on the other there was the opposite. On one side there was work, on the other there was the opposite. On one side there was a growing sense of pride, on the other there was the opposite. On one side there was hope.
It grew closer and closer to the night of the open-mic. I allowed myself some sense of excitement. I had written my songs. I knew them by heart. Flora liked them. I was ready.
That’s when I decided to phone home and tell my parents. They would be so proud. Everything would be fixed. I’d quit smoking. I was doing the open-mic. Granted, I still had to talk to her but it wouldn’t be the hardest thing I had ever done.
Naively, in that moment I convinced myself that everything could be alright. There’s no such thing. It’s like when we look back and only see the moments when we were happy. Just the moments. Not the pain or stress that surrounded them. Golden ages are a myth. There’s always something wrong. It’s just most of the time it’s something small, something fixable. Something that we can just ignore until it gets better. The trouble is it’s impossible to discern what to ignore and what’s going to grow and grow and grow until it’s something that cannot be fixed with intelligence or with brute force. Only time can fix such problems. Only time lets scars settle.
CHAPTER TWELVE
She was in my room. I hadn’t talked to her about everything, yet. I was enjoying the time we were spending together. Maybe this time it could’ve worked. I had told her that I was going to call my parents and I held the phone in my hands. I remember smiling. She smiled too. I loved her smile. The sun shone outside.
I dialled the number and put the phone to my ear. It rang for a while. Longer than usual. It was a Saturday. Somebody eventually picked up. They took in a deep, heavy breath. I could fix everything. All I had to do was say how well I was doing.
‘Tom?’ The voice on the other line asked. It was before I had had a chance to speak. It sounded like Hannah.
‘Hannah? What are you doing home?’ I laughed in surprise. The girl smiled next to me in the room, the sun behind her hair.
‘I’ll pass you to Mum.’ Her voice trembled.
‘Ok, then.’ I said, still smiling.
I remember looking at the beautiful sights around me as I waited to hear my Mum’s voice. The same voice that had brought me back to myself when times had been tough. The voice I had always imagined, always there for me, the light at the end of the tunnel.
‘Tom.’ She said to me.
‘Everything’s alright, now.’ I said. ‘I’ve sorted everything out.’
The next words I heard made me realise the beauty that I saw around me was like the beauty of home. From one perspective you saw the Tudor architecture and the rustic churches and the trees that used to sway in the summer wind, from the other you simply saw a town, just another place to live. Just a place like any other.
‘Tom, you need to come home.’ My Mother had said.
That perfect girl next to me began to realise something was wrong as my Mother continued to speak. The ground beneath me seemed to move. The universe around me changed. The trees began to wilt and the skies turned red. I could no longer look at the empty bottles on my desk. My guitar became just an object. I began to remember how much pain she had caused me.
I don’t remember my Mother’s exact words. I don’t remember dropping my phone onto the floor. I don’t remember dry-heaving into the no longer familiar toilet in the corridor. I just remember that she was going to call me sooner.
Every small problem I had had withered and died before me. There was no longer anything or anyone around me. I had woken up to a lonely, desolate place.
I got the first train I could. I don’t remember being led to the train station by that girl and by Flora. My Mother said that she would pay for it but my inheritance would more than cover it. The thought of it brought tears to my eyes. It would never be enough.
The clouds started to get darker as I returned. The world around me seemed to have slowed, but the trains got me back almost a moment after I had left. I passed through Stansted airport without a pack of cigarettes and without thinking of the many places it had once taken me to.
My Mother waited for me at the station. She hugged me tight. There had only been a couple of other times in my life that I had been hugged that tightly. It felt just as bittersweet.
The sun was beginning to break through the dark clouds as my Mother silently drove me home. I was surprised that she was driving.
It was the first time in my life that a sense of control had been completely robbed from my grasp. I had no control over anything, anymore. Not even my thoughts.
The world around me felt unfamiliar. It felt larger. I felt smaller.
‘That fucking storm.’ My Mother said as we pulled into our driveway. She sat solidly behind the steering wheel, tears rising to her eyes. I put my hand on her shoulder. It was the first time I had ever heard my Mother swear.
Silently, I put the kettle on and drew out three mugs. I put teabags in all of them.
‘We’re just going to sit around and drink tea?’ Hannah asked. Her hand was shaking. I didn’t think she was in control of it.
The only sound in the room was the steam emanating from the kettle. Tea solves all problems. Tea solves all problems.
‘It’s fine.’ My Mother said.
‘They don’t even fucking know it’s him, though.’ Hannah said. I silently poured the boiling water.
‘Hannah.’ My Mother said.
‘They don’t know it’s him!’ She stood in defiance.
‘It was his car.’ My Mother did not change her tone of voice.
‘Someone might have stolen it. He might still be alive.’ Hannah was pleading. I’m not sure who to. It was only upsetting my Mother more and more. ‘How do you know it’s him?’
‘He called me.’ I could tell that my Mother didn’t want to retell this part of the story. ‘He called me before he set off. It was him.’
Hannah sat back down. It looked like she wanted to cry but no tears came.
I looked at the cups of tea in front of me. It was ridiculous. It was pointless pretending that nothing had changed. Everything had changed. Everything. Now he’d never see me perform. Everything had been taken away from me. When he had died he had taken my hopes with him. There was no point doing anything, anymore.
I smashed one of the mugs. My one. It made both my sister and my Mother look up.
Nothing was right. Nothing could ever be right. I wanted to wail and scream. I wanted to make my lungs sorer than they’d ever been. I wanted to call out to the heavens so loud that my Dad might hear me. That’s all I’d ever wanted. Just for him to hear me.
I hadn’t cried properly in years but I broke down. I fell to the floor in the wet heat. I didn’t feel it. My Mother rushed up to me and cradled me. My sister joined her. We sat there in that puddle for I don’t know how long. Nobody said anything. Nobody needed to. Everyone already knew what everyone else was thinking.