by Ivy Blake
“You better not be trying to drown yourself in there,” Megan called from the bedroom, her voice laced with a teasing tone.
“I’m fine,” I called back, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth. I had a sudden desire to isolate myself. I wanted to be alone, but I knew I couldn’t tell Megan that or she’d think she’d done something wrong. I had to get her back home before I brought her down too, which was the last thing I wanted to do on her birthday.
* * *
Megan
When Austin came out of the shower, I could tell that his mood had taken a drastic shift.
“You okay?” I asked him, even though I could tell he definitely wasn’t.
“I’m fine,” he said as he dried his hair.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. We should probably pack our stuff and get going by the way,” Austin added, turning his back to me.
“Right,” I said, forcing myself to drop the conversation out of fear of starting an argument.
What had happened while I’d been in the bathroom? The light hit the bed and I saw a glimmer of his smartphone. Maybe he’d received an upsetting text, and that’s what had set him off. While my brain looked for possible solutions to Austin’s mood, I made myself pack up my things as I savoured the remaining time I had in the hotel.
Last night had been one of the best birthday presents- if not the best- that I’d ever had, and I was still so shocked waking up in such an amazing bed with a beautiful scene just out of the window. Sleeping next to Austin had been better than I could have hoped for. I’d felt so small and safe wrapped up in his big arms as he spooned me last night. If only we could do it every night. I sighed as I finished packing my things and turned to Austin, who was now fully dressed, a faraway expression on his face.
“I’m ready if you are,” I said cheerfully, in an attempt to counteract whatever sadness had taken over him.
“Let’s check out then,” said Austin with a small smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
The drive home was fairly quiet despite my attempts to make conversation. Austin would respond unenthusiastically, and I felt bad for trying so hard to cheer him up. I decided to give up, realising that I was probably getting on his nerves and decided to be quiet instead. To my surprise, Austin noticed this and turned his gaze to me.
“I’m sorry, I’m just really tired,” he said quietly, sounding genuinely apologetic. “I have a lot on my mind and I don’t think I slept as well as I thought.”
“Do you think talking about it would help?” I asked as we pulled up outside my house. I was glad that he was finally being honest and engaging in actual conversation, but I knew that Austin had a tendency to shut down just as quickly. He thought for a moment as the engine continued running.
“No, it’s okay, I think I can figure it out by myself,” he said finally.
“Remember, you don’t have to,” I said, resting a hand on his arm. “I’m always here to talk or listen.”
“I appreciate that,” said Austin, that distant expression consuming his face once again. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for your birthday,” he added.
“Shut up, you did so much! Thank you for everything, Austin,” I said as I threw my arms around him. Austin hugged me back, but I noticed that it was significantly less tighter than his other hugs had been. Damn, whatever was going on in his head was really having a toll on him.
“It’s my pleasure, Megan,” he said with a smile.
I realised that it was time to go and the thought of being without him suddenly sent worry through me. Last night had been the first in a long time where I hadn’t had nightmares about my stalker. While it might have been selfish to think about, especially in these circumstances, the idea of sleeping alone without Austin in my bed to stave away the bad dreams was not appealing at all. He could tell that I was stalling leaving the car.
“You okay, Meg?” he asked, concern in his eyes. I took a deep breath and decided to tell him the truth. At this point, I was doing more harm than good keeping it to myself.
“If I tell you this thing, you can’t freak out, okay?” I said slowly, bracing myself for his reaction. If he could go apeshit on Max, someone he’s known for years for simply talking to me, then I couldn’t begin to imagine how he’d react to finding out that I had a stalker.
“What is it?” Austin’s eyes narrowed and I grew more nervous. Could I have picked a better time? My knee was restless as I tried to collect my words. “Megan, what’s going on?” Austin said, raising his voice. I was startled by the sudden change in his tone and without thinking it through, my words came out in a jumble.
“Someone’s been stalking me since I moved here and I have no clue who he is. Me and Sophie went to the cops the other day but they basically said they couldn’t do anything, and it’s been really freaking me out but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it in case it was nothing or I was seeing things-“
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” Austin hit the dashboard with his fist, his breathing becoming heavy.
“I didn’t think-“
“You never seem to think about your safety do you?” Austin snapped, making me shrink back in his seat. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths before turning to me.
“I’m sorry for yelling, I just get worried about you,” he said in a much calmer voice, but the tendons in his neck showed that he was still very tense.
“I didn’t want to make you worry anymore,” I squeaked, feeling a weird sense of embarrassment about admitting the truth about my stalker situation.
“Tell me everything about this bastard, I need to know what’s going on.” I recounted the same details I’d told Sophie and the cop, realising that there was no point in leaving shit out if there was a possibility that Austin had seen something whilst we’d been living on the same street.
“Right, so he could literally be anyone,” he growled to himself, I could tell from his expression that his mind was working a mile a minute. “Fucking useless cops, they never do anything right.” By the tone of his voice I could tell that he’d had clearly had a few unsuccessful encounters with the police, which I assumed had something to do with his abusive stepdad.
“They’re the worst,” I agreed, feeling a weight lifted now that I’d told Austin the truth. “I should probably go, I imagined you’ve got stuff to do.” I said after a moment.
“You think I’m just going to let you go after you’ve told me you’re being stalked?” Austin exclaimed, he looked at me like I was crazy.
“There’s nothing else that we can do,” I said. Austin sat back in his seat with a sigh and banged his head against the headrest of his chair.
“Fuck this fucking shit!” He said, slamming his hands down on the steering wheel with each syllable.
“It’s okay,” I said, placing my hand on his thigh.
“Come and live with me,” said Austin suddenly. My eyes nearly popped out of my head.
“Are you crazy? I can’t do that!”
“Why not?” said Austin, as if his solution made all the sense in the world.
I laughed bitterly. “My mom barely let me out last night, there’s no way in hell she’d let me move out, especially not to Nate’s. Unless you were planning to kidnap me-”
“That doesn’t sound like the worst idea,” Austin said, his eyebrows wagging. I hit him on the arm playfully.
“I’m being serious. There’s nothing we can do but just hope he doesn’t try anything else and gets bored.”
“You realise it’s you we’re talking about here right?” said Austin. “There is no way in hell he’s going to get bored with you.”
“While that’s very flattering, that’s not helping me feel any safer, Austin,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“You’re right,” he said after a moment. “Look, just call me whenever. If you’re by yourself, if you’re out walking, if you can’t sleep. Hell, if you see the bastard, call me and I’
ll be right here, okay?” Austin held my hand in his and looked into my eyes, the concern even more apparent.
“Okay,” I said, feeling gratified that he’d be willing to lose sleep and drop everything to make sure I was safe.
“Promise me,” Austin said, squeezing my hand, his voice urgent.
“I promise.”
“Good girl,” he said as he drew me in for a hug, planting a light kiss on my head. “Now you go and enjoy the rest of your birthday, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” I said lightly, giving him a kiss before I climbed out of the car. I stood on the pavement and watched as he drove away, my heart sinking at the fact that we couldn’t spend more time together.
I went inside, took off my shoes and found Lola watching TV while scrolling through her phone. I was glad that Mom had started work early today and that I wouldn’t have to answer her flurry of questions until she returned in the evening, and by then she’d be too tired to press me too much.
“Hey,” I called to Lola as I started walking up the stairs.
“Hey yourself,” she said. “Happy Birthday, by the way!”
“Thanks.” I took another step.
“How was last night?” Lola was standing at the bottom of the stairs in her pyjamas, looking up at me.
I told Lola all about the hotel and its various amenities, the amazing breakfast and gorgeous shower. I made sure to leave out all the gratuitous details even though she tried to get them out of me. There were some things that I simply did not need to tell my little sister. She gave me a card from her and Mom that had a gift voucher in it for my favourite book store before I went upstairs to my room.
I spent the rest of the day replying to birthday messages from old friends and calls from family that I didn’t speak to except for on birthdays and Christmas. After attending to my duties as the birthday girl, I decided to spend my birthday exactly how I’d initially planned. I cut a slice of birthday cake, got into my comfy clothes, jumped into bed and watched Gossip Girl. The only thing that would have made it better would have been having Austin’s head in my lap. It was a shame that he was in such a bad mood and that he had so much going on in his life that I couldn’t help with. I would give anything to be able to take away his suffering at the click of a button.
Despite missing him already, I allowed myself to think back to our lovely hotel getaway and to those words that Austin had uttered whilst we were in the shower. I love you. And for the first time in a while, I didn’t have to skip past all the passionate kissing scenes because I wasn’t feeling jealous or lonely, I had Austin.
Chapter Twenty Three
Megan
As expected, the nightmares had returned. Even though I’d looked outside my window at least 50 times last night, there’d been no sight of my stalker until I closed my eyes to sleep. I tried to imagine Austin’s arms around me, rocking me gently as I drifted off to sleep but I kept being interrupted by the sound of the wind whistling through the trees. Even though I felt dumb for doing it, I pulled out my phone to see if Austin was awake. After all, he did make me promise to text him.
You still up?-M
His text came back mere seconds after I’d hit send.
Awake and at your service. Bad dream?- A
Yeah, it sucks that you’re not here. - M
I could be ;)- A
Mom would kill me.- M
We texted back and forth until my eyes gave up, shutting without my permission just as the sun came up. I managed to get a couple hours of sleep in until my alarm went off, startling me awake. I groaned as I dragged myself to the shower. The last place I wanted to be was school, but I had some important tests this week so there was no way I was going to get out of those.
I checked my phone and smiled as I realised there was a text that Austin had sent me after I’d fallen asleep.
Hope you sleep well, love you Meg. -A
My fingers flew across the screen as I typed up a reply.
Not great, but thanks for keeping me company. Love you too.- M
* * *
I was sitting in my physics class, stifling a yawn as I tried to pay attention to what my teacher was saying. To make matters worse, Miss Watson spoke in a very slow, monotone voice that was perfect for sending people to sleep. If only I could hire her to talk me to sleep each night- my problems would definitely be sorted. Finally, we were dismissed for lunch and I met Sophie in our usual place. She looped her arm through mine as we made our way to the hall.
“So, spill the tea- how was it?” she squealed.
‘How was what?” I yawned.
“Austin’s surprise!”
“Oh right,” I chuckled. I’d forgotten that I’d promised to give her the downlow when I saw her at school because there was some things that it was safer to not write down.
“It was a lot,” I laughed as we selected our meals. I picked up an extra muffin as my dessert, remembering that I’d skipped breakfast and that my low blood sugar was probably contributing to how tired I was feeling.
I gave Sophie a brief rundown of everything that happened the night that Austin has whisked me away, stopping when the other girls from the band joined our table. Now that there were more people present, I felt less guilty being quiet as I ate my food.
I allowed my attention to drift to Austin’s table, my heart sinking when I realised he wasn’t there. I wish he’d tell me when he wasn’t coming to school so at least I could prepare and not get my hopes up that I’d see him. Maybe I’d kept him up too late and he’d slept in? I checked my phone but there weren’t any notifications from Austin. I looked back up at his table at Nate and Ross who smiled when they caught my eye and continued speaking amongst themselves, surprisingly not causing chaos- which was rare for them.
Suddenly, it seemed like everyone’s phones in the dining hall went off at the same time. The cacophony of text tones and vibrations was enough to jolt me out of my thoughts.
“What the hell?” I said as I opened my phone. There was a message from an unknown number. Strange. There was a collective gasp and then everything happened at the speed of light.
“Oh my god, Megan, I-” Sophie’s voice faded into the background of other voices as I opened the message to see what I hoped I’d never see again. I wanted to be sick.
“That’s one of the new girls, isn’t it?”
“Do you think she sent it herself?”
“It’s not the most flattering picture.”
“Is this you?” I heard the voices around me, and they felt like they were coming from every corner of the room. I could barely bring myself to reply, my eyes fixed to my phone screen as tears sprung to my eyes, blurring out the images, but I still knew what they were. They were the pictures that Austin had taken that day in the library that he’d used to blackmail me.
And for whatever reason, that I couldn’t even begin to understand, he’d sent them to the whole school. There was a message above the pictures that read ‘MEGAN PARKER BARES ALL’. Sophie’s hand was on mine, another person’s hand was on my shoulder but I felt far from comforted. This was enough to ruin my life. Why would he do this to me after everything I’d done for him? After everything we’d been through?
I looked up through tears, glaring daggers at Nate and Ross who were on their phones laughing loudly, obviously having seen the pictures.
“Looking good Parker!” shouted Ross, with an obnoxious smile on his stupid face. Some students around him laughed at his comment which made me feel even worse.