Gone (12 page)

Finally I was able to relax and not live by one of my labels, even for one short night. In doing that I started to experience thing’s I’d never felt before. My skin was just burning with my need to have him next to me, skin on skin. The moon shone on his shoulders like silver as he leant down to kiss me, his lips firm and sure as he explored me with his hands. It felt like I wanted to die from needing more.

He was gone this morning when I woke. Next to me on the pillow was a sketch of me on a folded piece of paper. It shows me lying on the bed with my eyes closed, my hair spread over the pillow and half of my face.

I looked at the piece of paper in my hand and the peaceful expression on my face. And then with a shock I realised that with all the strange things that happened last night; a boy in my bed, and mammoth kissing sessions. There was one thing that didn’t happen. I didn’t have any nightmares.

Ten Days to go.

Cream Tea

After I’ve showered, I take a
long and hard look at myself in the mirror. If I could be that girl from last night maybe I could lose one of those labels after all? Maybe the people here would never know to call me that?  Unable to find any profound answer to my question in my mirror image I trek down the stairs. The cottage is deserted so I am guessing the Munch Bunch are out for the day. That’s a bit annoying, I would have asked Joshua to stay for breakfast if I knew they were going out early.

I scour the kitchen looking for something to eat. I find a bloomer of bread and hack off a doorstep which I butter and jam. The first mouthful does not go down well. It tastes like, well like bread and jam, but it is not what I want. I am feeling a little restless, more so than normal, and I know the reason why and it is very annoying. I just want to see Joshua again. I want to find the boy made of moon and have breakfast with him.  I’ve never shared a meal with a guy in my life, especially breakfast but today I want to. I find my door key on the sideboard and slip on my flip flops and head out. I am sure I can track him down somewhere.

I go by the shop but it is closed, a sign on the door saying that it will be open again in twenty minutes. I turn my attention up and down the limited row of shops. The tea room beckons me with steamy windows so I head towards it, not entirely sure what I am looking for. Am I still looking for Joshua? Or am I now in search of a sticky bun and a cup of tea?

A sticky bun wouldn’t be bad.

Checking my pocket I make sure I have my left over change from my bonus fiver – I have officially only spent seventy pence since being here. It’s a miracle.

I don
’t find a sticky bun, but I do find Joshua.

He is sat at a far corner, one elbow on the table his head propped in his hand, looking across at the girl from the pictures.

I feel a little wave of sick wash over me and my body does this annoying rigid thing where I get stuck on the spot unable to move.

So did he, or did he not spend most of the night with his hands over a vast percentage of my body, working me into a crazy frenzy?

This completely explains the lack of removal of my clothing. He has a goddam girlfriend. I hate myself first, for being so weak and pathetic, and then I hate him nearly as much.

I can see a glimmer of silver blonde hair over in the far corner and I know instantly it is Emily, which means the Munch Bunch are here. There is no way I am going to go and sit with them and do the whole pretend happy family thing while Joshua is over in the other corner staring lovingly over a cup of tea at the girl from the paintings.

I’m going to turn and leave but the girl with the dark eyes notices me glaring by the door and says something to him. He spins and the green eyes pin me to the spot. I want to move but my feet aren’t listening.

“Bex, come over.” He gestures to me. Is he mad? He waves again, and my cursed feet just walk towards him.

Has my bloody brain gone on holiday?

I think it must have done, otherwise I would never have got into that situation last night. I don’t do evenings of romantic intimate dalliances. It’s just not my scene.

“Rebecca,” I state.

“Bex, this is Faye.” He waves between the two of us and I hesitate for a moment. Is he really introducing me to his girlfriend?

“Hi, Rebecca.” The girl with the shiny dark hair smiles at me. “I’m Josh’s oldest friend. It’s good to meet you finally.”

“Yeah why’s that?” Pleasantries are not on my to-do list right now.

The Painting girl, or Faye as she is called is undeterred. “Well, we are all pleased that you have broken through Josh’s painting brick wall. It’s a problem when an award winning painter can think of nothing to paint. Now apparently he can. You.” Her words sounds strange but her tone is even and friendly.

“Shut it, Faye.” He laughs and shushes her with his hand.

Hmm.

“Well maybe he should stop,” I say.

“Stop what?” she asks.

“Painting me. He won’t be able to in a few days when I am gone. Maybe he should go back to painting you.” And with that I walk back towards the door not making a second glance in the direction of my family or the sticky buns.

“Bex, wait.” He catches up with me out on the pavement, and the door to the tea room clinks shut behind us. One of his hands slides along my arm to grasp hold of me. I hate the tingle that accompanies his touch. Right now I am so mad at myself for allowing myself to be made a fool of. Fourteen days, that’s all I had to do before I could leave again. Fourteen days and I could not manage to get through them without getting into some sort of dilemma or trouble.

Did I think that I was going to spend two days with a guy and suddenly all my problems would be gone. No more nightmares, no more screaming? Who am I kidding? I don’t deserve that sort of peace.

Fuck, I am so mad at myself I think I am going to explode, or implode. “Is that the girl from the pictures in the shop? The pictures that I couldn’t afford to buy apparently?” I keep my voice low, my anger at myself trapped inside.

“No, you have it so wrong. Faye, is a family friend. And I didn’t mean it that you couldn’t afford it, I just meant they weren’t for sale.” His face flickers as he clearly remembers his words in the shop that day. “If you would just come back in and sit down and have a cup of tea like a normal person you would realise that Faye is a friend.”

Fuck. Did he just say I am not normal?

“What did you say?”

He hesitates, clearly scanning his memory for the error that has made my cheeks flame red.

“Is this about the paintings, because I can’t remember what I said, but I didn’t even know you then?”

“It’s not about the fucking paintings, Josh, it’s about me and the fact that I shouldn’t have trusted you.” I try and take a step back. “I shouldn’t trust anyone.”

“Bex.” He links his fingers through mine but I pull away.

“It’s fucking, Rebecca!” I scream.

He moves a step closer into my space. “
Rebecca,” voice low. “You are the one who said you did not want to share secrets.”

Secrets. My whole life is secrets.

“Is she the reason you did not have sex with me last night?”

Joshua leans back from me slightly, his dark green gaze flicking over my face. “
No. Not at all.”

“Because truth is I wanted to fuck you, but you did not seem that keen.”

His eyes widen a little but then become steely with a resolution that I don’t understand. He steps right up against me pushing me against the window of the tea shop, one leg pinning me in place.

“What did you say?” his voice is nothing more than a whisper.

Mine, is not. “I said I want to fuck you.”

He moves another step closer and the low burn I am beginning to associate with him flames into an outright ache. “Lower your voice, Rebecca, your parents and sister are right through the window. Just how far do you want this to go?”

This makes me hesitate. For a split moment I wonder how this must look to them, how it must look to Emily sat on the other side of the glass pane. Me standing there glaring at a boy with dreadlocks who is right in my space, his taut body just mere millimetres from my own. Then the Rebecca switch is flipped and I lose all sense of propriety.

I want to shout, I want to push him, at
him, move him out of my space.

“I wanted to go all the way, you know, shag, fuck, have S.E.X.”

He is so close I can feel his breath on my skin. “Don’t be cheap now.”

Ha. Cheap if only he knew.

I take a deep drag of air, and then another and the red rage starts to ebb away. I push my hands against his chest. “I don’t want to see you again. Okay.”

And I don’t. Trusting people is always my biggest mistake. I’m not going to make that mistake with him again.

The greens sweep over my mouth, then to my eyes one last time.

“Fine. Enjoy your holiday, Rebecca.” With that he moves his body away and walks back into the tea room and I am left with an ache that is centred in the pit of my stomach and goes right down to the tip of my toes.

“Fine.” I shout after him.

I start to march away, away from him, away from my family and away from my fake home.

Joshua

Girls Lost at Sea

I can’t believe she said that in the middle of St Agnes.

“I want to fuck you.”

Who taught the girl made of sun to speak like that anyway? It makes my stomach twist to think that she may have said it to someone else before me.

“I want to fuck you.”

It keeps reverberating around my brain and every time I hear it I also get this deep stab of longing somewhere inside me. Not just physical but something other; a flicker of recognition at her words and the look on her face as she said them, that sheer defiance and hatred that she had stored up. It made me feel something deep. I just don’t know what it was. It is not an emotion that I recognise.

After I swung back into the tea shop I went straight up to her parents’ table. Her mum looked like she was on the brink of tears as she worried the rings on her fingers.

“I’m sorry about that.” I said.

Bex’s Dad looked up at me a look of resignation on his face, “That’s okay, Joshua. You don’t really need to apologise to us, we should to you. She will calm down in a bit. If I was you I’d steer clear for a while.”

I offered him a smile and walked away.  Every step I took I could only think one thing. What on earth has she done for her parents to treat her like that? Like she is a bomb just waiting to go off. I walked back over to Faye. I did not say a word. I just shoved my hand into my pocket, grabbed some change and gave it to her.

“See ya, Josh,” she called after me as I walked back out the door.

I know the news will have spread like wildfire. ‘Joshua Adams, the poor soul has found someone nearly as fucked up as he is.’

Thing is I don’t feel like a poor thing. I feel alive for the first time in ages. I feel challenged. I feel like I want to track her down and do exactly as she asked until I lose myself inside of her. I feel like I want to kiss her every two steps down the high street. I feel like I want to walk up and down it holding her hand, not caring who sees. I feel everything but in the same moment I don’t know what she feels, or if she even feels anything at all.

“I want to fuck you.”

Now I am staring at the painting in the middle of my studio I feel a distinct urge to darken it. Not because of the words she said, because, let’s be honest, I so did want to do that to her last night. Even when she was really pushing me to give in and take her, it was ultimately what I wanted to do, and that is why I didn’t.

But there is something else there, a darkness inside of her. I don’t think its evil. I can’t believe for one moment that she has anything that bitter and twisted inside her, but I think she believes it is there whether it is or not.

I mix some dark paints, adding some grey for a stormy sky, just like her mood this morning and I brush it over the burnished gold. An hour later I have changed the entire mood of the painting. Even Bex herself is now swathed in dark, the edge of it glimmers from under her skin. She is no longer like a sun kissed harvest, now she is something else entirely, something that I can’t put into words. A goddess, half the side of light, half, the darkness she can’t control. Two elements at war with each other.

The studio is in darkness when my phone starts to ring. The noise wakes me from my reverie and it hits me that I have been in here all day without anything to eat or drink. It’s been a long time since that happened.

Faye is on the other end, shouting something at me as soon as I answer. For a moment I can’t make sense of her words. They are just a jumble of sounds battering my ears.

“
Rebecca,” she shouts.

My brain snaps into action on that one key word. “
Rebecca.”

A sinking sensation fills my stomach and for a moment I can’t place myself, am I now? Or am I back then? Is this the phone call that’s going to end everything in my life, just like it did six months ago? But Rebecca is not the right name. Rebecca is the name of the girl made of the sun.