How I Got Here (24 page)

‘I did it for you.’ Amanda defends weakly; he stares at her blankly, knowing he now needs to ask her the question.

‘Did you tell her to leave New York?’ His voice shakes because he knows the answer will change how he feels forever.

‘Yes I did, and I stand by my decision to ask her to leave.’ Amanda replies firmly, holding her ground.

‘Then I can’t ever forgive you for this.’ He walks away from her, out the door and past his mother, not stopping until he gets into his car and drives away.

The next few days are a blur, he doesn’t sleep much at all, finding that there is always another task to be done, and when he does go to bed, he lays awake thinking about all the things on his to-do list, and ends up getting out of bed to complete some of them.

Amanda had been calling several times a day, she came round to the apartment once, and even went to the hospital while he was on duty, yet he still remains firm in his anger and refuses to talk to her, other than to tell her to leave him alone.

His parents have come round a few times to help him with the packing, and Judy each time has tried to get him to make peace with Amanda, but he reasons each time that what she did was too big, she’d broken his trust and it would take time.

Today was the last day he’d be spending in the
city; he was currently sat on one of the packing boxes filled with a bulk load of his books, drinking coffee with his mother, who was sat on the window seat in the lounge.

‘This girl was special to you then?’ Judy looks at her son, affection shining in her light grey eyes, as she curls her hands round the cup of coffee.

‘Yeah she was very special – I guess it’s hard to explain.’ He shakes his head, and then suddenly he knows exactly how to explain it, because it’s a story he’s heard so many times, ‘You know when you met dad?’

‘Of course I do, on a beach while I was on holiday in France.’ She smiles fondly at the memory which she treasures so dearly.

‘Right,’ he nods, ‘and then you guys just hit it off right away, and by the end of the summer you knew you loved him.’ He says with his voice getting more animated.

‘By the end of the summer I felt like I couldn’t breathe without him,
he proposed and we were married two months later.’

‘That’s how I feel about River, I feel like I can’t breathe without her, it’s not so much that I just want to see her, want to be with her, I need her as well. I never thought I would feel so hopeless because I didn’t have a girl, I never thought I’d be that pathetic.’

‘It’s not pathetic; your father wasn’t pathetic because he couldn’t live without me. I think that’s what makes a relationship strong, that deep need to be with them, the desperation at being apart, and respect of course, you must always remember there should be respect.’ Judy says watching her son carefully.

‘I respect her a great deal, she’s so perfectly easy to respect after everything she’s gone through.’ He sighs and swirls the last of his coffee around his cup, it’s cold now and he doesn’t want to drink it, so he just stares at it. ‘I don’t think it matters now though, even knowing that she left because of Amanda, she still left and didn’t want me finding her. I have to respect that.’

‘Moving on is possibly one of the hardest things to do, I know I’m not an expert on it because me and your father have been together since, goodness I’d only just turned eighteen, but I think I’ve read enough to warrant an opinion.’

‘Go on then, because I could use all the advice I can get.’ Oliver laughs humorlessly, downing the last of the coffee simply because it’s there, even though it tastes awful now that it’s cold. He sets the cup aside and looks over to his mother, hoping she will have the wisdom to help him.

‘You’ll feel awful for a while, but slowly the ache in your heart will get less and less, and it’ll become manageable, then one day you might meet someone else, now don’t look at me like that, it may seem like you’ll never get over her but one day you will, and you’ll settle down and be happy. I don’t believe there is only one perfect person for anyone.’

‘What about you and dad?’ He says looking at her directly, ‘You two are perfect for one another.’

‘We found each other when we were really young, and yes we are perfect for one another, but I don’t fool myself into believing that if things hadn’t worked out with your father, if he hadn’t proposed and we’d gone our separate ways, I wouldn’t have eventually moved on and found someone else, because I would have.’ She says realistically, ‘Your life can’t just stop because River isn’t in it anymore.’

The conversation ends there, Judy gets up and lays a reassuring hand on his shoulder and then goes to wash out the coffee cups, before packing them into one of the boxes, and then helping him with the remainder of the packing.

By the time midnight rolls around the apartment is empty, his car is loaded and it’s just the items for the removal company that are still in the apartment. As he walks around the bare rooms, with nothing but furniture, the place looks so unlived in, that it’s exactly what he needs to see, the symbol of the clean slate he’s about to have.

Chapter Twenty Seven

Letter
15

I quit my job at the grocery store, I felt like I had to because I kept on making mistakes, I kept on letting people down, because I can’t seem to focus on anything at the moment, all I want to do is curl up in bed all day. The feeling of being in a rut has grown, and yet all I’m doing about it is slowly closing my world in again. I haven’t left the house in three days, I haven’t left my room in three days, except to go into the bathroom, which is attached to my bedroom because I have my own one, so I don’t
think that really counts.

I don’t want to slip backwards again but I can’t seem to get a grip, I’ve tried talking about it with my parents, especially with my dad, because he’s noticed how down I’ve been feeling, but I don’t think either of them truly understands. They’ve been together for years and I know they love each other, they may not always show it, but I know that they do, but even so their relationship had never been one that’s all or nothing. I think that’s how I fell about you; it’s extremes I’m facing. With you I felt completely together like everything was perfect, even when I was falling apart, I felt like I could be stronger because I had you, because you were there to support me, I felt like nothing could touch me because I had you. I relied on you so entirely, that now you’re not here I feel it all the more deeply.

Now that I don’t have you in my life I’ve swung incredibly low, and I’m not saying it’s constant, for a while I really was doing ok, clinging onto positivity by a thread, by keeping myself busy and making friends, and I guess I thought that the longer I stayed away from you, the easier it would become for me to hold onto that positive outlook, to keep hold of that thread of happiness, because that is how it’s supposed to work, but that’s not how it’s going for me, I find myself missing you more. The thread has snapped and I don’t have anything left to cling to. The phrase distance makes the heart grow fonder, truer words have never been spoken about love.

I guess my parents think I’m being silly, in fact that was the actual term that they used. They called me silly, like a little girl who’s throwing a tantrum over losing a toy.
You see when I was a kid my dad used to work away from home a lot, there were months at a time sometimes when he’d be gone, and they would be apart, and they wouldn’t call each other every night or anything like that, because they were both too busy, so they’d call once a week to catch up and that was it, unless of course they had something big to discuss, but the point is, they could go for days without speaking to one another, and yet they never felt like they couldn’t cope if they didn’t hear from the other one, so they really can’t seem to understand what this distance is doing to me, what the thought of never seeing you again is doing to me. They don’t understand when I say that I need to hear your voice, because that’s just never how it’s been for them.

I want to say that I’m being strong because that’s who you taught me to be, but I’m struggling with holding onto my strength, because without you I just feel so utterly weak. I don’t know what else to say, the thought of you is the reason I survive, and that may sound overdramatic but I don’t care, it’s there and it’s honest. I have to trust that I’ll see you again, because without that I can’t keep myself from breaking down completely.

I never knew how accurate a description falling in love was, because I am most definitely falling, fallen even, and I’m scared that I’ve fallen too far too quickly, and that I’ll never be able to climb back up from where I’ve landed, in the dark.

Megan and Kylie are worried about me, they’ve been coming over every single day to check on me, both of them are worried that I’m letting this pull me down too far, Kylie thinks the whole thing is terribly romantic, and Megan is being the sensible one and bringing me things to read, books about how to deal with losing love. She believes that anything you need to know can be learnt by reading.

I however am finding my therapy in my writing; my characters are facing a horrible choice right now, between following the pressure of society, or to keep on staying true to one another. I think I’ll have them stay true to one another, because someone deserves a happy ending, even if it’s not us.

I really don’t mean for this letter to sound so depressing, I’m not saying that everything is going bad for me at the moment. I am still eating and still getting physically stronger by the day, and I’m finding it so much easier to open up about things now. I’m doing well with my studies, even though finding the energy to study these last few days has been hard
, even with Kylie and Megan being my cheerleaders, I still can’t quite get my head to focus, or get myself to care.

I think I need to find a way to carry this pain with me, right now I’m crippled under the weight of it, but if I can fold it down to a more manageable size, I can put it away somewhere and it won’t be so hard to carry. I’ve taken to thinking about it this way, my feelings for you and not being with you, it’s a physical weight that needs to be resized, I imagine it as a heavy block of stone, and I just have to keep chipping away at it bit by bit. You said once that we’d take a baby step towards getting me eating again, and so that’s what I plan to do now, baby steps to getting over you.

I’m starting to sound just a little bit ridiculous now, but only a little bit I think, but even I still have a tight enough grip on reality to know that it’s getting towards truly ridiculous, so I’m going to stop writing this, fold it up and put it in the top draw and lock it up, then I’m going to take a shower, and if I just keep forcing myself to act normally, then maybe soon I’ll start to feel normal.

Chapter Twenty Eight

Oliver
6

The house is much bigger than he’d been expecting, the pictures hadn’t done the place justice, as he wandered round his new home, he was struck by the amazement that each room he entered, was grander than the one he’d previously been in. He’d been busy exploring the house while unloading his items from his car, and helping the removal guys get the furniture in, however he soon found that his own furniture was dwarfed by the size of the rooms. As the day progressed he started getting the feeling that he’d taken on more than he could handle, and more than he actually needed. The house and the
grounds were more excessive than he’d first thought, far too excessive for a single guy in his twenties, who was planning on living in the place alone. He shouldn’t have been so rash in his decision to buy this place, he should have looked for somewhere smaller.

As he makes his way up the spiraling staircase, which is the central feature of the entrance hall, and looks round the three large bedrooms he decides for definite that this house is too big for him, he can’t even bare to think about living in this big rattling house alone, not when so many people haven’t got anywhere to live, it would be wasteful of him, and all because he’d randomly picked it out with his eyes closed, all because he’d needed a sudden change in his life, and didn’t want to overthink it, he wanted it to be unorganized and unplanned, but this wasn’t what he’d expected from his impulsive move. He hadn’t realized at the time that it would turn out to be such a
foolish purchase, despite that though he also had to admit that the house was stunning.

He thought about his father’s advice about selling in a few years, telling him that real estate was a good investment, and the thought occurs to him that he could easily just sell the house again, how hard could it be? He’d already received five different offers on his New York apartment, and accepted one that morning, one which was way over the asking price, apparently it was a young professional newly married couple, who were buying their first home together, they were looking for a starter home in the city, and had fallen in love with his old apartment, and it was their story rather than the size of their offer which had drawn him to accept. It made him feel good that he was helping these people get a start in their new life, because if he couldn’t control his own new life, then he at least needed to know he could help someone else.