Five
Leah
M el and I were exhausted on our way home. We should’ve spent every minute talking about the concert, but Mel was shrouded in thought, and I was on the verge of tears, discreetly wiping my eyes every time she made a turn that had her head looking the other way.
How come it all felt so fresh?
Wasn’t time meant to heal you?
Weren’t you supposed to look back from such an event and feel like a lifetime had lapsed instead?
Stepping out of the building meant facing life again, and the melancholy that loomed over us in that car reminded me of the moment the boys drove off to follow their dreams. Mel had admired my strength for saying goodbye to Carter, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think I was the only one saying a hard goodbye. She’d suffered the “what ifs” too when Rome turned his back on her. More happened than she’d let on, I quickly came to realize, but getting the truth out of Melanie was like trying to create an echo without sound to start it.
Utterly impossible. She was a stubborn beast.
Reality immediately set in when she parked my Jeep next to her sedan in the underground parking lot of our condominium. It took a lot of effort to remove myself from the seat and focus on the now instead of how brilliant that concert had been.
Eventually, with a lot of laughter to be had, we collapsed out of the car and stood up on wobbly legs. Completely shattered, we hooked our arms around each other and walked very slowly to the elevator.
“I may never move again,” I remarked.
She giggled. “Me neither.”
“Well, you danced like crazy.”
“So did you.”
“Yeah, and now my body is broken.”
“Well… it might kick-start with that fine ass.”
I followed her gaze to a nice car that had just parked. Ah, our hot new neighbour. He stepped out, and Melanie moaned in approval. I chuckled at her blatant display of want.
“You can have him,” I whispered to her.
She gasped. “Are you sure? You’ve passed up a lot of guys for me.”
“The only reason I passed up other guys for you was because I was in a relationship.”
Cole was my last relationship. We ended a few months back. He was an engineering student, brilliant and sweet. I got a little freaked out by how serious he wanted things to go. I bailed on the relationship five months in, around the time he told me he had to relocate for a job offer. I jumped straight on that shit, using it as an excuse we couldn’t work with that sort of distance between us. It was actually because I liked him. A lot. He was the kind of guy I was prepared to be intimate with, which was a serious step. And I was terrified of commitment. I couldn’t risk having my heart broken a second time. And Cole, despite being safe and easy, was annoyingly lovable. He was the kind of guy you could see yourself settling down with. Nothing about him at all screamed rebellion.
But still; I didn’t want to love him.
I didn’t want to love anyone.
I didn’t want to love, period.
Oh, how the tables had turned.
We stepped into the elevator with Hot Neighbour, and he nodded in greeting at us. Melanie stood up straighter, giving him her best flirty smile. I shook my head to myself, knowing damn well that screwing Hot Neighbour wasn’t going to erase all her years of pining for Rome.
“Exciting night?” Hot Neighbour asked us, scanning both of us up and down, as we rode up.
Melanie nodded. “Oh, yeah. Saw a concert in the city. You?”
“Just a night out with some buds.”
“Nice,” Melanie said with approval.
“What band did you see?”
“Fatal Rebellion.”
His brows shot up. “No shit? You know those guys are from here, right? They used to sing at a local bar.”
She smiled. “Oh? Wow.”
“Yeah, they hit it big with a fan made video. Some celebrity’s brat shared it with millions of her followers.”
“You know, that vaguely sounds familiar,” she went on.
I held in my laughter as the elevator doors opened and we all filed out.
“I’m Daryl, by the way,” he said behind us as he went down the hall in the opposite direction.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she replied, not even offering him her name in return. Oh, sneaky girl.
“Playing hard to get, huh,” I whispered.
“I like when a man chases,” she clarified. “It makes the build-up so much more fun.”
I shrugged. I wouldn’t know. I’d spent most of my years being the chaser.
When we got inside our apartment, she went straight into one bathroom, and I went straight to the other. I took a much-needed shower, scrubbing off the sweat I’d accumulated while being pressed against people. Some of it wasn’t mine.
Totally disgusting.
But if that was the price for attending the best concert of my life, I could definitely live with that.
When I got out, I joined Mel in the kitchen. She pulled out two wine glasses and filled it to the brim. We clinked glasses and downed that shit.
“To men,” she said, on the second glass, “I hope they die a horrible death.”
“What, all of them?” I asked her.
“Every last fucking one of them. You know how peaceful our world would be if women ran it?”
“It would actually be kind of bitchy,” I muttered.
She paused. “You’re right. Fucking China would talk behind Russia’s back, and once a month all the jealous allied countries would go against each other. Fucking France would be stuck up, and the Germans would think they cooked their sausages the best, while England walked away with their fucking awesome accents –”
“Stop it,” I laughed, wrapping my arm around my stomach. “You’re killing me!”
“Yeah, taking your mind off your soulmate?”
My laughter slowly died. “My soulmate?”
She tilted her head to the side and raised a thin brow. “After leaving that concert, even I’m unable to keep Carter out of my thoughts. He looked incredible.”
“He did.”
“I’m talking beyond incredible. I’d completely forgotten how hot he was.”
“He’s pretty hot.”
“Bet you he’s swamped with groupies as we speak.”
I tensed, trying to appear casual. “Right.”
“That’s just the lifestyle,” she added, glumly taking another gulp. “Him and Rome and the rest of the boys… Just fucking anything that moves, I bet. We have to remember that, babe. Can't mince reality with hope.”
The mood immediately shifted after that.
We didn’t drink for fun.
We drank to forget.
*
I collapsed into bed much later and stared up at the ceiling for a few moments. After thinking about the band, my mind wandered, and my insides twisted with warmth. A minute later, I got off and bent down to grab the shoebox I’d placed under the bed a very long time ago. I turned on the lamp and wiped the sheet of dust off the box before opening it. When I laid eyes on the contents, I blinked away the tears.
I kept a whole stack of pictures in here of Carter and me. There were also small little things that I accumulated from our time together: arcade cards; black and white photo booth images; a couple guitar picks I’d stolen off him; a pen that he used to write his lyrics with; some loose pieces of paper he scribbled random lyrics on, with one paper in particular that had a line at the top he’d written absently, which read, “Leah has nice tits.” I chuckled at that and leafed through the items, purposely ignoring the letters until they were the very last things in the box.
There were four letters, ones he’d sent me the year he’d left after I didn’t return his calls and changed my number. I knew it was old school to resort to writing me a letter, but I assumed, using his own logic, it was the only way he felt he could get a hold of me.
I never opened up the letters. I was mourning the loss of him, and in the process of trying to move on, I hid the letters away. I promised myself that when I was truly over him, I would open them. But… with the way things had gone tonight, seeing him there on stage, looking the way he did, singing from the bottom of his soul…
I wasn’t anywhere near ready to be opening them yet.
I didn’t keep this box because I was consumed in him. It was just that I missed him. I missed having that connection with another person. Aside from all the amazing sex we’d had, he was truly my best friend, and having these little treasures was a reminder of a happy time in my life.
“I miss you,” I whispered to a photo of us, running my thumb over his face. “I miss my best friend.”
With a heavy heart, I very slowly placed them back into the box, making sure they were neatly positioned. There was an old watch of his that I kept, only discovering it on his dresser after he’d left. I kept it because there was that faint smell of him lingering on the leather band. I brought it to my nose and lightly sniffed it. Maybe it was my head conjuring up the smell because it’d been so long, but I felt the nostalgia just the same.
When I finished, I returned the box beneath the bed and climbed back under the light covers. Then I sat there some more before I grabbed my laptop from the nightstand.
You can call it stalking, but I prefer the term curiosity being the reason I looked up Carter online. I’d never done it before. It would have interfered in my getting over him stage, so I’d done well distancing myself from the internet where it was a playground for Carter Matheson articles.
Now, before anyone thinks I’m a loser that is falling into the trap of obsessing over Carter again, I’d like to make a case against that. I wasn’t pathetic like I used to be. Simply put, there are residual feelings you get from every important moment in life because it was a part of you, and completely burying it isn’t likely to work.
I’d like to think I’d moved on, mostly. I didn’t pine for him like I used to. If anything, I felt like I’d woken up the second he left to travel down a path that might have ultimately led him to his early grave.
I saw things for the first time. I wasn’t in a love-sick daze. I was a realist, learning very early on that love didn’t exist the way I thought it did. I had deluded myself into believing in a fairy-tale romance, where men gave you their hearts without pause, and women swooned into their arms and stayed there forever.
Happily-ever-after with another man was a dream that needed to be burned and mutilated.
I learned to make myself happy.
Learned to depend on my abilities.
I made money and had a good nest egg in case of rainy days. I experienced a whole array of firsts on my own: finishing school at the top of my class, buying my own car, paying my own bills, having my own credit card… I didn’t need a man there to hold my hand. I didn’t need to walk on eggshells because of their attitude changes. I walked into a relationship with eyes wide open, and the second they treated me less than I deserved, I dropped their asses faster than a grenade.
So, I didn’t like to think of this as a moment of complete weakness. I wasn’t vulnerable and my heart wasn’t bleeding for him, but I needed another dose of Carter after watching him fuck the crowd with his eyes.
Perhaps I wanted closure, to know for sure that he’d moved on. I wondered if he was so well into his fame that he forgot all about me, and us. Our time together seemed like such a lifetime ago, when in reality it had been only three years.
There’s something particularly odd the moment Google rewards you with 4,510,000 results. It’s sort of a what-the-fuck kind of moment. The face I’d stroked infinite times looked older, more chiselled. He got a few tattoos, was broader than he’d ever been, and I wasn’t sure if it was Photoshop, but his abs looked especially impressive. To think, I’d run my tongue down those abs, tasted the sweat off his skin, ran my nails into his back as we came together.
I chewed on my nail as I scrolled through the images, ignoring that disappointed part of me for giving in.
Don’t you remember what an addiction is? That’s what he was to you, and now you’re about to relapse.
Ignoring that deluded voice that knew nothing, my impulse meandered into the videos territory. It was a bad territory—I needed more alcohol. Did I have any left hiding in my barren cupboards? Probably not, but it was okay.
I’d make do somehow.
Liar.
It felt like a cement truck had settled on top of my chest when I listened to the first interview. The floodgates opened, and a tidal wave of emotions ran through me.
This was a natural reaction, I reassured myself.
I let out a breath of air and quivered hearing his voice, deep and smooth, answering questions from a hair twirling reporter that giggled for no reason.
She leaned over to supposedly hear him better, pouring her cleavage out in front of him in the process. He seemed entirely immune to her gestures, that signature smirk playing at his lips as he answered. His responses were often short and void of any real information.
He seemed to be exceptional at dodging the hard stuff.
“Is there a moment in your life that stands out to you the most that influenced your decision in becoming a musician?” she asked, and it was her first serious question in her list of craptacular “what’s your favourite colour” type of ones.
“I never wanted to be a musician,” Carter answered, leaning back in his leather chair. “I was thrown into it.”
“By who?” she eagerly asked, looking like she’d hit the mother-load. He’d clearly never said anything this personal before.
He paused and absently scratched his jaw, his eyes moving away from hers. “By someone I don’t know anymore.”
“No names? I’m sure that person would be happy to hear your thanks, Carter.”
He chuckled sardonically. “She’d probably nuke that thanks, that’s the way she is. In all seriousness, the past should stay in the past.”
I went tense and cold hearing his response.
The past should stay in the past.
That was what I’d been trying to do, and he just said it in the most blasé manner. At least he wasn’t denying my existence altogether. Maybe I was a fleeting thought in his life after all. He’d clearly moved on. Our past together seemed so trivial in the grand scheme of things.
The woman didn’t spare a second before she pestered him about his latest fluff. Some girl by the name of Molly Anderson. He seemed annoyed by that question, and I read him so well, noting the way he blinked rapidly and inhaled sharply.
Who is this girl?
Without shame, I opened up another tab and looked her up. Even though I felt like I wasn’t pining for him—truly, I was okay—this was still strangely hard. I swallowed a lump as the search results mirrored my expectations.
She had endless long legs and large auburn curls; she was a daughter of a rich investor, and she’d only started to gain popularity after her relationship with Carter came to light almost four months ago.
The gossip sites were all over them, posting up articles with images of them eating together, or in the streets together. All the photos consisted of her in some seriously fucked-up outfits plucked from the late 80s. She also was an aspiring model— gasp, who would have thought it? —and her photo shoots were borderline ridiculous than they were “artsy”.
Whatever. No judgement here.
These are just natural feelings. I reiterated to myself. Totally natural.
I then gritted my teeth, forcing myself to admit she was actually gorgeous.
A gorgeous giraffe, maybe.
But, as is obvious, I was too intent on finding ways to hate her.
When I finished feeding my curiosity, only because I was tired beyond belief, I put the laptop down and went to sleep. Facing the screen, I stared at a picture of his face before my eyelids were too heavy to open.
In my semi-sleep state, I remembered him spooning me the way he used to. The way his hand roamed up and down the side of my body, and the feel of his breaths against my neck right before he kissed it.
I remembered the feeling of his chest vibrating with laughter after he told me a horrible joke, and in my dream state, I tasted an alternate reality that had his lips brushing against my ear, whispering delicately, “I love you, Angel.”
In that reality, I was no longer afraid to love.