Chapter 28
GUY
The Fallout
Lyra and I leave without saying goodbye to my family and when we exit, we aren’t holding hands the way we were when we arrived.
‘Are you going to give me the silent treatment all the way back to Roker?’ Lyra asks after ten minutes of silence that’s only served to elevate my temper.
‘Maybe, Lyra, because I was always told that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.’
I hate how shitty I sound but the fact is, I’m pissed off.
Mostly with my family but with her, too.
I’m pissed off that she convinced me to go there tonight, to take her with me, to let her have that insight into who I am.
And I’m really fucked off that my palms are sweating and my pulse is through the roof and even when I’m not speaking, I feel as if my lungs are being squeezed and it’s getting harder and harder to breathe.
‘I don’t know what happened, Guy. Talk to me.’ God, she’s not even irate, she’s annoyed but typically calm, rational.
‘I don’t want to talk, Lyra. I don’t want to fucking—’ I inhale deeply, dragging in an unsteady breath that doesn’t feel like it’s enough.
We’re coming off a dual carriageway and getting closer to home and I think, if I can just hold it together for a little bit longer, she won’t have to see me fall.
‘Are you okay?’ she asks, glancing my way then back to the road.
I wind down my window, the fresh air welcome but still not shifting the tightening in my chest.
‘Fine,’ I manage, physically holding my ribcage as my heart tries to explode right out of it.
‘Guy.’ Her voice is softer now. ‘If this is going to work, you have to let me in.’
That does it. Her bringing our relationship into this.
Exactly like I knew would happen. There were two certainties tonight and I stupidly chose to ignore them.
One, I would be reminded of how I let my kid brother down catastrophically, the only person who’s ever really loved me.
Two, Lyra would see where I came from and we’d be ruined, too good to be true.
I respond how I’ve learned to over the years – offensively. ‘I don’t need saving, Dr Lyra. I’m not someone you can fix. I never asked for your help. I don’t need it and I don’t want it. So take your do-gooding somewhere else. Maybe your next boyfriend will be a fuck-up, too.’
God, Jesus, the pain in my chest.
She thinks she isn’t like her family, not worthy of them, but she is like them. She’s caring and good.
‘Guy?’ She sounds panicked. I can hear it in her voice but I can’t see it on her face because my eyes are squeezed shut, one hand on my chest because I can’t breathe, the other braced on the dashboard because I feel like I’m going to black out.
‘Pull over, Lyra. Pull over,’ I gasp.
She does. Into the car park of a McDonald’s drive-thru, but I don’t notice that until I’ve crawled out of the car and I’m propped up against the wheel, legs splayed out in front of me.
‘You’re having an anxiety attack, Guy. Breathe, baby. Just breathe.’ I look at her now, hunkered down in front of me, full of compassion, and it’s the straw that breaks my back and obliterates the dam that’s holding back a reservoir of tears.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say as hot tears roll down my cheeks and I try but fail to steady my breathing.
‘Shh, shh, shh. You have nothing to be sorry about. Nothing at all.’ She drops to her knees and holds my face in her palms, wiping my cheeks with her thumbs. ‘Big breath in for me. We’ll count to four.’
And she does count, though I can’t hold it for four. But she repeats it again and again and again, still stroking my face, making me feel like I’m not alone, until finally, my lungs are expanding and retracting with some semblance of rhythm.
What I’m left feeling is drained, remorseful, guilty, heartbroken and grateful for the woman sitting next to me on the dirty ground of a Maccy D’s car park, holding my hand, catching me as I fall, in a way no one has caught me before.
* * *
She doesn’t leave my apartment once she’s driven me home, though I tell her to go, guilt free.
Instead, she asks me, ‘Why would I leave the man I love when he needs me?’
And I stop short of crying again but she’ll never know how much her words mean to me, how much I desperately want them to be true. How ready I am to be loved by someone.
When we’re lying in my bed, her exactly where I like her to be – curled onto my chest, her leg entwined with mine – I tell her what happened with my mam.
‘They always saw us as an ATM. Before the band, when I was told to get out and get a job instead of going to school. Especially when the band started doing well. And you can imagine how frequent and sizeable the demands for money got when we were successful.’
‘But you bought them houses,’ Lyra says. I know she’s trying to keep her tone neutral and mostly listen but every now and then, she responds to me and I can hear it in her voice – shock.
‘I tried to give them everything they wanted to keep them away from Scott.’ Her hair feels like silk beneath my fingers and the simple act of stroking it makes it easier to talk somehow. ‘I would tell him, don’t be daft, kid, they’re your family, they love you. Blood means everything.’
‘Like I told you about going to the party tonight?’
‘I guess, yeah. The stupid thing is, part of me believed it. Even though I knew they liked the money, despite every memory reminding me that the love wasn’t there, I believed it.’
‘Because you wanted to.’ She props herself up on my chest, looking into my eyes in the dark room.
‘I think that’s why I was mad at you tonight.
I’m sorry, Lyra, none of it was your fault and I was a dick to you in the car.
’ I hate that I was. I tuck her hair from her temple behind her ear.
The very last person in the world I want to be shitty with is the woman I’m holding right now.
‘I think I wanted to believe what you were telling me, so I let myself go back there. I let myself fall for it, again. Like I have so many times before. Stupid.’
She turns into my palm and kisses it. ‘We all want to be loved, Guy, for who we are, not what we’re worth in gold coins. That doesn’t make you stupid.’
I take the kind of breath that makes her rise and fall against my body, tracing the outline of her beautiful face with my fingertips, and tell I her what I’ve known for weeks. ‘I love you, Lyra.’
And now, I get to wait for it all to fall to wreck and ruin. For the ticking time bomb to go off.