Chapter 30
GUY
Down and Out
I can taste the metallic of blood in my mouth. I can see it running from Jay’s nose. We lie panting, side-by-side, backs on the sand, halfway down the beach in front of my apartment.
‘I think you’ve knocked my tooth loose,’ Jay groans.
‘That’s the least you deserve,’ I gripe, coming up to sit, wiping blood from my cheek without knowing where it’s coming from.
Jay brings himself upright, sitting next to me. I’ve no clue where the others are; I was blinded by rage when I saw Jay standing at my front door. This has been a long time coming.
‘I miss Scotty every fucking day, Guy,’ he tells me, making me want to hit him again.
‘You don’t get to say that.’ I can feel pressure at the back of my eyes that I don’t think is a result of our scrap. ‘You introduced him to the hard stuff, Jay. I told you and I told him. Weed, beer, fine. The rest?—’
‘I kick myself every day, Guy. So ya can go on hating me if ya want to, but ya won’t cause me any more damage than I’ve felt already.’ He wipes the back of his hand under his nose and it comes away looking like it’s been coated in red paint.
‘I wasn’t in the right frame of mind myself to think better of it, man.
None of us were. You included. But I’ve accepted, and you need to, that if Scott was hell-bent on finding drugs, he would’ve got them from somewhere.
That accident could’ve happened whether he was high or not.
I didn’t make him get in a car that night, just like I didn’t force him to take drugs. ’
I can’t move my blurred focus from the grains of sand around me, but I sense Jay shrug and hear his sigh. ‘Fuck it. If ya need to make me the scapegoat, I’ll be it. But I’ve done a lot of work on myself in the last few years, man, and I’m not the same kid I was then.’
I hate myself for looking at him and seeing genuineness in his expression. For hearing sincerity in his voice.
‘I’ve got a wife now and a kid of my own,’ he says.
‘I didn’t know that.’
He shrugs. ‘It’s not like we’ve spoken a word to each other since Scotty’s funeral.’
I wipe the stream of red from my face again. This might need medical attention.
Jay stands and offers a hand up. ‘You need to forgive yourself, too. He was yer brother, not yer kid to babysit. He made his own choices and his own mistakes and he’d be fucking irate if he knew ya were broke and singing along to karaoke for a living in his honour.’
I don’t know that I agree with his words, or him, not yet. But I heard one word – scapegoat – and maybe he has been that for me. Someone to take a small amount of responsibility from my own shoulders.
He’s still holding out his hand and after long seconds, I bring mine to meet his, letting him drag me off the sand.
‘Got that out of yer system now, lads?’ Dave asks from somewhere behind us.
He and Trev are standing like bouncers: stances wide, shoulders broad, arms folded across their chests.
I consider the scene, like something out of an underground fight club, and the onlookers we’ve drawn. Rubbing my hands over my filthy, sandy, bloody and beat-up face, I scoff. ‘This is gonna look great splashed over the web tomorrow.’
‘Show us a rock star who doesn’t have a temper,’ Jay says. ‘Can we get patched up now?’
His words have a double meaning, I’m sure, but before I can respond, I remember…
‘Where’s Lyra?’ I ask Dave and Trev.
‘She left, matey.’
Ah fuck.
‘We’ll have to deal with this mess another time, lads. I’ve gotta go after her.’
* * *
I knock on the door of the address she texted me, hoping she didn’t lie. Despite being near inseparable for weeks, we’re always at my apartment or out somewhere, or sometimes at her parents’ house if her mum is working.
Lyra lives in a tiny bungalow that looks as if its owner should be about eighty. Outside the door are two empty plant pots and, honestly, the place looks uninhabited.
I’m relieved when she answers. Then, I immediately realise how badly beaten up I look as she gasps in response.
She holds on to the door frame, not offering to let me inside to her hallway that’s untidy with what appear to be stacked moving boxes, giving me a clue as to why we haven’t spent time here.
‘I’m sorry you had to see that, but it was— It was something I needed to do for Scott. I’m not like that any more. It’s not who I want to be. But the old me had a score to settle.’
A crease forms between her eyes as she exhales.
‘I’m a broken record, I know, but I swear it’s done.’
‘I didn’t leave because I was mad at you or disappointed in you, Guy. I left because I didn’t want to be just another bystander looking on to something you didn’t invite me to see.’
Despite her words, her reticence is clear from the way she’s standing, the way her jaw is gently moving from side to side. Yet she tells me, ‘Come in, let’s get you fixed up.’
I sit on the side of the tub in her small bathroom that notably gives no insight into who she is.
It’s as sterile as a doctors’ surgery, which is fitting, because she cleans me up with stinging alcohol wipes and puts tape strips along a cut she tells me could use a stitch at the corner of my eye.
Meanwhile, I hold a tea towel packed with ice against my fat lip.
She works in silence, and I don’t dare speak and undo her patchwork, until she starts packing things back into her first aid kit.
‘You should stop seeing yourself as two different people. There’s the you from your past and the you now and it’s okay that they’re the same person.
We can learn and grow and become different, better versions of ourselves.
’ She zips the bag shut and meets my eyes.
‘The man sitting in front of me now wouldn’t have changed anything, if it wasn’t for the things he’d seen and done even yesterday. ’
She gently takes control of the ice on my lip and peels it away, dropping the cubes into the sink and looping the tea towel over a heated rail to dry. ‘When you’re ready to let me in, I’ll be here for all of it. The good, the bad and the downright chavvy.’
I give a short laugh, wincing as I feel a tug on my broken skin.
‘But if you can’t learn to love yourself, what chance do I have of you letting me love you?’
She presses a quick kiss to my temple on the side of my face that Jay hasn’t messed up.
I feel drained, exhausted, and I rest my head against her stomach as she holds me.
I want to beg her to keep me here, in her arms, in the sanctity of her place, because I’m barely holding it together. I’m falling apart all over again.
She takes her first aid bag and leaves the room, leaving me sitting on the edge of the tub in my boxer shorts. Alone.
I’ll be damned if I’m going to make her part of it. Damned if I’m going to let her see it. But she’s going to have to be the one to walk away because I’m in so deep, there’s no way out for me when it comes to her, the woman I’ve conjured up from my subconscious.
When I pull myself together enough to find her, she’s made me a cup of tea and left out one of my own t-shirts that she’s previously borrowed.
My blood-stained jeans are already cycling in her washing machine.
I feel guilty to be such a burden. A thug and a burden.
So I decide not to tell her the outcome of the fight with Jay, that maybe, at some point down the line, I could see us being civil.
Maybe he’s right. Scott might have found hard drugs from somewhere else, if not from Jay. He might still have become an addict; we were all guilty of that to some degree. But it doesn’t excuse my failings in it all. I should have stopped it and I didn’t.
Lyra and I drink tea, lounging on her sofa. She tells me she just hasn’t got around to emptying her moving boxes yet, but I reckon there’s something more to that story.
She shows me around her place, which is small but something she’s proud of because it’s hers and she pays for it with her own earnings. I get that.
The one room she doesn’t let me inside is her dark room, even though I’d like to take a look and see her hobby. She has photographs developing and doesn’t want to let in light that could contaminate the film and paper she uses. Since I have zero clue about this stuff, I don’t push it.
Instead, we watch a movie and, though it’s late when we go to bed, there’s something I like too much about being in her room, in sheets that smell of her, in her house, to go to sleep.
We make love, slowly, gently, cautiously, and I hate that I can’t kiss her with my beat-up lips. There’s something about it that’s different to every other time we’ve slept together. It feels heavy, loaded, as if our actions mask unwanted and unspoken conversations.
She falls asleep exactly where I like her to be, but I don’t manage to. There are too many thoughts flying around in my head.
I think if I can just write it all down, I might be able to rest. So I slip out of bed and go in search of a pen and paper.
It’s dark in her home but I’ve been awake for so long that my eyes have adjusted. I don’t find paper and a pen but I do have a glass of water in her kitchen, where I find myself looking at more empty plant pots in her small yard through the window.
Then I remember the dark room. There’s no light to upset anything right now, so I let myself inside the room, which is dimly lit by a red light, so faint my eyes would need to adjust if I hadn’t already been up lying in the dark for hours.
And nothing could have prepared me for what I find in here…
Clipped along multiple rows of string, interspersed with handwritten notes, are pictures of me.
They aren’t just pictures of me. Some recent, at Earl’s Castle. Others that go way back.
I’m on stage with the band, with Scott, Trev and Jay. I recognise the stadium we played at in Madrid.
Then I see a picture that takes my breath away.
My dreams from a different perspective.
She was there.
That Night.
Seven years ago, she danced like a bird opposite me, she hung her head back and sang every lyric, and when I sang ‘You and Me’ directly to her, she took my picture.