Conviction(13)

“No,” I shout, “No, my answer’s no now, and it’ll always be no. I’ll walk away, Jet. If you keep this up, I’ll walk away from it all, you, the band, all of it. I’m not working with this hanging over us. You either get your head around the fact that it’s never gonna happen or I’m f*cking off for good and I mean it this time. My life’s f*cked up enough. I don’t need your shit adding to it.” His shoulders slump as he stands in front of me. I feel bad, but I’m still pissed off and I mean what I’ve said. I’m thirty-three-years-old and I’m so sick of this life that I’m leading. I love the band and the music, but everything outside of that is seriously f*cked. The sex, the women, the parties, all of it means nothing. It’s all superficial bullshit and I hate it, and the people that are part of it. I just want to go home to my family and step away from all of it and the last thing I need is Jet and his ‘let’s have a relationship’ drama going on while I’m at home. I don’t need his phone calls and texts, begging me to just let us try. I want to sleep and I want to dream, and right now, I just need him to go.

“One day, one day you’ll understand,” he says through gritted teeth. “You’ll love someone so f*cking much that it’s painful and then you’ll get it.”

“No, no I won’t. Not again, I won’t. See, I’ve been there. I know what a lying, spiteful, deceitful little cunt love is and I won’t ever go there again. So you just need to make up your mind, you either stop with all this bollocks and we come back in September or we leave tomorrow and announce the end of the band, ‘cause I’m done this time. I’m seriously done.”

“But I love you, I f*cking love you, Reed.”

I’m done, I can’t do this anymore. “Get out! Get out of my room and stay out of my life. I’ll sort out a separate flight back to London tomorrow. I don’t want you to call, text or email me. I want no contact with you, whatsoever. I’m done Jet, I just want some peace. Now, get out of my room and stay out of my f*cking life.”

He looks at me for a few seconds and I have no idea what the look in his eyes means. He starts to nod his head. “Your call Reed, just remember that this was your call.” He turns and leaves the room without looking back. I screw the cap on the water bottle and launch it at the door as he shuts it behind him. Fucking drama queen. I love him, but he does my f*cking head in sometimes. I lock the bedroom door, pick up my bottle of water and climb into bed. I turn on the telly with the remote control and flick through the channels. Notting Hill is playing on one of the film channels and that’s all it takes for my mind to drift to her.

We went to see this film together. I moaned, but she reminded me that I’d promised to go with her and she would come with me to see the Green Mile. I didn’t end up hating Notting Hill quite as much as I thought I would, but we never did get to watch the Green Mile together when it came out the following year. I leave the film on, I don’t usually, any other night it’d be off… gone. I go out of my way to avoid anything, music, films, places, anything and anywhere that might remind me of her, or take me back to that night. But after everything else that’s happened tonight so far, it seems a bit pointless.

I pile my pillows on top of each other, turn off the lights, lay back and attempt to watch the film. It takes all of twenty seconds before my mind starts to wander back to her. December the thirtieth, nineteen ninety-nine was the last time I’d seen her in person. I left her at the end of her drive. We’d spent the night making love in the back of my brother’s car. We had a spot in the local woods where we’d park, climb into the back and worship each other’s bodies the best we could through our clothes. I loved the rare occasions that we were able to share a bed and I could get her completely naked. Five times, that’s all it happened. I’ve worshiped and fantasised about this girl for most of my life and I’d only seen her completely naked five times. I’d only gotten to fall asleep and wake up with her in my arms twice, and yet all these years on, I was still desperate to have that experience again. Despite what she did, despite what her actions caused, I was still in love with her.

Her family had totally forbidden her from seeing me. According to them, I was from a rough family and the fact that we lived on the local council estate didn’t meet with their approval either. So, we’d spent a year sneaking around, seeing each other behind their backs. My brothers were good, Ty and Jordan both had their own places and let us borrow a bedroom for a few hours and we even stayed over at Ty’s twice, but it wasn’t enough. We wanted more. We wanted to be together all the time, every day, so we set our plan in motion. I was at college studying music, but we needed to get some money together so we could try to get away. Tyler gave me a job as a labourer with his building firm and I played the local pubs and bars in the evenings and on a Sunday afternoon. Meebs was still at school but was already sixteen so we wouldn’t be breaking the law, but we knew they’d come after us just the same. She had a part-time job in a clothing shop at the local shopping centre and she worked there two evenings and every weekend. We saved every penny.

The plan was for Miles to drop us at Guildford Station that night and we were going to get the train to Cornwall from there. We chose Cornwall as we’d both always wanted to learn to surf. We loved the beach and we thought, hoped, that it’d be the last place her parents and arsehole of a brother would ever think to look for us. She was going to leave a note, telling them that we’d gone to London. We thought we could lie low in Cornwall for a while, see if we could pick up some work and then once the fuss had died down, we could head over to Europe and backpack our way around. Meebs would do bar work, I’d do whatever I could pick up, but was hoping that music would be a part of whatever I did.