Blazed(55)

WE sat in a reflective silence for a while. Daniel pulled my legs over his and snuggled into me, letting me rest my head on his shoulder until our glasses were empty again. I could relate to that feeling of having the void filled and watching it slowly drain out again until my purpose was redundant, but unlike that glass, it wasn't as simple as refilling me with any old vintage. Even when I was at the point of suicide, I'd not felt quite so useless.

"Tell me I've done the right thing, Dan."

"You have, Emmy. I admire you for having the strength to do it. I think if Jonathan had thrown this kind of curve ball in my direction, I would have gone along with it and ended up getting chewed up by resentment."

"So why does it feel like a mistake?"

He saved his legs from underneath mine and padded into the kitchen for an ice bucket. "Because you love to love. It's just your nature. There are lovers, and fighters, and you ain't so hot at the fighting. Your love, once given, is selfless and unconditional, and for once you're doing something that's best for you. It was necessary but unusual." He threw the box of chocolates through to me and curled up on a foot stool with his legs crossed like Buddha. "Don't write off love yet. The world is your oyster, Emmeline Tudor— for that is your real name. And you know, while I may not be a huge fan of seafood, I do like having the option to be a pescatarian."

The metaphor made me smile. Friends and lovers would come and go, but I thanked my lucky stars that I had someone like Daniel as a permanent fixture in my life. Our matching rose quartz bracelets were our promises to accept each other and we always had. In a strange totally crazy way, he was my first love before Hunter but I never had the driving inclination to sleep with him, even though we had given each other our virginities because we didn't want it to be too serious or with someone who didn't deserve it. Maybe that explained why my attitude to sex went on to be so cavalier. If it was, I didn't care. I loved Daniel with all my heart and I knew that the fact I was still around to tell him so gave him a lot of faith and hope.

"How did you get so wise, Dan?"

He frowned halfway through his bite into a chocolate and nodded his head towards a picture of him and Jonathan stood next to their unnecessarily large television. "Because I fell for the wrong man too, except the hot road into hell was the lesser evil in my case." That was true. It had been a massive scandal when their relationship was first discovered. The fallout was ugly. A lot of people lost respect for both men— respect that they were both still fighting to earn back. Of course Jonathan didn't have any mystery spouses hidden in the woodwork. He was just an older superior with a big heart. It made me happy to watch them prove everyone wrong when they said it was a mistake.

"I might be out of line in saying it, Emmy, but I'm glad you met Blaze. Like it or not, you've grown massively as a person because of him. I was scared to leave you on your own for a really long time, but I'm not any more. He's been good for you, even if he has turned out to be a massive bastard."

"He has," I agreed, "so what the hell do I do without him?" How was I ever going to keep myself strong enough to not pick up the phone and call him when I was having a bad day? How could I stop myself from thinking about what might have been when I looked at that ring, which I'd stupidly put back on the same finger? Would I ever stop wondering if he was still thinking about me, and what the hell would I do if he really wanted me to honour our plans for Christmas?

"You live, Emmy. You have us to look out for you. Just tell us what you need us to do to go on living."

"Right now?" Daniel nodded, rolling the stem of his wine glass between his palms while he waited for my orders. "Right now, I really want to watch Chicago and pretend that we don't know all the words."

He grinned. "You got it, Roxy."





LIFELESS GREY EYES stared up at me, leaving only the look of dead panic. I was still smiling when I looked down at her and shoved the pillow back underneath her head. Her features still remained a mystery, but her eyes were just so... there, and I got a sense that they'd propelled all kinds of hate at me before.

She looked so small in that huge bed. One tiny life— what did it matter if she was gone? She deserved to die...





GASPING, I LURCHED out of the bed in Daniel and Jonathan's guest room and staggered across the hallway to the bathroom. It had a been a night of too much wine, too much chocolate and too many musicals to top a day of too much emotional abuse, and consequentially, I looked like shit. My eyes were like huge craters in my pallid face, and my lips were starting to chap again. And so began another cycle of illness.

The guys didn't flinch at the sound of me retching, seduced into a coma by the cognac Jonathan had cracked open when he'd gotten home and heard the miserable tale of my failed relationship. I'd been right there with them in their alcoholic buzz up to a point but never quite managed to shake off that sense of uselessness.

I wished it wasn't so late, or early. It was still mostly dark outside, so I knew it must be in the small numbers of the AM and not really an appropriate time to take a shower. The nightmare had left me drenched in a cold sweat and it made me feel dirty, just like last time. I was vaguely aware that I'd been having a lot of bad dreams recently, but didn't tend to remember them when I'd woke up. They were almost definitely the same one. There was no mistaking that triumphant flare of pride when my eyes first opened— the one I couldn't control but made me feel awful anyway.

With no methods of hygiene available, I slouched back into the lounge to attack rather than drink some more wine. If it made me sick again, I didn't care. I didn't want to be capable of cognitive thought for at least a fortnight, or until scientists could develop an effective way to selectively erase memories like in Men In Black. Whichever came first.

I made the stupid mistake of looking at my phone. The picture of Blaze and I was still the wallpaper, but that wasn't what felt like a dagger in my heart. He'd been trying to call me. A lot. For my own sanity, I dismissed the notification for his missed calls and erased all twelve of his text messages without reading them. If I let myself believe there was a way back, I was likely to take it. I missed him, and my still throbbing muscles reminded me that he'd spent an afternoon making it clear that his place was inside me in every way. It was, and I'd probably feel him there for days, getting lost in the fantasies of how hotly we burned for each other, and how bone-shakingly awesome it would be if we found our ways back to each other.

Maybe I had handled it wrong. Maybe I should have just been happy to have had the chance at all...

"Hi, this is Blaze. Obviously you're calling at a ridiculous hour and I'm sleeping so leave me a message and I'll call you back when this man's brain opens for business."

I called five times before I gave up and told myself that I needed to cut my losses. He's been upfront in telling me that he couldn't get attached and obviously had a damn good reason. This was never meant to get serious; it was always supposed to just be both of us getting our end away, and he was going to realise that too. We'd just gotten swept up in the drama, but in a few days, this would all look much better. We might even be friends again one day. Purely platonic friends. Another notch in my 'platonic penis' belt.



I sat and drank for hours, but didn't really feel like it was touching my sobriety. When the early rumble of traffic started to move outside, I sneaked out as quietly as possible with my sights set on a secluded café that kept stacks of books that people had left behind. Failing that, I'd buy a new book. I wanted to get lost in someone else's woeful romance.

When I'd sourced my caffeine fix, I tried to distract myself with as much banal bullshit as possible to clear my mind before I started reading. I logged into my email account on my mobile phone and went through the tedious task of deleting all the junk mail. Depressingly, that left me only with emails from Hunter with various 'URGENT' titles. Idiot. He thought anything was urgent when it came from his mouth/fingers. I counted through all the change in my purse, taking out the copper change for the charity box. That was my good deed for the day. It was around the time I was sorting through my old receipts that I was reminded of the last time I'd declared a good deed done.

A faded black and dog eared business card covered in gold font stared up at me from between the scraps of paper. A business card for one Calloway Ryan of New York— the sexy suit from Oxford street. What was it with these gorgeous men and their equally as impressive names? I hadn't made good on my promise to call him and I still had his money clip...

And then I found the creased wedding invitation from Hunter stuffed into a credit card compartment. That invitation to Japan was still open. I knew the language, had the money and could contact the right people...

Or I could swallow my pride and throw myself into the lava pits. The moment I looked at my phone and saw Blaze's face staring up at me was the same moment my mind was made up. I could sit around moping or I could start to make some big changes in my life— productive this time. I'd been offered so many opportunities and never taken advantage of them, and running away was my forte. It was my tendency to build bridges to replace those I'd burned, but now it was time to rebuild some of those that weren't completely destroyed.