I Love You to Death (7 page)

"Yeah I’m okay Luke, thanks," I reply, trying to smile at him.

"You want me to introduce you to my flatmate?" he asks.

I take a sip of my beer. "Um, maybe later."

Luke smiles at me. "Sure," he says, leaning against the counter sipping his beer and still watching me.

I have to change this. I move and lean against the counter beside him, probably not the best idea, but I just have to change it. There’s about a foot of space between us, but it feels much smaller.

Luke looks down at me. "Not really into big parties then?"

Is it that obvious? "Mmmm, not really into situations where I don’t know anyone," I say surprising myself.

He half laughs. "Yeah I know what you mean. The party was Jared’s idea really, not mine."

I look sideways at Luke. He’s staring out of the kitchen into the living room now, like he’s trying to work out what all of these people are doing in his house. I wonder if he truly doesn’t want them here, if he’s just being accommodating to them and his flatmate.

We don’t say anything more, both of us just watching the people as they talk, laugh and interact with each other. I try to imagine if he feels like he’s watching it all from the outside, like I do. I wonder if he also feels like an observer in his own life. But I can’t possibly ask him, so instead I finish my beer which catches up with the ones I’ve already had at home.

"Bathroom?" I ask.

He turns back to me, a small smile on his face now. "I’ll show you where it is. Thanks for coming by the way."

I actually smile back at him. Somehow he makes this easier.

I’m in the bathroom when it happens.

"Ash, how you doing? Man, you look really good tonight."

Liam, shit.

"I’m fine thanks," I answer without looking, concentrating instead on just washing my hands.

"So ah Ash, do you wanna maybe go out sometime?" he asks in a voice full of confidence, but nothing sincere.

I stop washing my hands but refuse to turn around. I don’t want to look at him, especially now. I’ve never liked him even if he was harmless, but right now this feels very different. He’s never done anything like this before. Yes, he made some stupid comments to rile me up when he knew Sam wasn’t around, but nothing like this. I don’t understand why he thinks he can do this. He knows what happened to Sam, so why is he doing this to me now. Was he always just waiting?

"No Liam," I finally say. "I don’t think that would be a good idea."

He says nothing more, but suddenly I know he’s standing right behind me. I can feel his breath on the back of my neck. It is hot and makes me feel sick. I don’t want him this close to me. I look up and see his reflection in the mirror, staring at me.

"Ash," he says, a smile on his face. "Come on, it’ll be fun, I promise."

I turn now and face him. "No Liam, I really don’t think so."

I watch as his eyes widen. I watch as the confidence falls from his face. I watch as anger replaces it, and I suddenly realise just how close he is when he spits out, "Why Ash, I’m not good enough, not good enough for you. Not like Sam?"

I flinch at the words. I’m boxed in, trapped against the sink and my heart is racing now. Liam doesn’t seem to notice as he continues.

"Look I know what happened with Sam okay, I just thought maybe you might be over it all, you know, ready to think about someone else."

"Fuck you Liam," I suddenly scream at him. "Fuck you."

I put my hands on his chest to push him away but he grabs my wrists. His grip tightens as he stares at me and all I can smell is the alcohol on his breath.

"What?" he says, his voice harder now. "What is your problem Ash, what makes you think I’m not good enough? You aren’t that perfect you know, not with all the shit you carry around."

I’m shaking now. Shaking at the words he’s throwing at me, shaking at the closeness of him, shaking at the anger that’s radiating off of him. I feel sick, scared and desperate to get away from him. He was always a dick at work, but never this bad, never this aggressive. I try to push him away again but his fingers tighten. My skin is burning and I twist my arms to try and free them from his grip. He doesn’t let go.

"Ash," says a voice I instantly recognise. "Are you okay?"

I say nothing, my eyes closing now as frustrated tears threaten to fall from them. I have to block Liam out, block out the look that’s on his face, try to pretend he isn’t this close to me. I can only whisper now as I say, "Let me go Liam, just fuck off and let me go."

He doesn’t move and all I can smell is the stench of alcohol and his warm breath which is blowing in my face. I’m really going to be sick in a minute. Still he doesn’t move.

"Get the fuck out of here you asshole," says a different voice. It’s spoken so angrily, but I still don’t open my eyes. I feel Liam let go of my wrists and finally move away from me and although I’m barely standing, I can’t do anything except open my eyes, turn and walk quickly away. I don’t look back, I walk out of the bathroom and somewhere, anywhere else, opening the nearest door I can find. I hear someone call out my name but I ignore it and close myself in the room. It’s someone’s bedroom, a small lamp on a table illuminating a large room with double bed and an open closet, a smaller bathroom through another open door. Walls covered in band posters. Piles of books stacked everywhere all over the floor.

I’m still shaking as I listen to the shouts from outside. I don’t know what’s going on out there, but several voices are shouting and then a door slams. A few minutes later I hear the door to the room I’m in open. I don’t turn around.

"Ash?"

Luke.

"Ash, are you okay?"

I shake my head now, honestly answering his question for once. I still can’t turn around, can’t face him. My whole body is shaking now; at the words Liam said, at his touch on my skin, at his breath in my face. I can’t make it stop.

"I’m so sorry," Luke says quietly. "I shouldn’t have invited him, I’m sorry."

He closes the door and walks over to me. I can feel him standing directly behind me. Still I say nothing.

"I’m really sorry Ash," Luke continues. "I don’t know what else to say."

My tears are falling freely now and I lower my face, covering it with my hands, burying my shame. Luke must step around me because the next thing I know, his arms are around me and he’s holding me. The next thing I know is my face is buried in his chest and I’m crying. He gently strokes my hair and doesn’t say anything more and all I can feel are his arms, wrapped around me. All I can feel is the warmth of his body, pressed against mine. All I can smell is him through my tears.

He doesn’t say anything more to me and I don’t know how he knows how to do this. How can I possibly feel okay standing here with him like this, after what happened back in the bathroom? I don’t want to be this close to him, but I can’t bring myself to move away, because he feels warm, strangely safe. And although I know this is wrong and I should move, I can’t because I feel my shaking body finally start to slow down.

How can any of this feel okay?

∞

When I was a kid, I met someone who was exactly like me. Grace hated making friends too. Neither of us would’ve even known each other, if it wasn’t for school seating arrangements. I still don’t know why we were sat together. It wasn’t alphabetical, I was a Black, she was a Robinson, so we were nowhere near each other. I guess it was just luck.

Or bad luck in her case.

When we first got put together, neither of us said anything for the whole day. I was too shy and she was too shy. I wanted to be friends with her and later on she told me she did too. It just took us a while to get there. Once we got over it though, that was it. We were best friends, at least until the inevitable happened.

The reason we did become friends in the end, is simple. She stuck up for me. She defended me when no one else did and after that, well it was impossible for me not to like her.

Because I was so shy, I used to get picked on. A lot. It was ok when my older brother Seth was around, but by the time I met Grace, he was too far ahead and we weren’t in the same school anymore. He would still walk me to the gate and drop me off, but he wasn’t there during the day. Wasn’t there when the others starting teasing me.

I’d been sitting next to Grace for about three weeks, but we still hadn’t really spoken much. Neither of us could bring ourselves to get past a smile and a hello. After that we both seemed to get stuck. But when art rolled around, well, she became my saviour and then you couldn’t stop us talking.

I’ve never been particularly good at art. I like to think that somewhere inside me I’m creative, but I just can’t find the right way to execute it. I don’t know, maybe I really don’t have any talent. But that day I was going to have to find some because we were starting painting. Each of us had a huge canvas and we were painting whatever we wanted, as long as we only used three colours.

I was using black, red and grey.

"Grey is not a colour." I heard Mike, the biggest instigator of my teasing, say to his two little side-kicks. "It’s just the same as black."

The three of them sniggered at me, and while I wanted to disagree, I didn’t say anything, just kept painting and trying very hard to ignore them. Problem was Mike just kept going, he kept telling everyone I was too stupid to pick three separate colours. That I didn’t even realise black and grey were the same thing and that I couldn’t even paint right. I was desperately trying to ignore what he was saying, desperately trying to ignore the three of them laughing at me, but all I wanted to do was disappear. All I wanted to do was paint myself a colour which hid me from everyone, especially Mike.

Eventually when he saw he wasn’t getting a reaction from me, he walked over to my canvas with his paintbrush. As he pushed me out of the way, he started flicking yellow paint all over my painting. He was holding a pot of it in one hand and he just kept dipping his brush in and flicking more and more paint over it. I stood there mute. I just couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t even bring myself to cry.

Then out of the corner of my eye I saw Grace. I saw Grace walk over with her pot of black paint. I saw Grace walk right up to Mike and dump the whole pot over his head. Then I saw Grace reach out and take my hand. Pulling me away from my ruined painting and over to hers, where she was painting with the same three colours as me.

"I don’t like him very much," was all she said to me as the teacher came rushing over to find out what had happened.

I smiled at her. "Neither do I."

After that day, talking to each other was not a problem anymore. And the teasing stopped too, especially from Mike. I think he was kind of afraid of Grace, while I was just in awe of her. We hung out every day after that, sitting together in class and during lunch. We’d spend many afternoons at each other’s house and would often have sleep overs on the weekend. I was so relieved to finally have a friend, someone to talk to and so very glad the teasing had stopped.

And just like that, we became best friends forever.

Well, three years to be exact.

∞

Eventually I pull back from Luke’s embrace, taking my hands from my face and turning my head away from him. I see leaning against the wall are three guitars; electric and acoustic.

"Do you play?" I ask, wiping the last of my tears as I turn back to him.

"Yeah," he says turning to look at his guitars.

I look up at him. "Are you any good?"

He laughs softly and turns back to face me. "I don’t know. Why don’t you come watch us play one night and then you can let me know," he says, his fingers reaching out to wipe a tear from my cheek. I let him. His thumb is soft against my skin.

"You’re in a band?" I ask, surprised. He’s never mentioned this in his emails.

"Yeah," he answers the tiniest amount of pride lighting up his face. "We actually have a gig next Saturday night, you should come along, see what you think, tell me if we’re actually any good."

I think this would be a very bad idea. I also think I really want to go and see him play, because I really love live music. Love nothing better than losing myself in a crowded room or stadium, anywhere that’s full of people who are all feeling the same thing. Who are all affected by the music that’s being played. There is nothing like it, the energy that surges through the room, the emotion that’s felt as a note is played or a word is sung. I love it. And it’s one of the few things I can do alone and still enjoy.

"You never told me you were in a band?"

Luke looks at me, half grinning, possibly half embarrassed. "Yeah, I think maybe I was kinda working up to it, you know. Waiting until we had a show sometime that you could come and see?" He seems a little nervous now.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I realise though, standing here looking at Luke, that he’s the nicest anyone has been to me since Sam died. That he is the first person to just be normal with me, to talk to me as though I’m normal, even if I’m clearly anything but. And he’s the first person who has touched me, comforted me. That it has been months and months since someone has held me at all. And right now, all I am is surprised that it hasn’t been as hard as I thought it would be. And there is some part of me that’s strangely grateful for all this.

I shouldn’t go though. It’s not fair on him. It’s not safe for him to be around me.

"Ash?" he asks quietly. "Will you come along?"

I look back at him. He’s watching me, concern in his eyes, worry on his face. If only he knew.

What happened out there?" I suddenly ask, nodding towards the door. "With Liam?" For some reason, this matters to me now and I want to know.

I watch as his face changes slightly, as he thinks about my question, maybe trying to decide how to answer it.

"Luke?" I ask again.

He smiles at me now, but it’s only half a smile, like he doesn’t really mean it.

"Why did you come in?" I ask, trying to get him to answer me. I wonder if he knows what I’m talking about, but he must because he eventually says, "It just didn’t seem like you were comfortable in there with him. I don’t know, maybe I was overreacting, but it just didn’t feel right." His voice is a whisper now.