Gone (27 page)

What are the chances?

My head falls onto her shoulder as I let out a groan of disappointment. Bex starts to laugh but the sound quickly falters and I feel her stiffen under my touch.

“Can I help you?” I spin and ask. It’s not a customer, it’s Dan. He has his habitual smirk smeared across his face. Instinctively I edge closer to Bex. Dan narrows his eyes as he registers the movement.

“Josh and the holiday maker!” Dan shouts the word like he is addressing a vast audience not the two of us.

“Hm.” Bex and I both state at the same time which makes me smile.
She is no holiday maker.

“Josh, it’s been days!”

Possibly not enough days for my liking.

“Hey, Dan, I’ve been busy sorry, mate, how are you?”

I haven’t seen him since he upset Bex in the pub. And it’s not because I have been too busy. I don’t know what it is but there is something in his eyes when he looks at Bex which sets me on edge. I haven’t felt this uncomfortable around him in a long while. He is always pulling some holiday maker when we are out but I have never until the last few days noticed how blatantly territorial he is around women. But then maybe it’s me that is being territorial. Maybe Dan has always walked around stripping off a girl’s clothes with his eyes. I just never read it for what it was before. Now it makes me uncomfortable. I am starting to wonder what else I may have missed.

“Oh, Josh, you know what it’s like. Out in Newquay, a different girl every night, you remember that don’t you.”

I grimace in response. I can’t lie outright and say no. Because I am still trying to forget that one summer when I decided to act out of character, it seems Dan is not going to let me forget.

“Nice.” I nod eventually.

Bex is standing there, her arms folded tight across her chest, completely unmoving. She is reading him too, and I think she agrees with my current summation of my friend’s personality.

“How’s St Agnes? No more strops in pubs, Bex? I heard you caused quite a scene the other day offering Josh here a blow job in front of all the old grannies.”

I flush hot with anger straight away. “That’s uncalled for.” I glare at him.

“Just saying. Everyone knows about it.” Dan does not make eye contact with me. He keeps his attention directed at Bex.

I expect her to flip or go to that place inside herself where she hides the other Bex.

“It’s Rebecca.”

I suppress a smile but Dan just grins and changes tact. “So are you love birds coming out with us tomorrow?”

Jesus! That’s the quickest word has ever spread in St Agnes.

“Yep.” I interrupt, making him look at me instead of her, but Bex just smiles at me and straightens herself up a little further.

“So you going to show me the sights, Dan?” Bex smiles at him and hoists herself up onto the till counter, re-crossing her legs as she does so. Even I am wide-eyed. Dan is gob smacked.

“Uh, yeah I guess.”

“I bet you know how to have a good time hey?” she smiles.

“Yep, I know all the sound spots.” He is looking a little wary, as he probably quite rightly should.

“Excellent, I can’t wait. Josh, that sounds so much fun, it will be great to go out and meet everyone else.” Bex tugs at my T-shirt sleeve and leads me over to her perch on the counter where she then wraps her arms tight around me, resting her chin on my shoulder so she is still looking at Dan. “What time shall we meet?”

“Uh about eight.”

“Excellent,” she says. And with that he is dismissed. He stares at us for a moment longer but Bex just ignores him and turns my face gently with her fingertips around to hers, kissing me on the lips and swiftly shifting
herself up closer to me so I can move between her knees. Bex has completely disarmed him by not fighting him.

The door opens and the tension I hold inside me when he is around releases. I think he is gone but I have not waited long enough. “Josh mate, bad form to leave those pictures up there what with your
new
girlfriend sitting right underneath them.

And with that parting shot Dan has the last word, as per always.

She does not say anything, in fact she just keeps kissing me with a steady enthusiasm, her mouth moving against mine, her fingers gripping my shoulders and her legs moving further apart so I can get as close to her as possible.

A few minutes later she pulls away. The ambers are dark and hazy as she watches me, a faint smile lingering on her lips. “Want to have sex with me now?”

I smile against her cheek, “What makes you think that?”

She shifts slightly against me creating the perfect pressure point, “Nothing.”

“Most guys walk around with hard-ons.”

“And are you most guys, Joshua?” Ah, there it is again her sing-song way my name trips off her tongue.

“Well no,” I start but she chuckles against me.

“That’s good.” She pushes against me and I see a flash of fire in her eyes which makes me believe she has been purposely misleading me. “Because your friend Dan is one of the biggest twats I have ever met and believe me I have met a few.”

I sigh a little and slide my hands along her bare legs pushing myself away from her so I can look at her properly.

God damn it, she has just completely trapped me into making a ridiculously sexist comment about hard-ons after my friend told her that I spent some time putting it about one summer season. What he didn’t tell her was that it made me feel gross and that I don’t think I learnt anything that summer apart from how to close my mind off to what I was doing, which has never been an easy task for me.

“It wasn’t like that,” I say as I reach a finger and slide it along her eyebrow.

“Dan seemed to think it was.”

Part of me doesn’t really want to explain, but I also know Bex has told me stuff about herself, the secrets behind why she is the way she is now. I feel it’s only fair for me to share a part of my past with her. Desperately I flip through the images in my mind choosing which part of myself to give to her.  “It was stupid childish stuff, Bex.”

She leans towards me and kisses me as I start to speak. “I said you could keep your secrets.”

I stare into the ambers. “Yeah, but maybe I shouldn’t anymore.” I kiss her again and then take a breath. “So, uh,” Okay this is making me feel all wishy washy. I have spent months pushing all of these memories to the furthest corners of my mind.

“Josh, please. I actually don’t think I want to know.”

Okay now I feel like a prat because I have made this sound worse than it actually is. It was never that bad, it’s just I don’t like to think about it anymore.

“Bex, it was nothing bad. When we were growing up there was a whole gang of us, and we were all really tight. Dan and I were the closest for a while and then it started to become obvious that we both liked the same girl, and well that’s a bit of a problem between mates.”

Bex gives a nod of her head like she may understand this.

“So we kind of got into this ridiculous situation where we were vying for the same girl. Apart from which I thought I was the one who should win because I was actually in love with her. It never occurred to me that he might be in love with her too.”

Bex is watching me carefully, her lips clamped together as if she is trying to stop herself from speaking. Her hands are jammed under her thighs so she can’t touch me while I tell my tale.

I wish she would.

“So anyway I played the sensitive game giving her all these paintings, and I used to write gay little poems for her and all sorts of crap. Dan went for a different approach. He shagged everything that moved. I knew that I would win her because of that. I knew she would hate that sort of behaviour.”

I take another breath, this story seems too long now.

“Anyway about two and a half years ago we were all out for one of our gang nights out. I went to go and get some drinks at the bar, and I found them kissing. He had her in a corner seat at the club we were in. It made me see red. There I’d been for all these months, years even, trying to win by playing the
nice boy
game and I had lost. She liked her boys bad after all. I went a bit off the rails, did some things I regret. I ignored her and Dan for weeks until one evening she walked down a back alley in Newquay and found me shagging a girl against a wall. She went mad, like hysterically mad and I finally took her home where she told me she had always been in love with me but as I’d never made a clear move, she thought I was just being friendly. Then she told me that Dan had pushed himself on her that night, it hadn’t got far, but the kiss that I had witnessed wasn’t one that she had wanted to give away.”

I take a deep breath and watch for Bex’s reaction. She is staring off into space, mulling over my words.

“So what happened then?”

“Well then she was mine and Dan’s behaviour became even worse, to be honest, Bex I try and ignore the way he is, but seeing him look at you that way he does, with the words he says, I should have taught him respect a long time ago. It makes me think that perhaps she didn’t tell me the whole story about what happened that night I found them kissing.”

Bex glances down and runs a finger along her bangles. They chink against each other as they reposition against the skin of her wrist. “So I’m not the only one to be caught doing things down alleyways?”

Her words make me feel sick, her joke in the pub days ago wasn’t a joke at all. It was a bitter barb at herself.

“I guess not.” I literally can’t stop the next words out of my mouth. I wish I could. “What did you do down alleyways, Bex?”

She raises an eyebrow at me but a faint blush illuminates the skin under her freckles. “Let’s put it this way, I am known for doing stupid things when I’ve had a drink.”

I know she is. I have a very clear visual image of her passed out on the sand inches from the night tide. At the same moment I recall the faceless girl I got caught with in Newquay and I know I will never judge her.

“That makes two of us then.”

“And the girl you were in love with,” her eyes briefly glance at the paintings, “Where is she now?”

“She is gone, Bex. Just gone.” As I say it the weight on my chest lifts, but underneath it I can feel a well of emotion bubbling to the surface. Gently Bex slides her arms around my waist and places her ear just above my heart which is thumping in an erratic manner.

“Can I ask where?”

My heart starts to race even more as I chase words around my brain trying to think of the right ones to say.

For the longest moment I just stand there suspended in time. Eventually I let out a sigh and push myself away. Raising her head she looks at me questioningly. This is it, time to let the moment go, time to let the past go.

I’m just about to. I cast my eyes around the shop and take in the paintings on the wall. They draw me back in and it makes the words form in a lump in my throat.

“I want to tell you, Bex,” I start and the ambers watch me, waiting for me to explain. “I’m going to try and tell you but I need to sort some things first, can you wait?”

Bex has an emotion flash across her face, at first I can’t read it but as she silently slides her arms back around my waist I realise what it is. Hurt. Bex has told me everything and yet I can’t do the same.

Joshua Adams hurts everyone again, and the kicker is that by hurting Bex I am ultimately hurting myself too. I hold my arms around her as tight as I possibly can in the hope that my embrace will speak the words that at the moment I still can’t. As I grip onto her like a life raft I look up at the paintings one more time and I know it’s finally time. She does not say anything, what can she say? Her arms cling around me though, and I hold her for everything that she and I are worth.

Later as the afternoon slowly ticks to a close I take down all the paintings, and as Bex minds the shop I walk them out the front door and up to the studio. Thirty paintings, thirty pieces of my past and thirty reasons why I still need to say goodbye. As I walk back into the shop and catch sight of Bex dancing to a tune, twirling around the stand of oil paints I am sure that my time to say goodbye has arrived.

It’s time to go and see Faye. I need to leave all the past behind me. It’s time to move on.

I find Faye emptying ash-trays in the pub garden. “I didn’t know you were working here now,” I say as I walk towards her and perch myself onto the edge of a spare picnic bench.

Faye laughs. “There are so many things you don’t know about me anymore.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Yeah like what?”

She thinks hard for a moment, her face scrunched in concentration. “I have realised that having an artist as a best friend sucks, because you always end up helping them and having this happen to your hair.” She pulls forward her ponytail from over her shoulder and waves the end at me which is covered in specks of paint.

“Me too.” I groan comparing one of my paint spattered dreads with her glossy dark locks. The two don’t really compare at all.

“What you doing here anyway? Shouldn’t you be off spending every last moment of time with Bex before she leaves?”