Smiling Politely

“So are you going to tell me what happened or do I have to guess?” her mother asked in the car journey back from the train station.

Lexi tore her gaze from the streams of rain the window wipers were manipulating over the windscreen, “Huh?”

“You don’t usually just phone to tell me you’re coming home for the night. What’s up? Have you and Kaylah had a falling out?”

“No,” she shook her head, “Nothing like that. I just wanted some time away from everyone, that’s all.”

The low hum of the radio and the swoosh of the wipers engulfed the car.

“I know Matt was back for a couple of days,” her mother revealed.

Lexi looked at her mum, “How?”

“I still buy Kerrang for your brother and he saw the ad,” she explained, “Did you see him?”

“Yeah, we talked,” Lexi nodded. Her family had always liked Matt, in fact him and her younger brother had a weird bond over Star Wars and she knew they kept in touch through e-mail. Her parents were a little wary of her disappearing off on tour with some boy they hardly knew but after one dinner with the young couple their older counterparts welcomed the drummer with open arms, in fact the plan had been to spend Christmas at home with them except Lexi had ended things before then.

“About…”

“Stuff,” Lexi picked at the rip in the thigh of her jeans.

Fiona Edwards rolled her eyes at her only daughter, “Lexi, out with it.”

They had pulled into the driveway of her childhood home but didn’t bother to leave the car, the only noise was the pitter patter of rain on the windows and the low murmur of music and chit chat from the radio. Lexi ran her fingers over and over the frayed denim making the fibres roll into little sausages of cotton, “We talked like old times, actually we talked more than old times,” she felt hot tears prick her eyes, “I still love him.”

Her mum nodded and ran her hand over the top of the steering wheel, “I think you were the last person to find out.”

“What?” Lexi turned to face her.

“Come on Lexi, everyone knows that you two were always meant to be together. I mean you know how much it takes you to trust someone and let them in, and you and Matt were so close, you shared a lot.”

“But if we were meant to be together then why did I freak out after tour and come home and not contact him. I mean who does that to someone they love?” Lexi frowned.

Her mother looked at her daughter’s confused face and wished she could make her understand that she had a perfectly reasonable, natural reaction, “I think you just realised that the two of you were getting very serious, I mean you were living in each other’s pockets for quite a while. You’re bound to get scared, it‘s a perfectly normal response.”

Before she could stop them the tears were spilling down her cheeks and the sobs racked her chest, “I didn’t meant to hurt him.”

Suddenly she was wrapped in her mother’s arms and she couldn’t stop the hysterics. She loved him so much, she always had. It had just been safer to run away, to shield herself in some weird way but what if she had been missing out? In fact she knew she had missed out, missed out on time with him, missed out on a really good thing.

“Come on,” her mother rubbed her back soothingly, “Let’s get you inside and you can have a lie down then decide what you want to do. No one’s rushing to do anything, okay?”

Lexi nodded, wiping her wet face and probably smearing some of her mascara on her cheek, “Okay.”