Confusion Girl

The silence dragged on for eternity as my beating heart raced to supply my body with depleting oxygen. I couldn’t breath, I wouldn’t breath, I didn’t even fucking want to breath.

“Lizz please tell me that’s you?” his voice cracked at the end slightly as if he were having trouble speaking… or maybe it was just the crappy line. I merely remained frozen in time, a statue holding the phone with a probably too tight grip. If I moved the spell would be broken and Alec would disappear as he always seemed to. “Lizz?” Something in his voice forced the hidden tears to make their sudden unwanted appearance.

“What do you want?” I was pleased with how fierce I sounded because inside I was dying.

“Holy fuck it really is you” he breathed out in a sigh. I closed my eyes briefly to allow the tears to make their short journey down my cheeks before wiping them away angrily. I didn’t cry. I hadn’t cried for years. It was weak and pathetic and changed nothing.

“Yes it is. Why are you calling?”

“To see if I could speak to you.”

Then a thought dawned on me. “How did you know I was here anyway, did Jo tell you?”

“Jo?” he sounded confused as if this name was foreign to him. “Jo fucking knew you came home… he didn’t fucking tell me that bastard I’ll fucking k-.”

“Well then how did you know?”

“I didn’t” he replied as if this was the most obvious answer in the world. It only served to make my blood boil further. I’d shed so many tears over him on this very doorstep and here he was talking to me as if I were incompetent and stupid.

“Well then fucking explain and stop being an idiot” I spat, the hate completely taking over. He’d done the breaking here, what gave him the right to talk to me without some form of explanation.

“I call your house every day at this time.” I furrowed my brow in disbelief.

“You call everyday?” I asked, doubt evident in every word.

“Yes I fucking do Lizz. I have called this number everyday for the last 2 years in hope that you will pick up the phone. Your mum normally just lets it ring out or picks it up and tells me to piss off.” I didn’t have anything to say to that. Guilt washed over me like a tide that no amount of reasoning could keep at bay.

“Why?” I asked, my voice small and vulnerable, everything I had tried to leave behind. Alec made me feel on edge, I knew any one of his words could break me all over again.

There was no reply for a long time but I knew he was there. His soft breathing carried down the line from where he was in Texas to where I stood bewilderedly by my front door. “Because I miss you.”

That was all it took. I threw the phone violently back onto its holder, grabbed my suitcase and fled the house as quickly as I could. Tears streamed down my cheeks betraying everything that I’d become.

Angrily, I pulled out my mobile and dialed Jo’s number. “Come pick me up” I choked out “please just take me away from this place.” Slumping down onto the curb I finally gave up to all of the pain that had been dawning along my horizon for days. It was as if that well built wall of 2 years had all but fallen down at his words.

And they didn’t hurt in the way I wished they did. At least if he’d insulted me I could easily pick myself up and move on again, but this was different.

He had to fucking tell me that he missed me. He fucking had to say that when he had no right to. I’d moved on and now he was just inexcusably messing with my brain.

I heard Jo’s car and saw the headlamps racing toward me way over the speed limit of 20. The light shone onto my crestfallen figure as I stooped into the vehicle and rested my head gratefully onto the seats. They were cheap and smelt of boy cologne but they felt like heaven because they were taking me away. Far away from Alec Bradshaw’s voice and far away from my stolen family.

“Can I crash with you for a bit?” I finally turned to my cousin, the tears never relenting. His face turned angry and then sympathetic and then strained as if he were trying to conceal all emotions.

“He called you didn’t he?”

“Yeah” I tried to remain nonchalant but failed “my mother got married and had a baby while I was away too” I added.

He choked on his own shock. “Well what do you know, the old hag can still pull” he said completely unsympathetically. As the car sped off to his house, I wiped away the remaining tears and tried to grasp hold of the fallen bricks of my wall that seemed somehow heavier than before. Stupid me had to fall for his tricks all over again.