The Bed

The pyre in front of Roxanne Jones burnt high up into the sky, spitting orange sparks and emitting acrid fumes into the atmosphere that would probably kill a fraction of the ozone. She could have cared less at this point; she just wanted the bed gone. Gone from her flat, gone from her life and gone from existence.

If she did not destroy it, it would be a constant reminder to her of everything that had happened between the sheets that she covered it with. It was a bed that started the entire saga and led to the severe grasp of heartbreak she was struggling to remove herself from now.

Her parents took the decision upon a visit to see her at University to treat her to a new bed and though DFS did not sell beds, she still met DFS Boy as he had been known to her for two weeks till she learned his proper name - Isaac Greyson. At first she would walk past and peer through the glass windows, hoping she might catch a glimpse of him; then she started to go into the shop under false pretences just to look at him until ultimately, she had no choice but to talk to him when he asked if she needed help.

Roxie can’t remember what she answered with; all she remembered was how stunned she was that he was talking to her. Of all the customers and prospective buyers he could have attended to and he chose her. George and Daisy said she had squealed and forgotten about the “sofa” she wanted to buy and had hidden behind them both.

She didn’t care anymore.

Isaac was a masterpiece of creation but as she had soon come to learn it was only on the outside. The bed, the bed in the premature bonfire, had been the host to many a lustful night between the two; nights when she should have been completing dissertations, researching for papers, revising for exams were spent in night clubs and eventually in the bed, with Isaac instead.

To Roxie he had been a beautiful mystery and the less he told her the more she wanted him. He made her crave him right down in the very pits of her gut, till her stomach exploded with butterflies and her toes would curl with glittery anticipation at their next meeting.

He would take their meetings wherever he could. He had pulled her out of lectures under false emergencies; he had jumped out on her in the middle of ASDA; he would turn up at her dormitory at 4 in the morning, wet from rain but always smiling. That was one thing about Isaac that had made her truly fall for his charm: his iridescent smile.

Isaac always wore that smile like a mark of reassurance. He used it, and rather unfairly so she figured when she looked back on reflection, whenever he asked something of her. He smiled when he asked her on a date; he smiled when he asked to come back to her dormitory all those times. But the worst of all, the one thing with its sharp edges that hacked away at her heart like an ice-pick every time she thought of it, was the day he smiled when he promised her that he loved her.

Oh how Roxie’s heart had leapt for joy to hear the words she so dearly wanted to hear him say! Isaac Greyson loved Roxie Jones and she could not have felt happier even if she tried to. Five in the morning stood outside of McDonalds in the middle of Nottingham City Centre and all she could do was throw her arms around him and kiss him.

But Isaac Greyson, he was a liar and his smile was the all knowing accomplice to his misdemeanours. For an entire year he let poor Roxie believe the filthy lies he fed her and he would have happily gone on spitting more if it were not for the fact he was caught out. Roxie could only laugh at how fitting it was that he had got so tangled in his lies that all the women he had strung along found out at the same time.

He would forever be glancing over his shoulder and carefully watching up and down the aisle’s in ASDA in case anymore of his bits on the side was to collide with him at the same time. Daisy thought it was the best comeuppance a man could get though much to the expense of her best friend’s heart. For Roxie had truly loved DFS Boy, she had genuinely fallen in love with him and they all knew, even Isaac, that had he got down on one knee her answer could only have been ‘yes’.

The smell of the bed burning was a strange mix, not of something burning, but for Roxie’s memory it was all the acrid smell of sweat and other bodily fluids that had been exchanged during those intimate moments between her and Isaac. Daisy couldn’t be sure whether a smile wasn’t beginning to form on her best friends face. The simultaneous death and funeral of the bed was also the death of that part of Roxanne’s life and, perhaps, the start of much happier times. George and Daisy and all of her other friend’s who had gathered for the bonfire hoped that this was where her heart began to mend.

“Roxie,” a timid voice beside her spoke and when she turned she was met with her cousin George, a plate of hotdogs in his hand but his grave expression suggested to her it wasn’t the hotdogs he wanted to talk about. “The door.”

She stood mute for a few seconds, blinking as her brain came to the only conclusion it could. She gulped and looked down at her muddy green Hunter Wellington boots. Then she took a deep breath and held her chin high. “I won’t be a minute.”

Turning she headed back through the traditional country kitchen that Daisy had recently had fitted in keeping with the stone cottage she lived in with George, through the small hall and into the entrance. For a moment she stopped in the dimly lit room to ready herself for what was about to happen. Her heart was hammering away in her chest and her hands shook.

Gulping one last time she took a deep breath and grasped the iron handle, lifting it up and pulling open the heavy oak door separating the two. There stood in the glow of the wall lights mounted to the stone either side of her stood the one thing that had built her up and knocked her straight back down.

Isaac was tall and muscular to look at with high, well defined cheek bones and short cut dark hair. His eyes were watery blue and his lips just slightly rouge in colour but perfect to kiss. His skin was unblemished but for the pock mark on the bridge of his nose from when her had picked at his chicken pox scabs, and a mole on his right cheek.

He held in one hand a bunch of flowers in an array of colours and as his eyes picked out little Roxie with her pixie-like hair and striking hazel eyes he smiled that smile and already she felt herself being hooked and reeled.

“What do you want?” She hissed fighting against the claws of the hook in her shattered heart.

“I’ve left them,” he began in his over-confident, almost cocky voice and she had to steel herself before she swooned. “All of them.”

“And why are you here?” Roxie then asked, folding her arms across her chest, hoping to hide the battle wounds she bore. Next time she would wear armour.

“Because I’ve left them for you,” he smiled, stepping towards her, the light casting across his dark hair and creating shadows on his lovely deceiving face. “It is you that I want, Roxie, and nobody else. You truly own my heart.”

A lump formed in her throat and her pulse throbbed hot and fast in her ears. The hooks he had set upon the pieces of her heart had tightened and were pulling, tugging her back into his charming arms. Did she still love him? Of course she did, she had been in love with Isaac for a very long time and she couldn’t get over that in less than a month.

“I love you, Roxanne.”

There were the words and there was that smile that had fooled her once before but she would not fall for it again. Violently shrugging away his hooks she took a step back into the house; sense had found her, sense had saved her from the clutches of this greasy man. He could not play her heart like a fool for any longer.

“You lied to me and made me look stupid once before,” she began her voice and words laced with confidence and venom. “I will not let you lie to me again. Good night Isaac.”

Stepping back further into the house as his arms rose up at his sides and his mouth hung open to protest his innocence, Roxie closed the door on Isaac Greyson for the last time. With a boost of confidence, hearing him shouting her name, she dropped the lock upon the door and returned to the warm and welcome company of her friends.

Shutting the door on Isaac had shut the door on that part of her life and she looked towards the bonfire of the burning bed and its memories with a smile. It was the first genuine smile in a very long time and everyone else smiled to see this.

Sidling up between her cousin and his fiancée she put her arms around them both, watching the fireworks that were now decorating the night sky. Isaac could be heard still shouting and demanding her attention but she merely smiled with broader confidence than before.

“Is this genuine?” George enquired. “This smile, is it real or do I have to go out there and knock him for six?”

“No it’s genuine,” Roxie smiled with reassurance. “When I shut the door on him I closed that chapter of my life and you know what? It felt good; I may feel broken inside but it also felt like the first pieces had been put back together.”

“And the bed?” Daisy then asked, pointing to the burning heap in her back garden. “You don’t regret this? You won’t turn around in the morning and cry because you burnt your bed?”

“Absolutely not,” she answered. “What happened in the bed with Isaac Greyson, ends today. I will dwell on my doings with him no longer for the bed is no more. All it was good for was fulfilling the fiery lust that had consumed me. It wasn’t love and I understand that now.”

“Wow,” George spoke with a low whistle. “That’s quite a step. Well done, I think you’ll pull through just fine with an attitude like that.”

Roxie gave a sly grin and looked up through her lashes. “Well in the words of Florence Whelch,” she began with a big satisfying sigh, exhaling the last ounce of worry over Isaac for the night, “lets sit back and watch the bed burn.”