The Heartbreak Factor - Part Three

Chapter Seventeen.

Walking down the street towards the tube station, I continued to cry; the rain was disguising my tears as it poured down on me. As a couple passed me, I shoved the hood of my hoodie up to hide my identity. Splashing through the puddles, I tried to clear my head and decide where to go but I could only  think of one place – the least obvious place that George would even think to look for me. I couldn’t deal with talking to him, let alone seeing him.

As I got to the tube station, I checked what line to get before running down the steps to the right platform. I had to stop running as I got a third of the way down though as my jeans were rubbing slightly on my stitches.

The second I got to the right platform, the train pulled up; everyone seemed to get off and barge their way towards the exit yet hardly anybody got back on. Sitting on the empty carriage, the train began to pull away from the platform. It wasn’t until the train was fully in the dark that I realised there was a man at the other end of the carriage. I tried to disguise my sobs and sniffles with coughs, but luckily for me, he was the typical London business man who only stares at the advertisements above opposite seats for the whole duration of his journey and avoids as much eye contact with the other passengers as he possibly can.

Eventually, when it got to the stop I needed to get off at, I rushed off the train before its doors even had the chance to fully open properly. As I got out into the drizzly rain in central London’s streets, I began to walk down the street towards my determined destination. I could feel my phone vibrating in my pocket but I couldn’t bring myself to get it out to cancel the call as it was obviously from George, so I just left it, hoping that George would give up trying.

The rain seemed to get heavier and heavier as I got further down the street. Finally, after what seemed like ages of walking through the streets, I got to my destination. After running up the uneven steps, I pressed the buzzer beside the huge door over and over again, praying that it’d make them answer the door quicker as the rain had begun to seep through my hoodie and making my skin freeze.

“Sammy, what are you doing here?”

“Can I come in? I had nowhere else to go.”

*

“So what’s wrong?” Tom asked me as we walked into the kitchen of his flat he shared with his university friends.

“I finis..” As I was about to tell Tom what had just happened, I noticed two of his flatmates sat staring at me from the kitchen table beneath the window. “Hi.”

“Tom,” they said. “What’s Sammy Jones doing in our kitchen?”

“Oh, she went to my college,” Tom smiled. “Give us some space, yeah?”

With their jaws dropped, they both jumped up out of their seats and scurried along to the staircase, leaving their half-finished toast on the table.

“Sorry about them,” Tom smiled. “Coffee?”

“Have you got anything stronger?” I laughed.

“Vodka?”

“That’s perfect,” I smiled, sitting down on the sofa as Tom brought the bottle of vodka over along with two glasses.

“What’s wrong then?” he asked, sitting down next to me.

“Nothing,” I lied. “Just thought I’d live the single life as a student for the night.”

Tom looked at me with a sudden look of concern. “Single? What happened with you and George? I thought you two were still going strong.”

“Long story,” I smiled.

“I have a whole night,” he smiled warmly as I downed a shot of vodka. “And we have a whole bottle.”

I looked at him and then at the bottle of vodka that was stood on the coffee table. “I had a miscarriage,” I blurted out.

“That’s awful, Sammy.”

As I sat explaining everything that had happened in tonight’s events and the happenings leading up to tonight’s events, Tom listened to every word I said attentively. It was so comforting to know he was actually listening to me and not telling me how to feel like everybody else seemed to do when I told them.

“I couldn’t face talking to him so that’s when I thought I’d come here as it’s the last place he’d think of checking.”

“I didn’t even have a clue, Sam,” Tom said, hugging me.

“How was you to know?” I asked. “Nobody knew.”

“I’m sorry.”

I bit my lip in an attempt to stop myself from going off on a rant about people saying they’re sorry when it wasn’t even their fault that it happened in the first place.

“You know I’m always here for you,” Tom smiled to me as he pulled out of the hug. “Don’t you?”

I smiled at him. “You seriously don’t know how good it feels to hear that right now.”

“You don’t deserve this, Sammy.”

Without thinking, I leaned closer to him and kissed him. Although I kept telling myself to stop in my mind, I physically couldn’t bring myself to pull away. It wasn’t just me though – Tom didn’t even flinch, let alone pull away as I kissed him. As we sat on the sofa kissing, I pushed him down and climbed on top of him, starting to undo the buttons on his shirt. The touch of his fingers on my ice cold skin as he ran his warm hands up the back of my soaking hoodie made me shiver.

“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted this to happen,” he whispered to me as I kissed his neck.

It was in that second that I realised what I was doing and pulled away.

“What’s wrong?” Tom asked, sitting up on the sofa and looking at me.

“I can’t do this,” I said, picking my hoodie up from the floor where Tom had thrown it. “I’m sorry.”

“Sammy..” Tom called after me as I hurried out of his flat and down the steps onto the street, feeling disgusted with myself.