The Crew: A New Beginning

Chapter 8

That night Jake stayed for dinner, after helping me get the rest of the boxes and unpacked. By 6pm we had the wide screen TV connected and working as well as my PC in the spare room and all my photography gear. A couple of photos fell out of the bag I had my camera in and he picked up one of a tall guy with sunnies looking towards an R33 GTR. "So is this........?" Jake trailed off as he handed me the photo and my back went rigid. I hadn't even thought of Josh in the past day or so since being busy with moving. I quickly ripped it up and threw it in the trash. "That's my ex. I thought I threw all of his photos of him away, that must've gotten away from the pile," I said shakily. Jake looked at Ella with sympathy and concern. She looked pale, like she'd seen a ghost and her hands were shaking.

He took my hand and led me to the couch and sat down. "Sometimes it's good to talk about stuff, even if it's emotional, that way you can move on," he said gently. I looked down realising he was still holding my hand but didn't pull away. Somehow it felt comfortable. "A couple of years ago, I was in a car accident. I lost part of my memory, briefly. Josh was.....kind of like therapy, him, the car scene, the studio. Unfortunately another jealous ex boyfriend of mine and a jealous co-worker decided a vendetta against us. The same ones who'd tried to kill me. Anyway we got Billy locked up, not too sure what happened to Annabelle, but by then Josh had some family crisis going on which he failed to mention to me. It all ended with him moving up to my old hometown. So yeah real bad breakup there. No texts, no calls, nothing from him since then," I replied with a sad sigh. Jake nodded taking in what I had just told him. I gave a sad chuckle. "My friend Cass warned me about car guys. I guess she was right." Jake gave a small sympathetic smile. "Hey, you can at least put that in the past now, move on with your life, start a new chapter. To be honest he seemed real fake to me," Jake said, nodding towards the ripped photo. "You don't deserved to be treated like that." It was then that Jake got a second look at the ripped photo in the waste basket and he suddenly frowned. Why did this guy look so familiar? He couldn't remember.
At that moment my phone buzzed with a text and I picked it up blinking back the tears that had welled up in my eyes. "I bet ya this is my mum checking up on me," I say, trying to lighten the damp mood that I had created. I opened up the text and first words that popped out at me was, SummerFest. I gulped. I had not been at the track in ages, I knew it was a new thing that had just started a year ago, but I had been so busy distracted that I kept avoiding that place. Now it was like the ghosts kept coming out of the closet. Jake looked over my shoulder. "What's SummerFest?" He asked curiously. I sat back, still looking at my phone. "It's a sponsored event they started putting on at the track. It's similar to DriftMasters. I didn't go last year because......I didn't go, but it's a pretty popular event," I explained. Jake pointed at the screen. "Well now you can show me. I'm keen to know what people get up to around here," he said with a grin. I held back a grimace and smiled. Did I really want to relive the past? "Fine, I'll take you, it's on this weekend," I say, disguising the fear and terror in my voice.

After some time Jake left and I finished cleaning up the remains of dinner, before settling down in bed, with my iPad. I could've watched a movie, but I felt restless. I jumped onto Facebook just to see what was happening but as usual there was nothing to see besides people advertising or commenting on posts about SummerFest. I tried to search up Tommy's Facebook but it looked like he still had me blocked. Since that day, he and Ash never spoke to me again, it was like everything came crashing down when Josh had left town. I then went into Cass's profile, hoping she'd have something new on her page, but it also looked like she hadn't been active since a couple of months ago. I sighed, and then scrolled through the rest of my contact list which were more or less people from my work. I weren't exactly friends with these people, but still, as soon as I had gotten the job at the local swim school, I had been getting random friend requests from my fellow staff. I was just about to got to bed when another friend request notification popped up. Glancing at it, I noticed that it was Jake and accepted his request. I smiled as I clicked onto his page, revealing a profile pic of a guy in sunnies and a surfboard. His posts were mainly just photos from holidays and some song clips. Suddenly the mood shifted and I felt calm again. Maybe this new beginning could work. I logged out of Facebook and decided to get some sleep. When I closed my eyes all I could picture was the beach, the coolness of the sand, the sea breeze and Jake's nice smile.