padam - a jan peteh pov story

10

Kris left soon after that, seeing how quickly my mood declined. He must have regretted confessing the information; the pain on his face at the sight of me distraught spoke more than words could have.

Yet, underneath the hurt I was feeling, there was some gratefulness for what he had said. Now, I realised, there was not a genuine reason behind Bojan's sudden flip. This meant that I had nothing to be sorry for, no reason to feel ashamed, and I would be permitted to be as stubborn as I liked until I received an apology.

Because how could something Lilia had not been involved in be her fault?

I lifted my phone from the table and pinched my brow at the sudden influx of light; my blackout curtains were shut, and so it was much harder for my eyes to adjust to the bright screen. Despite the uncomfortableness, I ensured that I got on with the task of calling Lilia - she had messaged me worriedly after the Instagram story incident, and I had had to brush her off for a few hours as I came to terms with the situation myself.

She picked up the phone within two rings.

'Jan?' she asked stressedly down the phone, fear causing a slight jolt in her voice. 'What's going on?'

'A lot.' I sighed in response. It was difficult to find the words even in Slovene - Lilia's lack of bilingual vocabulary meant that I now had to struggle to string together a sentence in my second language.

'I thought you were sorting it out?' These words crushed me a little - she didn't yet understand how serious everything was, she didn't consider how much of a disruption it had caused.

'It's not that simple, metulj. I wish it was.' I sighed, setting the device down on my bedside table and turning to face it; my hands had now began to shake.

'I'm worried about you.' she pursued.

'I don't need to be worried about. I'm fine. It's Kris I'd stress for.' I replied, despite the shiver in my tone being unavoidable.

'Stop trying to change the subject, Jan.' she fought with me now, aching for me to admit that I needed her support, coaxing me into remembering that she was a safe space for me to say what I needed to.

This was just one of the many reasons as to why I loved her.

Clearing my throat, I began to tell her about the day, skipping over details to wrap it up quicker. By the time I reached the end, my words were just spilling from my mouth as she listened intently, attempting to interject a couple of times, yet ultimately deciding against it.

'I don't understand what we've done.' she confessed as my storytelling reached a conclusion.

I didn't voice my agreement initially; I had something important to say first. 'I don't want to have to ask this.' I replied, inhaling deeply as I did, 'But is there anything you said or did since you've met Bojan that he could have taken the wrong way?'

'No.' she replied honestly. I was grateful that she didn't take the question as an offense - it could have been easy to misinterpret, and I silently cursed myself for not approaching the topic with a little more preparation. 'Any ideas?'

'None at all.' I returned genuinely, my mind flicking through all the important occasions since I'd met Lilia. Yet the timeframe was too large to reduce it to one singular moment - we'd known each other for months now. 'But he's been acting strange since Zagreb.'

'Zagreb?' she repeated, and then, figuring out which concert that was, delivered a plain 'Oh.'

'But you weren't there.' I pointed out, and silence hit the end of the line for a few seconds as she thought - it wasn't difficult to picture her pensive face, which had come out one too many times while we'd been drunk for me to forget it.

'No, I wasn't.' were the only words out of her mouth. Rather than responding immediately, I just allowed the pair of us a minute to gather up a few shreds of information that could help us to piece this puzzle together.

'I don't want to think about it.' I finally said, pushing away the memories that attempted the penetrate my mind. All five of us band members had a concert that we didn't want to reflect on, and mine was Zagreb. It had essentially felt like a two-hour-long attempt to hold back from retching, the panic wrapping around my mind like thick, impenetrable vines.

That was the moment when the room began to blur.

'Jan?' Lilia asked, but I couldn't reply. My throat hurt each time I swallowed, dry like sandpaper. Try as I might, the feelings became too much to hold back, and they detonated inside of me like rogue explosives. Now, there was no blockade left to hold back the powerful emotions from coursing through my body; I quickly fell victim to my own thoughts.

The fun of drinking had long since passed; Jure splayed the full length of his body across the backseat, while Nace took a nap on the floor. Annoyingly, the light had perfectly refracted so that I couldn't see Kris' face at all, which left only Bojan definitely awake. I didn't want to speak to him properly yet, not while I knew he was still annoyed at me for invading on his spotlight during the concert.

'You are moving on from her, right?' Bojan questioned out of the blue, needing clarification.

'I have to.' I messed with the zip on my jeans, trying to distract myself from the dread of potentially being attacked by him. Before, he would have had to confront me in front of the entire group - now was the perfect opportunity to talk down to me without fear of being reprimanded by the others.

'Thank God.' he praised the ceiling. A small amount of anger manifested itself inside me, yet I shoved it away.

'Why do you say that?' I asked, a hint of malice perhaps tinging my otherwise inoffensive tone.

'You need someone who can actually commit. Not just a girl from another country who will ditch you the moment you go back home.' he explained, almost absentmindedly. Like he had recited these words numerous times.

'It's not like that. You don't understand how it is.' I barked back. I was not about to let him tell me how to handle my own issues - I could do that alone, without need for his interjection.

'Believe me, I do.' he retorted icily. As I tried to meet his eyes, I noticed how thin his pupils had become, how they focused on the swiftly changing scenery outside of the van instead of me.

'Jan.' I heard a new voice now, not one I had previously remembered. Had my mind been blocking this section out to numb the ache? I turned my head, to see that everyone else was still asleep. Nobody moved. And I began to look around the van, searching for who had spoken, yet the voice didn't belong to anyone. My leg began to bob in worry, and my hands were noticeably quivering.

That was where the reminiscence ended, and I worked out that the voice had been Lilia's, as she tried without relenting to snap me out of the delusion.

'Just thinking.' I told her, yet that was beyond a lie.