Eddies pov
Today was a new day, and my hangover had totally gone, which left me feeling pretty happy. We were leaving for tour so soon, and despite jackos interruptions yesterday we were sounding the best we had ever sounded.
I’d slept in once again, and being Monday I had the house to myself.
Well, I was supposed to be at school but it was after 11 now and it’d take me too long to get ready and catch the train. Instead I took my time in the shower, washing away the muck and memories of the weekend. Then instead of studying I got myself a bowl of cereal and my acoustic guitar and headed out into the back yard. I don’t know what it was, but hanging around ash had sort of changed how important things were, and how I saw them. It was weird, I hated the girl I remembered, but now I knew I was falling for her again. But it was too late, I’d missed my chance.
The music had been flowing so easily over the last week, my fingers seemed to know which chords to play and I knew what notes to sing.
It was the most amazing feeling.
My phone starting blaring from the grass next to me, and the number wasn’t one I knew. My heart was telling me not to answer, but my head was saying to pick up the phone. Listening to your heads always better than listening to your heart right? Your heart can be broken, but your head can’t.
“hello?”
“um hi Eddie?”
“yeah, can I help you”
“it’s Shaun, we met yesterday”
“as in Shaun diviney? what did I do wrong now”
A slight laugh came from the other end of the phone, and made me nervous.
“no it’s Shaun Jennings, you probably know me as jumpnow?”
“oh yeah, hey”
“I’m really sorry to have to ask you this but I need you to tell me your address, we need to talk”
I gave it to him, and he muttered to wait for him there, before hanging up.
This wasn’t good, maybe I shouldn’t have listened to my head, instead of a broken heart I had a messed up head.
Jumpnow arrived just on an hour after he called, he looked like shit and was carrying an envelope in one hand with a coffee in the other. He didn’t say anything except a mumbled little bunch of words I couldn’t understand, but instead he thrust the envelope into my hands. My breath caught in my throat when I saw ash’s handwriting on the front, and I started to rip it open.
When you’ve known someone for ages when you read something they’ve written, you read it in their voice. As I could further through the letter, my breath started to catch more and more.
After what we’d had before I would have been happy to see her dead, but after the weekend this hurt like a rusted razor in my throat.
It was a suicide letter, she’d given in.
My legs seemed to get all wobbly beneath me, and I sunk to the ground and leaned against the wall.
If it had just been a simple letter saying goodbye it would have made this a bit easier, but there was 2 pages all up, full of apologies and thankyous. Breathing in was getting harder, the razor blades were getting sharper. I didn’t want jumpnow to see me cry, I was far too old to cry over some girl. Instead I breathed in hard and blinked back the tears. We sat on the lounges and spoke for about 10 minutes before he said he had to go.
He didn’t say much after goodbye, but just before he went out the door he turned around.
“it’s okay to cry you know”
“bye Shaun”
And he was gone, simple as that.
Then I could let the tears come, I hadn’t cried for so long it was almost painful now.
Upstairs I slammed the door in anger, even though there was nobody home to pay any attention to how I was feeling. The tears were coming thick and fast now, from anger and regrets, from the embarrassment of crying like this.
After a few minutes the tears slowed, but I felt so numb inside. Curled up in bed I re-read the letter, again and again until the words on the page turned to scribble and I couldn’t make sense of them any more.
My head was aching, and when I saw myself in the mirror i looked lime disaster. My hair had dried in clumps and my face was all red and splotchy. Ew. I was almost 18, and at the moment I was embarrassed for myself. I put on the random cd ash had made me when we were first together, it was all angry and dark. Perfect, distracting.
