Out of Time [Brian Jones]

I Need You Baby

Yeah can I come out on the front
And listen to my heart go bumpety bump
I need you baby that's no lie
Without your love I'd surely die 
*

It was awkward.

I've been with Brian for so long and we've been so often on our own, but it was different now. We had our moments where I hadn't felt at ease with him and some where I had really enjoyed his company. However, this was the first time I felt awkward with him without him even doing anything. Alone his presence seemed to be able to make me nervous and I nearly would have preferred to stay with Mary, even thought that too was embarrassing. No matter how often she reassured me that she hadn't seen or heard anything and had indeed waited until we were finished, I couldn't shake the feeling off that she was lying. It might have been a stupid thought, especially when everyone seemed to be quite freely with their love life, but I wasn't and I preferred it to stay private. Mary might have no problem with everyone knowing what she was up to, but I had, which went to the degree that I could hardly look at Brian without feeling hugely embarrassed.

In the past, it had been easy to shrug off or to ignore whenever something similar intimate had happened, simply because I could tell myself that it meant nothing, which was no longer true. I felt this huge need in me to reach out to him and never let him go. At the same time, I felt immensely insecure and wanted nothing more than to run off. Brian had seen a lot of women and I had nothing I could offer him. I was inexperienced and unattractive. All I had was death and nobody wanted that.

"You could move into my room. I mean if you want," Brian suddenly said as we entered his house. Since we had left my old flat, no one of us had said much. I had about a million questions for him, but I couldn't find the courage to voice them and Brian's silence I supposed was probably a try to give me space until I was ready for a conversation we sooner or later needed to have or maybe I was only misjudging him again. Brian was still hard to figure out for me or at least in certain situation he was. Therefore, I didn't really know what to reply to his request either. He probably meant well, but so much closeness was a huge step for me and I wasn't sure I could take this risk, just after I had taken a different one. Turning his offer down however, sounded like something he would misunderstand again.

"I-I-"

"You can stay in yours too, I don't want to scare you off," he said. His tone gentle and a small smile on his lips, which ironically scared me. I don't know why, but it seemed unreal. We had argued so much and that had always felt more real than him being actually nice and understanding to me.

"I- I can leave my things there, just like before. It was good like that, wasn't it? "

I knew I had said the wrong thing when he didn't reply and just headed to my room like I wasn't even there at all. I run after him, thinking about how to explain to him that whatever he thought I had meant was not what I had meant at all, but the only thing I came up with was that Mary was right. We were indeed complicated.

Brian had sat my suitcase down on the floor and I thought he would just run off again. Leaving me here wondering, what had gone wrong ahain, but he didn't. "I don't want to have what we had before. I'm no job and no arrangement." He took a deep breath and sat down on the bed. "I want a chance, a real one, even if that means I have to play by your rules. Touching to a minimum, you having your own space and so on, but don't push me away."

I didn't want to have this discussion now. Not when there was something else that unnerved me far more than how we would figure our relationship out. We had waited so long with it, that it could probably wait a few moments more. "Why did you leave?"

Which was apparently a topic Brian didn't want to talk about, judging by his annoyed face. "I just wanted a break and I thought we already discussed this. I'm sorry, okay? Can we-"