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Chapter Nineteen

He did not know how long he had been there, time seemed to have slowed down. He was in a sort of trance, a colourless miserable existence.

“Chris!”

“Chris!”

“Chris, open the door, please!” Will’s voice came from behind the hard wooden door.

He did not want to listen to whatever he had to say. No comfort words or apologies would put his broken soul together.

The door shook again under the force of the drummers’ fist.

“Chris, please, mate!”

After a while, the ruffling of feet on the corridor carpet told him he had left. Good. He did not need his company or his sympathy.

He slowly stood up and with the scarce energy he had left, climbed on the bed and lay there, motionless, numb, the sound of his own breathing his only company.

His eyes opened in alert at the loud knocking. He must have dozed off, he realised. Disoriented, he looked around, the room was still dark, except for the lights from the bedside table lamp.

Another knock, then another one. “Chris!”

How insistent was he? Had he not got the message?

“Chris, please! I know you’re in there,” he said with a concerned voice.

The man from Southampton persisted for a few more minutes without getting any sort of response.

Finally Chris heard him sigh, “Chris, I know you are in there, please, come and talk to me, you know where to find me, ok, mate?”

The singer grabbed his pillow and turned around, facing away from the door. Thousands of questions ran through his confused mind. What would happen now? What would Jonny say? What would happen with the band? Was Jonny still angry with him? He could not get answers to them. Only the worst case scenarios flashed through his head until he was finally clutched in a light sleep.

When his eyes opened again, sunlight illuminated the whole room, making it glow in the mid-morning light. For a blissful second he was at peace, but then, everything that had happened the previous night came back to him; attacking his mind, stomping on his already battered soul.

The pain, the rejection, the betrayal, the uncertainty. They were killing him, cutting him inside like a sharp knife.

“Jonny” he let out an anguished wail and burrowed his head in his pillow. Memories from the previous days where Jon and him were laughing, playing and even sleeping together flashed through his head. He had just lost all of that and possibly even more.

“Chris,” Will said knocking on his door again. “Let me try,” he heard Guy say, “Chris, mate, come on! Will needs to talk to you, it’s important!” the Scottish man said.

Now Will had brought Guy into it. Did Guy know already?

“Chris, please,” Will said.

The singer could not bring himself to move, he just laid there wishing things were back to normal, back to where he still doubted what to do with his love for Jon. It had not been an easy task to be around the quiet man, being so madly in love with him and wondering if Jonny would ever return his feelings, but nothing compared to the agony of seeing his typically loving and peaceful friend enraged like a furious dragon, looking at him with unabashed anger in his pale green eyes.

“Jonny,” he throatily uttered through his tears.

“Chris, Chris I didn’t…. believe me, please let me explain.”

He couldn’t care less about his explanation. He just wanted everything to be alright again. He wanted Jonny to be his friend again.

“Let’s go, mate. We’ll come back later, he can’t stay in there forever,” Guy said and Chris heard them walk away from his door.

He could not see the point in getting up, the idea of performing a show the following day seemed atrocious to him. How the hell was he going to do that if Jonny hated him? He had started the band with him, because of him. He could not imagine the two of them not playing together anymore.

It was time for breakfast but Chris wasn’t hungry, he wasn’t thirsty, he wasn’t sleepy, he was just hurting. Just existing and hurting.

Some time later a soft knock on the door shook him from his catatonic-like state, he ignored it. Will was surely stubborn. Another knock, then another. Chris sighed. Why wouldn’t he leave him alone?

“Chris,” Jonny’s soft voice said from behind the door.