Billie's POV
Once when Mike and I were about 13 we decided to go night swimming at this dodgy little strip of beach a few minutes out of town. It was in the dead of winter, and we had downed a couple beers so we wobbled precariously when we made our way down the old wooden jetty, laughing like lunatics.
"This is the stupidest idea you've ever had." Mike chided nervously as we began to strip down to our boxers, the air biting against our skin.
"That's a lie and you know it." I retorted, struggling out of my jeans.
After our clothes had been cast away we stood there and looked down at the water far below, breath foggy in the cold night. All I could see was rippling blackness; the only thing reassuring that there was ocean was the noise of it lapping against the jetty. Mike rung his hands and then wrapped his gangly arms tight around his frame, shivering. He was practically skin and bones, which was partially how he was naturally and partially due to other complications, specifically at home. Whenever I saw him like that, saw the ribs that protruded just a bit too abnormally from his torso, I felt some part of me hurt inside.
Shoving all that aside for the moment, I grinned back to him. His eyes were wide and he was shaking his head. I felt my skin flaring with goosebumps, and peaked down at the water again, losing some confidence. I was just about to suggest we go in from the shore instead when I felt two hands momentarily press against my back before I was falling through the air. Then, I hit the water.
The first thing I could comprehend was that I was underwater, and therefore needed to surface relatively soon in order to breathe. The next thing was the cold. Fuck it was cold, piercing like needles and numbing my entire body. I could feel each muscle straining and aching underneath my skin that was quaking with shivers.
This, coupled with the surprise of it all shocked my mind into complete lockdown for seconds. I had only experienced a worse case of that sickening, desensitising amazement and distress once before; with the death of my father. And I never really took much thought, after I had surfaced and screamed at Mike who was doubling over in laughter, if I would ever experience something like that again.
But, like falling into the icy ocean, that mixture of shock, amazement and distress came flooding into me the moment Annabel kissed me.
Her mouth was warm, that was all I could grasp for a moment. Her lips were soft and tasted like beer and tears, and they were as still as death, simply pressed to mine. Her hands were cold on my face, and her eyes were scrunched close, as if in pain.
Then, like surfacing from the water, I felt a rush of understanding crash over me and then all I could do was crush her to me. She made some muffled gasp as I enclosed her face with my hands, my eyes closing and my lips moving on hers, pleading for something, I didn't really know what. She made a noise like a whimper and then I felt her stir tentatively underneath me, her mouth opening hesitantly and her fingers digging into the back of my neck. I deepened the kiss, my head still spinning as if I was experiencing some bizarre case of vertigo, when all of a sudden she pulled away.
She took a step back, her gaze low and tears still falling silently down her pale cheeks. I just looked at her, struggling to find something to say. She took a shaky breath and finally looked at me, her eyes outstandingly blue and luminescent and brimming with meloncholy, her long dark eyelashes matted and damp.
"I'm sorry."
I didn't understand. She continued.
"I just...Billie you can't see me anymore, okay? We can just pretend, whatever this was, it never happened."
I didn't understand. Everything that had happened I was still struggling to come to terms with. She really began to sob then, big and heavy, wracking her slight form as she wrapped her arms around herself in a very different way than Mike did all those years ago. He did it because he was nervous and cold, she looked like she was just trying to keep herself from falling completely apart.
"I'm...sorry. Please, take me home." She choked on the last word.
"Annabel..." I began, I still don't know what I would have said if she would have let me continue.
"Please Billie." Her voice was quiet and hoarse and all I could do was let out a heavy breath before we walked back to the car in silence.
The ride was silent except for the yearning voice of David Bowie on the stereo, and I had to stop myself from thinking of another trip with him and the girl who was curled up, eyes closed but not sleeping beside me, one where there was no sense of heaviness hanging in the car or in my chest. The lights of Rodeo came slowly back to us as we drove past the refineries. She stirred, and made a comment so soft I barely heard it.
"They look like Christmas lights."
I didn't answer, only gripped the steering wheel harder to stop myself from stopping and yelling at what was wrong with her, what was wrong with this. What was wrong with me?
I pulled up at her house, my gaze straight ahead as she unlicked her seatbelt and opened the door. She seemed to hover for a second, looking back to me with an expression I didn't want to see before she sighed heavily, as if she was nothing but tired, and then she left.
I drove back to the party and found Tré and Mike. They both asked where she had gone. I got myself blind drunk and had sex with some girl and then left. I didn't want to go home, I didn't know where to go really, but I ended up at Christie Road. I stared at the train tracks and wished I was in another town, another country, another world, another galaxy.
The stars were fantastically bright and I wondered why I wasn't up there with Lucy and my dad.
I didn't know it then, but Annabel didn't go to bed that night.
A/N sorry for not updating!! this chapter was a little intense sorry i like to be overdramatic. thanks for all the comments and thanks for reading!!
