The Chain (A Catherine Diary) - Stamfield. Complete

Coming Soon

Coming Soon
The Catherine Diaries - Coming Out
by Darryl John Wilson

I settled down in my bed, I had had a great weekend, one that had stretched on until Tuesday. Susan and I had celebrated our anniversary, one month of knowing each other, although we had only been going out officially, with each other, for two weeks now. There were times I couldn't get enough of her. When we had first started getting together, we would get Jack involved, but eventually I had started getting jealous, seeing Jack penetrate your girlfriend, got hard to take. I had wanted to say something to Susan, but felt I may have come across as over possessive. Instead, I spoke to Jack, he understood, after all Susan wasn't the only girl he was sleeping with, he was quite the Casanova. For some reason, which I found hard to understand, he didn't even attempt to have intercourse with me. We would have oral sex with each other when Susan was involved, but never intercourse. Maybe, he valued our friendship more. Jack had become one of my closest friends over the last month and he would often walk me home from college and stay chatting about the college rugby team, that we had both joined, him as a player, me as an assistant physiotherapist.

Susan and I had celebrated our anniversary, by going to a pizza restaurant, we had both paid for ourselves, we had intended on going to the cinema afterwards to watch the new James Bond movie, but we had lost ourselves in chat. I had found over these past two weeks, there was far more about Susan than her stunningly good looks. For instance, she was signed up to Sotho one of the top modeling agencies in London, she painted and when she painted, she painted well. She had sold three of her painting for nearly one hundred pounds a piece. Her ambition was to open her own art gallery.

Susan was a special girl in many ways and that left me questioning why she was with me. One thing was for sure, I definitely had more feelings for her, than she had for me. I had introduced her to my mum and Andrew, not as my girlfriend, but as a good friend. I almost burst into laughter, when, the following day, Andrew had asked me if she had a boyfriend. Susan, on the other hand, was yet to introduce me to her parents, I had only met Janet. She had explained that her parents both worked and that their work took them away from home for long periods of time, but I wasn't so sure she was being truthful.

It was while I was thinking about Susan, I received the call. As I stretched over to my discarded jeans and rummaged in the pocket to find my mobile phone, I had decided it was one of three people calling me, Susan, Jack or my best friend Carla.

I looked at the name on the phone, it was none of them. It was Preeti, which to me was strange. I would consider Preeti to be my friend, but even though we had shared phone numbers, walked to college together on occasions, played on the same hockey team and a month earlier she had assisted me with research on sports therapy to enable me to be more proficient when I first joined the rugby team, as Duncan's assistant physiotherapist, Preeti and I were still not that close. In fact I couldn't remember ever ringing her or receiving a phone call from her.

'Hi Preeti, you okay?', I said, half expecting her to say she had rung the wrong number.

'Hi Catherine, that you?'

'Yeah'

'You sound different on the phone. I didn't mean to ring you so late, but my mum just told me she was chatting with Aiden's mum and he's been taken to hospital. Mum said he had been beaten up.'

I sat up. 'Aiden. Are you sure? Is he okay?', there was a strange panic in my voice, which was in direct correlation with how I was feeling. Aiden was my ex-boyfriend, he had cheated on me and as a result I had broken off our relationship. He had taken this badly, especially when other boys had shown an interest in me. As much as I wanted to deny it, I still had feelings for him, he was the first good looking boy to show they were attracted to me.

For years, at school, I had thought I would never get a boyfriend. I didn't think of myself as ugly, because I always had my family and friends of my family telling me how beautiful I was. But it was my complexion that repelled most boys through my school days. However, soon as I got to college, my popularity rose and I found myself attracting the attention of the opposite sex and more recently, the same sex.

'I don't know. But mum asked me if I wanted to go visit him in the hospital. I think she's going to keep his mum company. So I suggested you might want to see him....', I remained quiet. As much as I was sorry for him, I wasn't sure I wanted to see him, especially after what he had done to me a month ago.

While I was walking home one day, he had come up behind me, grabbing me and almost forcing me to say I would go back out with him. It really scared me. If it wasn't for Dwayne and Roger turning up, there was no telling what Aiden might have done.

'.....Catherine, you still there?'

'Yes..sorry, I'm here'

'If it's any help, mum would pick you up on her way'

'It's not that.....are you going?'

'Would you rather I did?'

I thought about it for a moment, if Preeti was there, it would just seem like friends visiting, maybe. But if I went by myself that would send out a completely different message.

'If you don't mind', I responded tentatively.

'I don't. We'll pick you up in ten minutes, okay?'

'Okay', I hung up the phone and wondered what on earth I was doing. I had finally got Aiden out of my life and I was about to let him back in. Regret filled me and I considered ringing Preeti back and telling her I'd changed my mind.