Jigsaw (NaNoWriMo13)

Thirty Four

Yay. Another update! This book is so nearly finished! *Cries. Then I'm going to finish my other works before editing this one and starting on the sequel. Which will be much better written and planned than this one! As always please READ/VOTE/FOLLOW/COMMENT/SHARE. Your support means the world to me!

The train journey feels like a journey to the centre of the Earth. Leah is throwing me sidelong glances, laced with curiosity as I bounce and twist in my seat, waiting anxiously for the tannoy announcement that will announce my re-arrival in London. I can't stay still. It's as if every time I blink, the image of a battered and bruised Evan laying prone in a hospital bed imprints itself on my eyelids and I jerk them open with a silent gasp. It's taking all my willpower not to collapse and release the sobs that are anxious to escape.

“Who did this?” I gasp after an agonising wait of a silence that seems to stretch out before us like a lonely highway.

Leah sighs, a crackly sound deep in her throat and turns to smother a cough in the crook of her elbow. She's not happy with me. I can tell. Her eyes are narrowed; teeth clenched tightly together. It's taking a lot of strength not to scream at me.

“Your friend.” she spits, not bothering to hide the venom from her voice.

I flinch a little. It's suddenly as if I am the vulnerable person I was when I first met Evan. The girl that needed saving; not only from the world. But from herself. What was a small cough, soon turns into a series of hacking coughs that have her doubling over in on herself. When she surfaces, she meets my worried gaze.

“Smokers cough.” she says.

She grimaces and wipes the moisture from her eyes. The only indication that she just nearly coughed up a lung. Almost as quick as lightning, she straightens up, eyes dark and menacing. Her blue hair sits messily around her head but almost seems to crackle like electricity as she glares at me.

“And just what do you think you were doing? Evan was worried sick! You should have seen him, Lily. He was nearly in tears. And me? I lost my best friend. I've never had a proper friend before and you took that away from me.” Leahs voice cracks and she runs her hands over her face.

I stiffen. Unsure of how to react as my usually composed friend falls apart in front of me. “It was horrible, Lily. That bastard battered the shit out of him. Outside his own café! He nearly didn't make it!”

My stomach clenches and a loud sob bites its way out of my throat. Pretty soon, tears are soaking my face, making it puffy. Evan nearly died? I nearly lost the man I lost because of my own stupidity. “W-what friend?” I say, wiping impatiently at my eyes.

Leah shakes her head back, brings the tip of her tongue to her lips as she thinks about it. “I don't know.” she says tiredly. “David or someone.”

A white blaze of anger trails through me. Coupled with the sting of rejection and betrayal. His alliances laid elsewhere all along. Evan had warned me from day one and I didn't listen. Now the result is my boyfriend – or ex boyfriend. Evan broke up with me – laying bruised from a beating in a hospital bed.

Leah's anger seems to drain out of her as she scoots closer to me on the dirty train seats. There are no other people in the compartment but for me and Leah. They took one look at Leah and her hair, and piercings and fled to the next carriage. Her warmth seeps into mine, oddly comforting over the rocking motion of the train and the jerk and rattle as it speeds over the tracks.

Evan hasn't been the only one that's suffered. No, my supposed best friend. My rock, my shoulder to cry on. The girl who stayed up with me until four in the morning playing Guitar Hero, when Evan stopped talking to me. But once again, it was once sided. Being the selfish person I am. I never saw the slight pain in Leahs eyes. A pain that I cannot understand. One that I will have to gain her trust to learn about. Sitting up, I wipe my eyes, fixing my eyes on an advert about violent.