Save Me

Chapter Twenty-Three

"Sure, you wish you did some things differently, but there is no sense in becoming burdened with regret over things you have no power to change."

-Rihanna

♔ Chapter Twenty-Three ♔

I'd packed all of my things and left Penryn right away.

I dropped out of Exeter University too, and had no plan on what I was going to do, where I was going to go - only away. I wanted away from Cornwall forever, away from the despair of the countryside, from the quiet of the English riviera, the faded childhood memories, all the dead people, the traumas, and the past. I wanted to escape from the familiarity of my hometown, where I was born, where everything went wrong; but from university too, where I'd let myself waste away from all the drugs and fucking, from having old wounds tore open by blurry faces and ghosts, phantom boys who didn't exist outside the four walls of my very own fantasyland.

I wanted to leave it all behind and push onward, towards a hopefully brighter place, where my past could finally be set in stone and cease to follow and taunt me. A place where I wouldn't see dead eyes watching me from the shadows, or guilt and regret itching and clawing at my very skin. A place I could be free - that was what I wanted, and where I was headed. Somewhere that I could finally move on, even if alone.

The only thing that kept me grounded in Cornwall was Darby. I knew it was him, and I had an intense feeling, somewhere in my gut that was telling me to go for it. Butterflies, twirling around in my stomach. Heart racing whenever he touched me. It felt like something old, but something new at the same time; something bitter with bad memories, but sweet with hindsight. And it was real, too - which was more than I could say for Luke.

After I visited Darby, I found myself in a musky pub on the corner of the road that first night in town, and I drank away my irrationality and paranoia until I couldn't think or see straight. I wandered into a hotel and booked a decent room at a place called The Boudicca, a big, golden-bricked building nearby. Inside, it was once a huge and extravagant affair, now worn down over time, it's grandeur fading with age.

I'd spent the last couple of weeks in the hotel, or at the hospital. If visiting hours were open, I was there with Darby, everyday. Each time I'd walk through those doors, I'd see him in all-white, his hair ruffled and thick, and he'd smile as he spotted me. He seemed alright again, almost like himself. He was a little loopier than I had remembered, but change was inevitable.

He seemed better, lighter, as though he had been drowning before now, dragged down by all the harsh realities of what he'd done, the memories that sent him insane. But finally, he had learned how to swim, how to kick his legs and manipulate the currents, and how to live with himself and what he'd done.

I got a call sometime early in the morning, waking me up. I looked around, momentarily flustered at where I was - then I remembered, I was staying in a fancy hotel in Truro. It was close to the centre of the town, in the middle of a main thoroughfare.

I turned over in the bed and grabbed my phone, answering the call, "Hello?"

"It's me," Darby said. His voice sounded hushed, a tone of worry underlining it. "I need you to come get me," he continued.

"Where are you?" I asked. "Aren't you at the hospital?" I sat up on the bed, my free hand wiping the sleep from each eye, looking around the room for my clothes.