Losing Everything

Chapter 7.1: Now

Lucy woke up, and for a moment couldn’t remember where she was.

It was a bright, hot morning, and she was lying in a white-painted bedroom full of sunlight. She was lying on a hard bed, harder than her own, still wearing all her clothes, and there was an odd, intermittent rushing sound in her ears. She couldn’t work out what that sound was.

She lay there, confused, trying to remember how she had got there, and after a little while she thought she did. She remembered the beach, and that now she was at Erica’s, in the spare bedroom. The sudden direct sunlight must be because the sun had moved around enough to come in the windows of this room, and its heat was probably what had woken her up. She lay a little longer, and eventually realized that the rushing noise was the sound of waves, in the distance, down on the beach.

That was nice, she thought. It was a nice way to start the day, waking up like that.

She sat up. She felt clear-headed. She almost felt good. She’d slept off the high from the weed, she supposed, and slept through the last of whatever the pills had done to her. And any morning which she woke up without an actual hangover was still a better morning than she’d once used to have.

She actually felt good.

She looked out the window, and saw the side of the neighbouring house, and very little more than that. The sunlight was bright, and above that house’s roof, the sky was blue, the way it had been blue early that morning. The sky was very blue, and she was starting to quite like that blueness, rather than Sydney’s pale haze.

She sat there and thought. She felt a little uncomfortable, remembering the night before. She felt like she’d been demanding, and quite insensitive, just turning up the way she had. As though somehow she’d used Erica. It had been inconsiderate, she decided. She shouldn’t have just phoned Erica like that. She shouldn’t have phoned, and she really shouldn’t have then turned up, and she absolutely shouldn’t have stayed to sleep, most of all.

She thought.

She wanted Erica. She was fairly sure she still did. She might have said so more clearly last night than she would have otherwise, if she hadn’t been high and depressed and lonely, but she did still want Erica as much as she always had. She had used to love Erica, in some complicated, painful way. She had loved Erica, even though she’d never actually said so, or explained how she felt. And since she loved Erica, it had been a pretty inconsiderate thing to do to her, turning up like this. She should have stayed away. She owed Erica more than to just use her like this. Appearing in Erica’s life again, just because it suited her now, that was being completely selfish.

She felt pretty awful about that.

She sat there thinking. She thought, and the more she did, the more it seemed like she probably ought to just get up and leave. It really just seemed like the best thing to do.