One More Chance

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

“I should have told her that…” He trailed off.

“It wasn’t your fault, Josh,” I told him. “You need to know.”

“She wouldn’t have done those drugs if I didn’t make out that she wasn’t good enough for me,” he replied, in an angry tone.

“It was never your fault,” I repeated.

“You can’t prove it can you,” he shouted. The silence…

“I can,” I replied. He looked at me in interest.

“When I grew up,” I started. “They used to bully me. It was terrible…how they’d make me feel…they’d make me do stuff I would never have done,”

“Like what?” he asked with a frown.

“Alcohol, cigarettes…once I even took something I’ll always regret. Those kids…they made me feel worthless and I wanted to prove to them that I could!”

“That’s what Hannah faced?” he asked me, and it was my job to reassure him.

“Haze told me that she was very talented,” I whispered. “They would have been jealous of her. She was a lot younger than them, wasn’t she?”

His face changed into a whole range of emotions. Relief, anger, disbelief. I carried on talking. I had to make him see sense.

“I’ll tell you something, Josh. You’ve seen the papers, right? A few years ago, this girl…she was with her friends and she made me take some stuff. You have no idea what effect she had on me. She was there, all glitz and glam with her friends, and I was by myself. She made me feel inexperienced and worthless. And her whole gang was richer than me,” I realized that I was pitting with hate for that pretty red-head. How much I hated her.

My anger made him see that I wasn’t lying.

“I’ll never stop blaming myself,” he said, and I knew it was true. The damage had been done, carved into his thoughts.

“But you understand…?” I asked him.

“Yeah…” he looked away. “I should never have done…I shouldn’t have cut myself,”

He had admitted it earlier, but it was too much to take in. The fact that he was cutting himself. I had seen him as the care-free, tall, handsome blonde, who thought that life was a doddle. There was so much more of him, all that pain and heartbreak twisted inside him, breaking him, sugar coated with a layer of pretend happiness. But somewhere along I had seen real joy.

“She would never have wanted it…” I told him.

We were embraced by another wave of silence until he spoke.

“You do look like her,” he said.

“That’s why you dated me?” I asked, jokingly, but he turned around, alarmed.

“No. I didn’t realize before. Then that dude said something and I looked at you and then it…just came back,”

“It’s quite weird that she looked like me. And she was the same age as me when she died. We’d be the same age if she…”

“She’d have liked you,”

I smiled.

“You wanna’ know what’s weird?” he asked me, and I nodded for him to carry on. “It wasn’t just that she was pretty. I liked her. Her personality,”

Again, we faced another silence.

“I was going to cut myself again,” he said.

“If I hadn’t come…” I didn’t want to say the rest of the sentence.

“Yeah…I would have,” he sighed. “I guess when they say ‘talk about it’ it actually works”

“Josh, promise me something,” I told him. “Whenever anything happens, just come and find me. You’re my best friend…just talk about anything….never go and cut yourself,”

“Ok,” he mustered, but I wasn’t satisfied.

“Promise?”

“I promise, as long as you do the same thing back,”

“Fine I promise,”

He grinned. “In that case, would you care tell me what went on between you and Haze?”

“Haze?” I asked him.

“Anyone can tell you’re nuts for him,” said Josh. “And he did say…”

“What did he say?” I asked him. “Oh my- you have to tell me,”

“Aha! I knew you like him!” he said, and the evidence for his theory was the blush on my cheeks.

“It’s getting late. We’ve got to go,” I said.

“Nice try, but we’re still having this conversation later,”

Urgh! This is the shortest I’ve ever written, just over 700 words, but I really can’t write more! Got a tiny writer’s block! Urgh!

Song Of The Chapter: Dancing With Tears in My eyes – Ke$ha _You know when you listen to a song (this is going to sound cheesy) and then you feel the emotion from the song? Well, this is that kindof song, even if it’s made by a rapper!

Book Of The Chapter: Fractured - Teri Terry (I’m obsessed with the series)

Wattpad Book Of The Chapter: The Wedding Dress Diaries - aimeecarsonmb