you really got a hold on me | john lennon

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

December 31st, 1959 — January 1st, 1960

If you had told me last year that this is where I would end up today, I would've never believed you. Not in a million years. Because me, crying over someone? A boy nonetheless? It was a silly idea to fathom until today when fate decided to stab me in the back and surprise me with the impossible.

All the tears I had suppressed minutes before were all spilled out onto my face and clothes  — leaving marks where they had run free. Somehow I thought that me having a reason to break it off with someone I had cared about would maybe soften the blow of it, but I was wrong. Dot's pregnancy was adding insult to injury when you thought that they cheated long enough for it to reach this far. Had I done something wrong? Was it my fault that he had to run to another woman for something?

John and Paul's raging voices could be heard very clearly from where I was until recently when it ceased to dead silence. My mind immediately went to the worst, considering that we were talking about John and Paul in the first place. The two of them were already insanely close to battering each other up earlier tonight and this was probably the last straw. And as we all knew, any fight between those two was assured to not have a pretty outcome.

I could hear some steady footsteps starting to get closer and closer to where I was, and this better not have been Paul. If it was, I don't know what I was capable of doing to him at this point.

"Natalie?" John's low voice whispers as he coaxes my cold hands off of my face and into his warm ones. His eyes slowly softened when he saw the state I was in. "God, you're going to freeze out here."

"That's the...That's the least of my worries right now." I manage to say through shallow breaths. I knew he was right about how freezing it was, but I didn't want to give him another thing to be worried about.

"Well, it's the most prominent of my worries to make sure you don't freeze to death out here."

"I don't need you to keep me from freezing to death." I bite the side of my lip and blink away any more tears that were starting to build up again. "I just want somebody to actually fucking love me with no conditions attached!"

John's expression suddenly fell, his mouth left gaping open. He looked like he was dangerously close to just sobbing everything out on the sidewalk here with me. Wouldn't blame 'im if he did. I had just shared such a burden of feelings I had been suppressing for God knows how long — and I'm sure it was just another piece of baggage I had forcefully made him carry atop of any other shite thing that had already been done to John as is.

After a minute or two of him trying to absorb what I had just blurted out, John wraps his arms around me and pulls me closer to him. God, he was warm. I had probably said this a million times before but John's hugs were the utterly best thing that could make me feel better and nothing else could compare to them.

"I'm here for ye," John lightly whispers in my ear, his voice unusually calming and gentle. "It's going to be alright, Nat. We'll get through this together, how does that sound?"

"I just — I just can't believe he would do this. He fucking knocked someone up, John!" My voice came out hoarse from all the crying and yelling I had done in the past ten minutes. It was harsh on my throat, but at the rate I was steadily going at now, I'm probably far from stopping it. Feeling that pain was a better option than having that exact moment replaying in my head over and over again.

"I know,"

"And to think...I was stupid enough to think that maybe, maybe he would change. Can you believe tha?" More tears forced their way out of me involuntarily, dripping down the side of John's leather jacket. My breaths were growing quicker and shorter — having me gasping for air every time I had to bawl my brains out like a fucking idiot.