Love vs. Lust

(33) Love vs. Lust

Love vs. Lust

Chapter 33

I just stood there in the door for a while, trying to gather enough strength to step through. When I finally did I felt both relieved and scared. Some clothes were lying on my bed, I didn’t recognize them but then again there were a lot of things I didn’t recognize lately. I picked them up, folded them and pushed them into my cupboard. Next I walked over to my bed and sat down on it, wondering where to begin and if I was ready to face what I found. I took me a while but I finally decided on looking through my bedside table first.

I opened the drawer and placed its content on my bed. None of it looked familiar except for a bracelet I got from my mom and my old diary. I decided to stop writing in it just before my sixteenth birthday so I knew there would be nothing in there to help me remember. There were a few pieces of folded up paper, a pink plastic ring, a teddy on a key chain that said I LOVE YOU, a box of condoms and a stack of photos.

I looked at the box of condoms and felt tears starting to sting my eyes. I couldn’t remember anything but I was pretty sure that they meant I was having sex with Gordon. Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t sad that I had sex with him, only that I couldn’t remember it. We had obviously shared so much and I couldn’t remember a single thing. I picked up the condoms and placed them back into my drawer before picking up the plastic pink ring. It was cute and had a little red heart at the top. I slipped it onto my ring finger and looked at it. It somehow looked like it was suppose to be there so I left it on.

I placed the key chain, the bracelet and my diary back into the drawer and then stared at the folded up pieces of paper and the stack of photos. I was scared of what the papers might contain so I decided on looking at the photos first. They were all of Gordon and me. Sometimes Shelby and Walter would be in some of the photos with us but on most of them it was just the two of us. A bunch of them were taken at the beach but I couldn’t place which beach it was.

When I was done going through the photos I put them back in my drawer and picked up the first piece of paper. I unfolded it slowly and started reading. It looked and sounded like it was the lyrics of a song but I didn’t recognize them. It wasn’t my handwriting so it had to have been Gordon who wrote them. I quickly unfolded the rest of them and found them all to be songs. The words were beautiful and when I was done reading them I was sobbing all over again.

I couldn’t remember Gordon but I knew I loved him, I could feel it deep down in my heart. I had to remember but I had no idea how to do it. Gordon’s landlord had phoned while I was in the hospital, I was asleep so Conner had answered my phone and spoken to him. Apparently he couldn’t wait for us to come clean out the place because he had somebody who wanted to move in so he had a moving company pack up all of Gordon’s things. He wanted me to come fetch them but since I was in the hospital Conner and Cole went to fetch them, Gordon didn’t have a lot of stuff so they just put everything in our garage.

I didn’t go through any of it yet because I just didn’t have the courage to do it just like I didn’t have the courage to come into my room until tonight. I got up from my bed and made my way to the garage. Maybe if I looked through his things I would remember something. I spent the next few hours going through his stuff. I left his clothes and things in the garage but brought three of the boxes up to my room. They were filled with books, cd’s, movies, photos and all sorts of personal things. I found a book full of lyrics all dedicated to me, making me realize that Gordon not only wrote down the lyrics to the songs I found in my drawer but that he had created them.

I had left the box of cd’s for last and as I went through them I found one with my name written in big black letters across it. My breath caught in my chest and my heart sped up as I opened the case and pressed it into my cd player. The sound of his voice came out over the speakers and I felt a chill run down my spine. I pulled my legs up to my chest and hugged my arms around them as I squeezed shut my eyes and listened.

“I made this cd for you so that you can sleep at night once I’m gone,” his voice said and then he started singing. I recognized some of the songs since I had read the lyrics earlier. He didn’t have any music in the background but something about it was stirring my insides. His voice was beautiful and I could almost imagine that I remembered hearing him sing those words to me before. He sang five different songs and I cried and sobbed all the way through. When he was done with the fifth song there was a long pause and I was about to switch it off when his voice came on again.

“I’m sorry Gabby. I love you,” he said and then he was gone. I don’t know how long I sat there before I finally stopped crying but when I did, I got up and went to go fetch my clothes from the spare room. I packed them all back into my cupboard and then headed to the bathroom where I took a long hot bath. My heart was racing in my chest all the while and I couldn’t get his voice out of my head but that was ok because I didn’t want to.

When the water started getting cold I got out, dried myself off and changed into my pajamas. I was feeling very tired but when I laid down on my bed I couldn’t fall asleep. I tossed and turned until after midnight, that’s when I decided to play the cd again. I hadn’t taken it out of my cd player so I just put it on repeat and pressed play. Hearing his voice somehow managed to calm me and I fell asleep after two songs. That night I had the same dream again. The one where Gordon helped me up in front of the ice cream parlor.

When I woke up the next morning my head was aching and my eyes felt puffy but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I got out of bed and started going through all of my things again, determined to remember.