Buttercup [H.S]

Chapter Eighteen

At some point if found myself flipping through my small collection of records, looking for something to drown out my thoughts. I held the Bowie record that Harry had picked out for me in my hands, staring at the cover.

I could feel my breaths labouring, fingers gripping the cardboard cover tightly, until my sight blurs with tears.

I slip the vinyl onto my player and turn it all the way up, a slight crackle and pop before the voice of a man who's bravery I was desperately in need of fills my home.

By the end of the first song my face was awash with tears of self pity, and I found myself in a stupor, dancing through the empty rooms of my house with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders like a depressed Stevie Nicks.

I couldn't seem to drink away the flashes of Kyles face in my living room the night before. My jaw ached as though he still had a vice like grip on my face.

Despite the music that blared out from the record player, I could still hear my mothers voice telling me to shut up. Hear that slap that echoed through my child hood home. Hear Jason's grunts in my ears, the tearing of my dress, my pleads for him to stop.

I just wanted it to stop.

All of it.

This aching emptiness, this spiral of flying close to the sun only to find the tips of my wings set alight before I'd come hurting back down into darkness.

I longed so much for contentment. For happiness. Friendships. Love. Purpose and drive. A life that meant waking each morning didn't feel like walking into the void, to return to the confines of this house exactly the same as I'd left it that same day. Alone. Unloved.

I don't remember opening a second bottle of vodka; I'm not entirely sure where it'd even come from. Perhaps I'd stumbled to the corner shop and back again, but when I woke from a brief moment of dozing off on the sofa, it was clutched in my hands.

I take another drink, play another Bowie record and stare out of the window as the sky burns orange. Watch the sun set and long to disappear with it.

***

Bang! Bang! Bang!

"Riley!"

When I hear my name calling out, and I jolt awake I have one of those moments where I'm entirely unaware of where I am.

I try to cling onto that blissful unawareness, because there's something peaceful about it. Devoid of reality, of the here and the now.

Perhaps I could will myself to be somewhere else, to wake up on another day or in another time, avoid what is to be for as long as possible.

But then there's that loud hammering on my door again, a fist right against the mottled glass that pounds so hard I hear the flap of my letterbox rattling.

"Riley! Open up!"

I can hear scuffling from somewhere, scraping and what sounds like a plant pot tipping over outside of the front of my house, but it's hard to tell over the music that I suddenly realise is still playing.

I clumsily feel my lips mouthing the words, my tongue and teeth dry and tasting acidic.

"I'm happy, hope you're happy too."

I try to peal my eyes open but I feel so incredibly sluggish, like every muscle in my body is made of jelly, eyelids included.