Buttercup [H.S]

Chapter Twenty Five

They were all ours really. Music, something that shaped me, drove every part of me, had been tainted by her for a long time now.

I couldn't even listen to my own records without remembering the times we'd sang along to them in the van. Couldn't sit behind the wheel without wondering if I really had caught a trace of her perfume; like vanilla frosting or wildflowers in a field. Only to look over to see the empty passenger seat. Knowing it was my mind playing cruel tricks on me.

But that's really her, just across the shop floor from me. My body is positively vibrating; with what I'm not sure. Fear? Elation?

Move, I tell myself.

I take a step forward, but as I do, a girl pokes her head into the door of the shop, calling her name.

She drops the record, pulling a headphone out and greets her friend.

She's leaving. I walk forward, but I'm not quick enough and my voice is stuck in my throat.

She leaves.

She's gone again.

2013.

I'm sat in Linda's office.

It's my last day in therapy; I'd put it off for a long time, but eventually the nightmares had become too encompassing.

I thought if I waited it out, they'd stop, but if anything they got worse.

Sometimes I didn't even have to be asleep to get flashbacks of finding Riley on that bathroom floor.

Her ripped dress.

Her blood soaked legs.

The way she cried out my name, like a wounded animal.

But when I did see that night in my dreams, I'd wake gasping, covered in sweat, shouting for her.

It'd caused my girlfriend, Amanda, to leave me three months ago. She'd tried to be understanding at first, but eventually the sound of another girls name on my lips got to be too much for her.

It had gotten too much for me too.

I just wanted them to stop. I wanted to move on.

That's what'd brought me to Linda, a friend of my mothers. Initially, I'd been nervous wreck, not sure if I was ready to talk about everything.

It wasn't easy at first. I couldn't talk about that night without bursting into tears.

The medication helped. Helped me sleep at least.

Three months of therapy, and Linda is smiling at me from her chair.

"How do you feel about us being done here?" She asks, closing her little notebook for what would be the last time.

"I don't know. Weird. A bit scared."

"What are you scared of Harry?"

I shrug. What was I scared of?

"Acceptance, I think," I say, huffing out a breath. Linda smiles, a soft smile that makes it almost too easy to keep talking. "That I'm moving on."