Save Me

Chapter Five

My nose touched hers for a second, before I leaned in even closer, our lips grazing slightly, her breath fanning my face. She smelled of orange juice and Chanel No. 5, a total turn off, but I continued anyway. It was just starting to get interesting, after all.

"Positively sure?" I asked again.

Then, her lips came in and grabbed mine suddenly. I didn't like the smoothness of her skin, where I'd usually find stubble tickling along my face. I didn't like the softness of her lips, the taste of her lipstick. I could feel it smearing over my mouth. I didn't like all the hair trailing down her shoulders, an empty brownish colour. I didn't like her tits, big and plump and poking right out. I didn't like it at all, but I did it because I was bored and it was funny.

That was when I felt her teeth scraping along my bottom lip, biting down hard in the middle of the empty kiss. Her free hand swung and clipped me in the side of the face, before breaking apart with a smug look of satisfaction spreading across her arrogant features.

"Yes, I'm sure."

I started laughing, despite the dull pain in my lip. I could taste the thickness of blood, but I didn't mind it. I liked it a little, actually. "I had you for a second there, admit it."

"Nope," she persisted. God, I hated her. She was just like me. I hated her. "Anyway, thank you for that brief seduction, but I'm off home now."

"I'll come with."

"Are you going out tonight?" she asked, before sucking the dregs of her orange juice and waiting for me to grab my things.

"I don't think so," I answered back. "I don't really like that scene anymore."

After I'd came to university, I quickly realised that most of it was just parties and girls and plastic red cups. None of that was for me, though. It used to be, a little while ago. Partying, getting so smashed that I couldn't remember the last week, sniffing all sorts of shit I really shouldn't be. It was the kind of lifestyle that could draw someone in so easily, but became hard to get out of. Not because it was addictive, but because it was so easy. It was an escape, for most people - being able to swallow a small, bright red or yellow or green little pill, letting it fill you up with fake happiness for half a dozen hours; letting go of the bullshit and soaking in an intense inkling of freedom.

In a way, I only used to like myself when I was on drugs. It was the only part of life that I enjoyed, before university, the only thing that I looked forward to. But I got over it. I distanced myself from the poisonous people in my life and moved away from my hometown to somewhere better.

I think it was a way of getting out of your own life, inside of a club, strobe lights flashing and people dancing and sweating, but it wasn't something I enjoyed anymore. One more night out, you'd tell yourself. Everyone else was doing it, everyone else was having fun, maybe this time, you would too. But you wouldn't, and neither would I. The thrill of the pill was something that soon became tedious to me. It felt more like something I had to do, not something that I wanted to do anymore. So I had to stop. My life wasn't about that anymore. I guess I'd moved on from it.

I think the reason that I came to university was because I was just lonely. At the beginning of my life, I was surrounded by people, and one by one, they all disappeared. I had a family, back in my hometown. A happy family. A place where I belonged, or people that I belonged to. Now, it was just me.

My mind went to the cliffs, as soon as I remembered them. Back home, there was a long road that wedged onto the motorway. There was a sharp turn in the road, just before a hill that dipped up and down, swerving upwards and suddenly stopping. Beyond that was nothing but ocean. That was where they all died, years and years ago.

I remembered sitting in one of the big, empty rooms of my house back home in Penzance. I remembered hearing the complete silence inside, not a single sound or a single soul around me. Just the lonely four walls of the room, the bare furniture of the house, the physical emptiness of the place, like I was trapped in a cocoon of my own cosy isolation, and it was sending me insane.

I hated being alone, I despised my own company, so I found my own way of escape. I remember never feeling more alone in my entire life, sitting in an empty house at the end of a bitter street. I'd crawled into the house higher than the clouds, and passed out on the couch. When I woke up, it was all soaking in - the loneliness. I hated it. Everywhere I looked, memories would bleed into my eyes and make them sting -  memories of my mum, or my brother, or my dad.

I had to get out.

It was the worst place I could be, in the neighbourhood of my destructive youth, and I remember exactly how it made me feel: like everything I had was gone, or like it was never there at all; like it was just nothing, and I was just there, bathing in it, living in it - dying in it.

That was when I'd decided to stop. I stood up, and I walked out of that house, and I promised myself - I whispered the words to myself, like that would make them more real.

I'd never be that lonely ever again.

Yet, I couldn't even tell if I was really keeping it, or breaking it. All the sex and the parties, it worked for a while - it always does work, but just long enough to convince you that you're okay, until suddenly, you're not.

And suddenly, I wasn't.