Burning Moon (Wattpad Version)

Chapter 1

“Val.” The sausage almost fell out of my mouth as I tried to talk. “Val, I need you to go down to the shops and buy me two, no, five Mars Bars, six bags of Jelly Babies and bread -- I need bread.” Right now, I needed bread like a junkie needed their early morning fix. If bread came in pill form, I would’ve swallowed the whole bottle. Before I’d even finished giving Val these instructions, I’d already started killing a crumpet, dripping it into syrup and practically inhaling it down. No one ventured to argue, or suggest that I shouldn’t mainline with pure sugar. Val jumped into action.

But the food could only push the emotions away for so long. I looked up at the clock. The minute hand seemed to be ticking in slow motion and I felt like I was trapped in a surreal dream, where the landscape was tilting and the clock face was melting down the kitchen wall like a Salvador Dali painting. It was hard to walk; my brain was struggling to send messages to my sluggish legs, which were now encased in psychosomatic concrete.

I crawled to the lounge and poured myself onto the couch, clutching a bag of newly arrived Jelly Babies. I needed a distraction. Badly. I flipped to the Reality Channel, confident that I would find solace there. Someone always had it worse; like the guy with four arms and wayward warts, or the person trapped in their house under the piles of magazines and toothbrushes that they’d been hoarding since 1966 -- or, better still, the woman who went into labour, while trapped on a steep cliff face in the Himalayas, or something equally as morbidly fascinating. But the current show was about a guy who baked cake, and unless his arm got trapped in the electric mixer and he was forced to gnaw it free with his teeth, I wasn’t interested.

I was happy when my family finally left and Sue and Val joined me.

“So now what?” The tears welled up again. “What do I do next?”

“I don’t know sweetie,” Sue took me by the hand. “But we’re here for you, whatever you need.”

“Whatever!” Val echoed the sentiment and took my other hand. I felt mildly better knowing that they were there for me. I thought back to the time that Val and I had rallied around Sue when she’d found her boyfriend in bed, literally, with another woman. At the time she didn’t think she would survive the pain and humiliation, but she’d come through it fine. More than fine actually, she’d recently landed a job as an intern at a glamorous magazine where she got copious amounts of free face cream. And she'd just started dating a med student -- or, as we liked to call him, future McDreamy.

Maybe I would be okay too? One day.

But right now, the future looked pretty damn bleak.

“Why did he do this?” I angrily bit the head off a Jelly Baby and obliterated it between my molars. “But I love him,” I wailed, vacillating between anger and desperation.

But neither of them could give me an answer. My mind replayed our last interaction over and over again. We’d eaten breakfast together two mornings ago before I’d checked into the hotel. We’d drunk espresso. We’d chatted about the wedding and what to do if my mother got drunk and started singing show tunes.

He’d kissed me goodbye.

He’d told me he loved me.

He’d said he couldn’t wait to see me walking down the aisle.

So what the hell had happened?

Maybe he was having an affair? But how? We practically lived together. Maybe it was something more benign; perhaps he was just scared? Or maybe he was worried about marrying a woman he’d never taken out for a test drive. I wasn’t exactly the most sexual person, and had also liked the idea of losing my virginity on my wedding night. Twenty-three and still a virgin! It all seemed so stupid and pathetic now in the face of so many 'maybes'.