It's Not A Question But A Lesson Learned In Time

It's Not A Question But A Lesson Learned In Time - Chapter Twenty

“Night Joe.” I laughed. He grabbed me for a hug and then waved me goodnight.

I climbed upstairs and just about managed to change into my pajamas before I fell into bed. As soon as I had pulled the cover over my body, I shut my eyes and curled up into a ball; hoping to fall asleep straight away. After about an hour I was still wide awake. I opened my eyes and started at the ceiling for a while before grabbing my cell phone and switching it on for the first time in several days. As I waited for it to load and find a network connection, I switched my laptop on and left that too, to wake up and load. To my surprise my phone only showed one message from the last few days and one missed call with a voicemail message. The text was from James, which I already knew about because he forgot I didn’t have my phone on, and the call from Tre.

Hello? Is this thing on? Earth to Frankie… Sorry.

Hey. I’m not calling you in an attempt to get you to come home. Cause I’m fairly sure that you’ll come back when you’re ready, and that’s clearly not right now. I am literally just calling to make sure you’re ok. I just wanted to make sure you’re still alive and stuff. So… Y’know, we’ll hopefully see you soon I guess. But please. Just take care and be careful. There’s some psycho people out there. We don’t need you running into one of them. Haha. Sorry, that’s not funny. Seriously. Even if you literally just send one of us a message that simply says ‘I’m alive’ It’ll make us feel better… So erm yeah. We love you, and we all miss you loads… Bye Frankie.

I laughed at how awkward he sounded and then stared at the glowing screen of my phone, biting my lip. The message was left three days ago, was there any point in replying now? I guess he only wanted to know if I was ok, but replying would defeat the object of this whole thing. I already replied to my dad on one of the first days I was here, surely they should know I’m fine, I mean, it’s not like I’m a little kid. I can look after myself… most of the time.

I shook my head to clear my thoughts and remembered the reason for switching my phone on in the first place. I sent a message to James and then turned my attention back to my laptop, which had finally finished loading, and connected to the internet. I signed into my messenger and, after blocking Mike, Tre and my dad, simply waited. Sure enough a few minutes later James appeared. I clicked to switch on our webcams and smiled when I saw his face.

“James!” I exclaimed, keeping my voice low so I didn’t wake up Ben or Joe.

“Oh my god Frankie. I’ve missed you so much! And oh my god, your hair!” He grinned. I laughed.

“Do you like it?”

“Definitely, it looks awesome! You look... Y’know…” He trailed off.

“Like my mom?” I mumbled, he just nodded. “Hannah said that too How’s it going?!”

“Pretty great still. Did I tell you I got a job?”

“No. When did you get that? And what is it?”

“Err.. Friday I think it was. I just work in HMV, stocking shelves and y’know, stuff like that.”

“Oh awesome. I’ve not spoken to you since… what? Wednesday? But that’s great, you won’t have to worry about not having any money at all now then.

“Yeah. I’m pretty happy to have found one. Oh, did I mention, I had a run in with the guys from My Chemical Romance on Saturday?”

“No you didn’t. But I bet that was awkward.”

“Yeah. Quite. I think Frank was suspicious for a while, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t realize who I was. I was freaking out the whole time we were talking to them though!”

“You’re so paranoid!” James laughed.

“Shut up.” I rolled my eyes. “But listen, it’s always about me and I feel bad. So how are things going with you?”

James laughed again.

“Things are pretty good I guess. Your dad’s finally stopped questioning me about you every five minutes so I’m not quite so, like, well worried I guess.”

“He stopped questioning you?”

“Oh… I guess he’s just realized that you’ll come home when you’re ready to. But he’s not been at school for like the past week either, so I’ve not really seen him as much anyway.”

“He’s not been at school?”

“Yeah. Someone mentioned that he’d been sent home to take some time out. He’s been like, out of it since you left, he’s completely distracted all the time, and it was affecting his teaching. Joey’s staying with Mike mostly, cause he’s scared of your dad. He yelled at him a while back, and Mike said Joey had locked himself in the bathroom for ages, until Mike could get there to take him to school himself.”

“You spoke to Mike?”

“Mmhmm. He rang the other day to see if I could watch Joey while he and Tre went to try and talk some sense into your dad. He’s completely torn apart because you left.”

I swallowed back my guilt and tears.

“Are you ok?” He asked.

“Yeah. I guess… I mean… I knew he would take it kind of hard. But I guess I didn’t realize he would be this torn up about me leaving.”

“But Frankie… He’s already lost your mom. Now he’s kind of lost you. What else did you expect?”

“I don’t know.” I sniffed, wiping my eyes.

“Hey. How about we change the subject? I don’t want to make you cry.”

I smiled, nodding in agreement.

“So what’s it like living with two completely random guys?”

“It’s… Kind of like living at home, but more fun.”

“Oh I see how it is. You don’t need me anymore then.”

“Noo.” I laughed. “You know I don’t mean like that. It’s just like, they’re really nice, funny, friendly, and y’know. They’re kind of like you I guess. Just not gay.” James laughed.

“Oh, what about your boyfriend? Or am I still not allowed to call him that?”

“I don’t know. I’m still not sure really. I work with him now though.”

“Is that going to affect anything? Some places don’t like people to have ‘relationships’ if they work together.”

“I have no idea. But no one knows about it.”

“Maybe you should keep it like that for a while. At least until you know whether they’d have any problem with it.”

“Yeah…” I trailed off, not really sure what else to say.

James asked some more questions and we talked for a while longer, until it was about two-thirty here in London.

“You should get some sleep Frankie. I guess you have work tomorrow?” James told me, noticing the yawn that I had tried to hide from him. I nodded.

“9am. Bright and early.” I smiled.

“Ok. I’ll let you go. I’ll speak to you soon though. Just ring or text me again whenever, and we can talk.”

“Great. Speak to you soon. Love you James!”

“Yeah, love you too Frankie.” He rolled his eyes and waved. I closed the window and shut my laptop down quickly, before turning back and falling onto my bed.

I fell asleep quickly this time, despite my mind running with different thoughts, and guilt coursing through me after what James had told me, I was just too tired to stay awake anymore.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here ya go. Not really got much to say to be honest, just enjoy I guess :)

Oh, and let me know what you think.