No More Lonely Nights - A Fan Fiction

No More Lonely Nights - Chapter Forty-Three

February 18, 1964.

Miami, Florida.

PAUL: Yes, you read that right. I'm still in Florida. Well, we're all still in Florida, all of us but John sulking. Sulking and complaining behind Brian's back. I now understand the meaning of the word mutiny... I think we'll be committing that if we don't keep ourselves under control. I haven't left my room since I had it out with Brian on the 16th; the others probably think I have fallen off the face of the earth. So much for coming home with that tan...

Three more days and we'll be in New York bound for Liverpool. I can make it three days... I think.


ALLIE: My father repaired the phone cord, but after doing so, he and my mother ended up getting into it- and not just a simple argument either, more like breaking things. My mother's end, of course, my father would never raise a hand to anyone or break anything in the heat of fury. I tried to sleep but couldn't over the sounds of them fighting in the kitchen, and I finally pushed open my window and jumped into the damp grass below, sitting with my knees balled up to my chest, their fighting much less noticeable from out here. It was freezing outside and the grass was covered in dew, but anything was better than being inside listening to them go at it. I wish my father would leave her and let me go live with Paul. I might have to make that proposition in the near future. When my mother isn't around, of course.

Three more days. It's a bit after midnight, it's the 19th at long last. Three days from now, I won't be in my house, in my bed, alone and listening to my parents fight. I'll be either in London or here in Liverpool with Paul, in bed with him with his arms around me, keeping me safe from the things that have crept into my dreams since he's been away from me. I know it's not his fault that my subconscious decided to rebel against me in his absence, but it will be nice to actually sleep again.

I stayed outside until I was certain that they were finished arguing and then crept back inside, shutting and locking the window behind me. I changed from my slightly damp-with-dew nightgown into one of the several white dress shirts I had hidden away in my top drawer and crawled under the covers. Maybe tonight I could actually sleep. Somehow I doubted it, though.


PAUL: Ah, it's the 19th- quite the blessed day, we have forty-eight more hours left before we head out for New York City. From there we'll pick up Delilah and then... homeward bound for England. At long last.

I decided to keep what all I had seen between John and Kyle to myself and not start any problems with either of them. I'll likely tell Allie (but I tell her everything), but it's not like she'll run tell anyone. I really don't want to start any sort of fight with John over something that honestly isn't my business. It just bugs me to see him doing this while his unsuspecting wife is home caring for their son. But not my place to point that out to him or tell him. I'll keep quiet.

Allie got her phone fixed but apparently that led to some sort of huge argument between her parents afterwards. I wonder what her plans are going to be as of February 28th... the day she turns eighteen. I'll have to ask her about that later on. If she so desires, she is absolutely more than welcome to move in with me. Or marry me. Whichever. It doesn't matter to me so long as I can finally get her away from all of that.

I can tell that George is absolutely ecstatic that Delilah is going to be coming home to Liverpool with him. I assume they'll be living together, which will work out nicely since George finally got his own place not too long ago. He'll be twenty-one in five days, what a wonderful gift for him to have- his love back home with him permanently.

I gathered all of my outgoing mail together and pulled the stack of postage stamps from the top drawer of the desk in my room. I counted twenty-nine letters and seventeen postcards by the time I was finished. Was I absolutely losing my mind? No, I was only doing it to keep myself from losing my mind. I couldn't focus if I wasn't writing. Writing anything- letters, postcards... I had fragments of lyrics scattered about on the desk, little phrases I was attempting to piece together into something that actually made sense. One phrase I had come up with particularly stuck out, but I wasn't sure what to do with it- "bright are the stars that shine, dark is the sky." It's very poetic, kind of sonnet-like. But what would go with it?


ALLIE: I went to bed this evening thinking that I only had to wait one more day and then I'd be in London to greet the band when they came home. We leave to go down on the 21st and plan on staying overnight since their flight gets in around eight in the morning on the 22nd. What a glorious day that will be, too.

I thought I would actually sleep somewhat peacefully tonight after going on ten days of barely sleeping at all, but once again, I was proven wrong to even hope for such a thing. Let's put it this way- I don't know that I'll ever want to sleep again after what I dreamed about. I woke up at around four in the morning screaming, waking both my parents and eliciting concern from my father and annoyance from my mother. I refused to even discuss it, saying I would be fine; there's only one person who will be told all the details. Needless to say, I didn't go back to sleep at all the rest of the night and am now exhausted. If I can just sleep tonight... then tomorrow, I'll finally be able to say one more day.


PAUL: Finally. In a little less than twenty-four hours, we'll be home. We're leaving this afternoon to fly to New York then an overnight flight to London from there. We're scheduled to arrive at around eight-thirty tomorrow morning. Allie told me that she and Cynthia (along with Julian) and Vi are going to go down to London tonight and stay so they can be at Heathrow tomorrow morning to greet us. I can hardly stand the wait. Shame I can't just fast-forward to tomorrow morning at eight-twenty so this whole ordeal will be over. This has been the longest, most agonizing twelve days of my entire life. I can't believe I actually survived it.

I separated my clean clothes from my dirty ones and began packing, folding everything neatly and placing it in my various suitcases and garment bags. I had of course ended up bringing way too many articles of clothing, but oh well. I ended up wearing all but four suits and all the matching pieces that went with them. I came up with only twenty-four dress shirts, but then I remembered where the twenty-fifth one was. It was in Liverpool, of course. I smiled to myself thinking about exactly whose possession it was in. If she wanted every single one of my shirts, she could have them. Anything for her to have a piece of me when we were apart.


ALLIE: I came home from running to market only to find that my room had quite obviously been searched, for what reason I have no idea. I opened my top dresser to drawer to find that all of Paul's shirts that I had tucked away in there were missing, along with the photographs of the two of us that I had scattered on various surfaces in my room. I was wearing one of his shirts underneath my pale blue sweater, but where on earth had the other five gone? The blue one he had given me was still in its place in my middle drawer; if my mother had gone through my things, she must have mistaken that one for one of mine and let it be. I walked into the kitchen and found my mother sitting at the table, all the things that had been missing from my room the table before her. "Why did you go through my room?" I asked, trying to keep calm when I really wanted to reach out and strangle her, my mother or not. "What have I done to warrant that? Those are my personal things."

She had a box of matches in her hand and sat running her fingernail along the edge of the box on the rough surface where the match heads were struck to be lit. "When will you ever learn?" she said. "You just will never get it, will you? Your so-called love for a person like that... it's going to destroy you in the end. You have no idea what love even is. You're far too young and naïve to even comprehend the workings of the world, much less something like love."

"You don't even know what you're talking about," I replied, my voice starting to lose its neutral tone and segue into something a bit harsher. I reached out to retrieve his shirts and my photographs but my mother caught my wrist, digging her perfectly shaped nails into my wrist. "I'll break you of this insanity one way or another, see if I don't, Alexandra."

"Insanity? From me? I'm not the one suffering from insanity here!"

My mother laughed. "Please. Don't even try to tell me that. I can see it. I'm not stupid, after all." She crossed into the living room and struck a match, tossing it in the fireplace, the logs blazing forth in a fiery orange fury. She collected what she had essentially stolen from my room and began to feed each item one by one into the inferno, and I had to force myself not to scream and protest. God only knew what she would do to me if I did so.