⏳Me Before Lou⌛ 🔞 (Larry Stylinson)

Chapter 12

12

I can tell you the exact day I stopped being fearless.
It was almost seven years ago, in the last lazy, heat-slurred days of July,
when the narrow streets around the castle were thick with tourists, and the air filled with the sound of their meandering footsteps and the chimes of the ever- present ice cream vans that lined the top of the hill.

My grandmother had died a month previously after a long illness, and that
summer was veiled in a thin layer of sadness; it gently smothered everything
we did, muting mine and my sister's tendencies to the dramatic, and
cancelling our usual summer routines of brief holidays and days out.

Mummy stood most days at her washing-up bowl, her back rigid with the effort of trying to suppress her tears, while Daddy disappeared to work each morning with a grimly determined expression, returning hours later shiny-faced from the heat and unable to speak before he had cracked open a beer.

My sister was home from her first year at university, her head already somewhere far away from our small town.

And I, was young , carefree and twenty and would have yet to meet Dani.

We were enjoying one of those rare summers of utter freedom - no
financial responsibility, no debts, no time owing anything to anybody.

Just young souls, free spirits, who felt like they had the world dancing in the palm of their hands.

I had all the hours in the world to practise my make-up, put on heels that made my father wince, and just generally work out who I was.

I used to dressed normally, in those days.
Or, I should say, I dressed like most of the other boys in town - short hair, flicked across my forehead, indigo jeans, T-shirts tight enough to show off my tiny waists and plump bottom.

I was still soul searching, on the way to find who I really was. Finally letting myself immerse in a world that filled me with joy. Confident enough to go out wearing a skirt in the daylight.

I spent hours perfecting my lipgloss, and the exact shade of a smokey eye.

I looked good in anything, but spent hours complaining about non-existent cellulite and invisible flaws on my skin.

God was I dumb!

Now years later, when flaws are actually starting to appear on my skin, I wish I could go back in time, and show myself the love and appreciation I deserved.

And I had ideas.

Things I wanted to do.

One of the boys I knew from school had taken a round-the-world trip and come back somehow removed and unknowable, like he wasn't the same scuffed eleven-year-old who used to ear rubber dust and shove pencils up his nostrils.

I wanted to book a cheap flight to Australia, and was trying to find someone who might come with me.

I liked the exoticism his travels gave him, the unknownness. The confidence.

He had blown in with the soft breezes of a wider world, and it was weirdly seductive.

Everyone here knew everything about me, after all.

And with a sister like mine, I was never allowed to forget any of it.

It was a Friday, and I had spent the day working as a car park attendant
with a group of girls I had known at school, steering visitors to a craft fair
held in the grounds of the castle.