Hey guys, this is a VERY important chapter. You may be thinking that now you know what made Debby and Beth fall out, but wait for it..... THERE'S MORE. This chapter brings the final, huge reason for them... well, you'll see.
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When a big event happens in your life, it is the world to you. In your mind you can’t think of anything else. In your mind this event changes everything, nothing will ever be the same again. Life as you know it ends. No matter how big the change is, it still comes as a shock when time continues passing. Others around you continue with their lives, unaffected by your own personal dramas.
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I don’t know what I expected it to be like once Michael had gone, but it was way too normal. I sat on my bedroom floor for a long time, trying to find the will to do things, anything, but everything that had ever happened between us went over and over in my head. All the memories were wonderful, but that only made it more painful.
I cried for a long time before my phone buzzed. I crawled across my floor to grab it and read the message. Is he gone then? It was from Isha. This only made me cry more: she would have never texted me before Michael came and changed everything.
Time passed incredibly slowly. My family tiptoed around as if I was a bomb, waiting to blow at any moment. Not wanting to say anything to upset me, or remind me of him. I tried to take up as much of my time as possible just doing things. After my initial moment of weakness I resolved to not cry again. I would continue with my life, not be one of those pathetic girls who no longer has anything once her boyfriend leaves.
Once Saturday and Sunday were both finally over, it was back to school. I hoped this would bring me distraction, but it just reminded me of how other aspects of my life had also changed. In the past I would have driven to school with Rob and Beth, but now, with Rob working to make enough money to go on a proper gap year trip, Beth in London, my dad jetting off alone to yet another country, it was down to my mum to get me to Haverfordwest and back. It was a weird experience because my mother had never in my life been the one to drive me to school.
But there was worse waiting for me at school. There were six very excited girls who all wanted to know about my amazing summer with the hot guy. Sian out of all of them was most interested, but they all fired as many questions as possible. Isha tried to subtly suggest that maybe I didn’t want to talk about it, but they clearly didn’t get the hint.
I endured it, answering their questions as patiently as possible and telling the truth wherever it seemed fine to do so. If I had been in my own room at home I would have been in floods of tears after two questions, but sitting in the school canteen the hall buzzing with excitement at the first day back, I managed to keep them in. That’s not to say it didn’t hurt, digging up all the memories, going over every single little detail, but my eyes wouldn’t let me cry, not in front of all these people.
‘So you never …you know- did it?’ Taffy asked me, voice lowered as if the whole school were straining to hear her.
‘No,’ I lied. Isha caught my eye. She knew all about what had happened, I hadn’t kept a thing from her, but I knew she understood why I didn’t want to tell them that part of it. ‘I’m too young for that, and he was fine with it.’
‘But you’re not that young,’ Sian pointed out.
‘I’m younger than all of you,’ I reminded her.
‘Yeah obviously, that’s cause you’re the youngest in our year,’ Nerys said. ‘But you’re still fifteen. Loads of people do it at fifteen. If you don’t do it till you’re sixteen you’re waiting till it’s legal, and that’s so lame.’
‘If it was true love, they didn’t have to do it,’ Nora told her. Nora was always the naïve one, the one who believed in fairytale romances and love at first sight. ‘Was it?’
‘Was it what?’ I asked.
‘True love,’ she explained.
‘How am I supposed to know?’ I snapped, hating that I couldn’t answer her question, even if I had wanted to. ‘I’ve never been in love before, so I can’t be sure.’
‘When it’s true love you’re sure,’ she muttered, gaze lost in the distance, dreaming of her Prince Charming.
‘How come you’re not upset about it?’ Bronwyn piped up. This was the first thing she had asked since the interrogation started, before she had just been sitting there, a little crinkle of confusion between her eyebrows.
This one stumped me. How do you reply to that? If I were to open up and tell them how much I missed him, how empty I felt inside, how much I wished I could see him, just a glimpse, they wouldn’t understand.
How could they, when even I didn’t understand the pain?
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The girls forgot quickly about Michael; they had their own fascinating lives to live and my fling was over and in the past. I stuck with Isha in school, and I told her everything that was on my mind. I spent my weekend walking up and down the coast, past the beaches I knew so well, as far down the coastal path as I could go with time enough to get home. I would stop sometimes, close my eyes, and try to imagine that Michael was still there and that any second now he would come up behind me and say something.
The weekend came and went, and then I had to go back to school again. The routine that made up my whole life was so different without Beth: instead of going to her house after school and spending hours there, I would stay at mine, or go to Isha’s occasionally.
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On Wednesday night I heard news of Beth for the first time since my birthday two weeks ago. I had been at Isha’s and arrived home to find my mum looking very grave.
‘Hey,’ I greeted her. ‘What’s up?’
‘Beth called,’ she said.
‘Oh god,’ I sighed. ‘Did she tell you what happened between us? I wanted to keep it to myself because I wanted to forget about it.’
‘No, nothing like that,’ she told me. ‘Her dad died today. They’re coming back to St. David’s on Friday.’
I had to sit down for a second, digesting this piece of news. ‘But- how?’ I asked dumbly.
‘He had cancer Debby,’ Mum said gently. ‘They knew he was going to die.’
‘I know,’ I whispered. ‘But- just…’ I didn’t know how to finish. It had been over a month since Beth had found out about her dad and left St. David’s, at the time it had seemed massive and significant, but it had been so long now, I had stopped believing that he was ever actually going to die.
For the next ten minutes I forgot completely that I was mad at Beth, I just wanted to call her and find out if she was okay, but I didn’t and then the anger returned.
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On Friday evening she came over to the house, but Rob answered the door. ‘It’s Beth!’ he shouted up the stairs to me.
‘Tell her I’m sorry about her dad, but I still don’t want to talk!’ I yelled back.
Apparently she was no longer as persistent, the words I’d told her on my birthday had had some sort of effect.
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But on Sunday evening everything changed.
I had managed not to cry about Michael since the day he left, and even though I thought about him all the time and missed him like crazy, I hadn’t been sulking about it or acting upset. I don’t know what made me realise, but it hit me like a giant weight in the chest as I was lying in bed trying to sleep.
I was so unhappy.
I wanted to see Michael again more than anything.
I missed Beth.
I missed Dee.
I missed the summer holidays.
I fiddled with the silver necklace around my neck and contemplated calling Michael. Maybe just the sound of his voice would make me feel better, but it could just make me miss him more.
I reached for my phone on the table next to my bed and called Beth. Even though it was one in the morning, she picked up on the second ring.
‘Couldn’t sleep either?’ she said, once we were connected.
‘Beth?’ I started, my voice wobbling from emotion as I did.
‘What is it babe?’ she asked, detecting that I was upset straight away.
I didn’t want to say more than that one word, because I knew that when I did all the tears I had been holding in over the last two weeks would come flowing out.
‘Beth,’ I managed again. ‘I need you.’ And as I had expected, the tears came.
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Beth had told me to sleep, and I had. She had told me that I would feel better in the morning, but I didn’t believe her. I didn’t want to get up and go to school, but I had to, so I endured it. She had suggested that I go over to hers afterwards and talk to her.
I waited with anxious impatience for the moment I was free of school and could go visit her. I was still annoyed at her, but I missed her so much and I didn’t think I could go any longer without talking to her.
My mum dropped me off straight at hers on the way home from school, and I approached the door cautiously. I didn’t want to knock, because after all these years that would feel silly, but things didn’t seem right enough to just walk in. However, she must have seen me get out of my car, because she opened the door before I had decided what to do. My heart stopped when I saw her.
Even though she looked a little worn this time, she still looked like my best friend. I took a second to process her, then threw myself on her.
‘Woah,’ she said, staggering, but hugging me back.
‘I’m sorry for what I said last time I saw you,’ I told her, my face buried in her hair.
She pulled back and looked at me, beaming. ‘So you didn’t mean it?’
I didn’t want to lie. I moved into the house, trying to find a way to say it. She followed me to the living room, waiting for an answer.
I faced her and looked her in the eyes. ‘Beth, I did mean it. You did play a major role in my life,’ I explained. ‘Too major a role. I shouldn’t have said it so harshly, but I still stand my ground that I need some time to be my own person. But just because I’m not spending every waking moment with you doesn’t mean I can’t ever see you.’
She sat down abruptly on the sofa and rubbed her hands slowly over her face. ‘I don’t know,’ she said eventually.
‘You don’t know what?’
‘Well all I’ve wanted is for you to forgive me,’ she said. ‘But I don’t want you to still be mad at me and want to see me at the same time.’
I moved over to the sofa and sat with her.
‘Are you still mad at me?’ she asked after some silence.
I didn’t reply, but the look on my face was enough to tell her that I was. ‘But I need you Beth,’ I told her. ‘I miss Michael so much. And while I get along with Isha really well and I’ve been dealing, I don’t feel as if I’m going anywhere. I don’t feel as if there will be a time when I stop missing him.’
‘It will pass,’ she reassured me.
‘How do you know?’ I asked.
‘I just do.’
We stared at each other, and I thought about how beautiful she still was in my eyes, just like always. ‘If I did it again,’ I told her, taking her hand in mine. ‘The whole summer and everything-‘
‘Debby, don’t go over it too much,’ she interrupted. ‘Remembering will only make you hurt more.’
‘Beth I need to tell you this,’ I said, adamantly. ‘If I did it again, I would not get together with Michael. It was the most wonderful thing ever, all of it. But I think I would rather none of it happened than have to keep going with this pain. If I did it again,’ I repeated for the last time. ‘I would choose you, not him.’
This made her smile, and her happiness made me happy. For the first time in two weeks, I didn’t feel as empty, as depressed and painful.
Then she kissed me.
She moved in quickly, and put her lips on mine. She didn’t do it long enough to allow time for me to stop her; before I knew it she was back where she had been with tears in her eyes. ‘Debby, I love you so much,’ she sobbed.
I couldn’t move for a second. I felt like I had a lump in my throat. ‘Wha-‘ I choked. ‘Just- Beth-‘ I didn’t know what to say.
I stood up, hand clamped over my mouth. ‘What the hell?’ I couldn’t stay and look at her crumpled face for a second longer, so I turned and ran.
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GASP. So Beth is a lesbian, eh? HANDS UP WHO SAW THAT COMING! *mee* Tell me if you did or not, cause I dropped a couple of very (VERY) subtle hints at the beginning, and her lack of a love life (to Debby's knowlegde) was supposed to be a clue in itself.
Please comment, because this was the big shocker I was saving for the end, and now I've finally pulled it out, and I NEED TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK. Did the short scenes broken up thing work or just feel silly? It was supposed to emphasize that time was passing... So tell me EVERYTHING :D