Let Me Be Your Hope (Music and Letters Series Book 2)

by Lynsey M. Stewart

  Clara: Where are you?

  Clara: I’ve cooked. Come home.

  Clara: What the fuck, Jamie? I come all this way for you and you work all weekend.

  The key in the lock turned in slow motion. I could smell the bad atmosphere, or was it the lasagne? Fuck! She had cooked and I was contemplating never eating again as fish and chips weighed me down like my stomach was attempting to digest a mix of concrete and wallpaper paste.

  I walked with tension running through the balls of my feet but stopped to survey the scene. Two places set at the table. A bottle of wine with two glasses. A salad bowl and a dozen red roses judging me over the lip of a vase.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she asked, her arms crossed as she appeared in the doorway.

  ‘I had a few things to finish before I could leave, sorry.’

  ‘Have you heard of mobile phones? I thought you had one,’ she said, irritation marking her tone and joining her tapping foot. She was fidgeting with the hem of her dress. A dress. Jesus. I had barely seen her out of a dressing gown since she arrived.

  ‘I was on my way when I saw your messages, so I just kept going, sorry.’

  She moved across to the table and started clearing it, clanging the dishes back in the cupboard and throwing cutlery in the sink, attacking the task with everything she had to give. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter anyway because the meal is ruined. I threw it in the bin twenty minutes ago.’

  ‘I’ve already eaten.’

  Idiot.

  ‘Oh, that’s just great,’ she said, her posture stiffening as she banged the plate down, smashing it into pieces before walking away dismissively.

  ‘Clara, please, can we just talk?’ I pleaded as she stalked into the bedroom. I followed and found her unzipping her dress, letting it pool around her feet on the floor. I was immediately met with the sight of her wearing a black lace bra and matching hold ups. Nothing else. Shit.

  She watched my face fall.

  ‘Had to do something to get your attention,’ she said, her voice thickening as she consciously folded her arms across her chest.

  ‘What is this?’ I asked.

  ‘I was trying to make an effort. I can’t remember the last time you touched me.’

  ‘I can. It was before—’

  ‘Don’t.’ She put up her hand to stop me.

  ‘We have to talk about it, Clara.’

  ‘I can’t. Please, just stop.’

  ‘We can’t even talk to each other,’ I said, holding out my hands in frustration before eventually settling them on my hips.

  ‘I’m going to have a bath.’

  I watched her walk away. I closed my eyes as she slammed the bathroom door.

  She was in there for an hour and twenty minutes. I counted every second alongside the ticking clock in the kitchen. When I heard the door unlock and her footsteps across the floor, I made her a cup of tea and took it through to the bedroom.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said as she took it from me, looking embarrassed and regretful. ‘I’m sorry I acted like a bitch. I had tonight planned out, so when you didn’t come home, I was… disappointed.’

  ‘What did you have planned?’ I asked with a knotted ache in my stomach.

  ‘I thought we could talk. There was something I wanted to ask, suggest maybe.’ She was looking at me through the mirror.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I thought maybe we could try again.’

  ‘No,’ I replied, far too fiercely and fast.

  ‘No? Why?’

  Didn’t she know? How could she even be thinking about this?

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Clara. We need to sort ourselves out.’

  ‘I’m ready. I need this. I need to feel something again,’ she said as she started to hide her tears behind the edge of her dressing gown.

  ‘We can’t just start again. That’s not how it works.’ I crouched beside her and rubbed my thumb across her cheek. She flinched and backed away in one sudden movement. ‘Look, you can’t even stand for me to touch you.’ I stood and shook my head as she offered me a pained stare.

  This time, it was my turn to walk away.

  I slumped onto the new sofa that had been in place for a few weeks. It still didn’t feel like mine, and I’m sure she felt exactly the same. It was a cold light blue and the almost hard tweed feel did nothing to make you relax into it. I ordered it off the internet, not giving a shit that it wouldn’t add anything homely to our home.

  Our home. Fuck.

  I thought of my conversation with Abi and where we’d left it today. ‘Someone Like You.’ I knew that song. I had the album downloaded but still opened my laptop and searched for the lyrics. It felt like my veins were being strummed like guitar strings as I read them. The vibration of nerves through my body made me feel weak. My breathing slowed, my heart pounded like it had moved to the front of my head. The lyrics described our situation perfectly. It described everything she didn’t know, couldn’t possibly have known.

  I opened the cupboard where I’d thrown in some of my belongings in a crap attempt to empty boxes and get them out of the way when I moved in. Inside were my headphones, which I placed over my head as I tapped the music app on the screen of my phone. I lifted my legs and lay across the sofa feeling like a stranger in my own home. The music pounded into my chest like a punch, the words, the sweeping melody, the emotional delivery and heartache in the voice all slowly tearing me apart. I set it to repeat and wrapped my arms around myself, turning my face into the back of the sofa, and there I stayed, drifting in and out of sleep as I listened to Adele on a loop until the morning.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Abi

  Now.

  The Monday morning briefing was in full swing. Jamie still looked like he wanted to hide in the corners and escape behind shut doors. I noticed that it was mainly whenever I was around. When I hid in the staff room to overhear his phone conversations, or when a colleague was asking for advice, he suddenly found his sense of humour and wide smile that sat behind the stiff posture and clenching jaw that he saved only for me.

  Drew, a social worker I graduated with, spoke up when Jamie asked if there was any other business to discuss at the end of the meeting.

  ‘I just wanted to let you know that we organise a night out every month,’ Drew said, wafting a piece of paper before pinning it to the notice board with a date, time and venue to meet in town on Friday night. ‘I thought it would be a good way for you to get to know your staff better. Plus it ties in with Kate’s birthday. A warning, though, we’re pretty hard-core drinkers. Abi’s the worst,’ he said, pointing over to me.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Sambuca,’ I said with a smile before returning to the report I was reading.

  ‘What? I have secrets on you that I could do some hefty blackmailing with, Abi Sinclair.’

  ‘Count me in,’ Jamie replied on a challenging tone that didn’t fit with the hard smile.

  When Friday night arrived, I decided I was up for the challenge. Jamie Dawson would not be able to resist my charms. I knew his likes, I could recite the long list of his sexual preferences, and I was bringing some of them out tonight.

  Back exposed. Check.

  Tanned legs, no tights. Check. He hated the synthetic glow of natural tights that achieved the complete opposite of their natural promise.

  Boy shorts, lace, red. Check.

  Matching bra. Check.

  Dress for easier access. Check.

  He used to be an impromptu alfresco lover, often pushing me against walls, his hands finding my weak spots in crowded bars and thumping gigs. If he wanted access tonight, I could pin a sign to my boobs saying: Take me, I’m fucking yours.

  The final piece of the make Jamie unable to resist me jigsaw was a necklace I hadn’t touched in a long time. I fished around in my underwear drawer and found the black jewellery box pushed to the back hiding next to the actual socks he gave me years ago but had taken a steak knife to in a drunken tantrum. I kept
my keepsakes from Jamie in the only place that seemed fitting.

  At the side of the box were the notes he had written and placed under the stapler on my desk, every single one of his letters, and a CD he made for me marked: Songs I want to eat you out to.

  I stroked my finger across the box, the one he’d given to me when I graduated. I pulled it open carefully and studied the silver necklace inside. A delicate chain held a silver bar, rectangular in shape with my name across the front and his across the back. I wiped it on my duvet to shine it up; it was covered in fingerprints, possibly his. I recalled him slipping it around me the night he presented me with it, fastening it through my hair as I lifted it off my neck. He’d stood admiring it, running his finger across the silver and along my collarbone.

  This would get a reaction.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Jamie

  Now.

  Conversations were circling in my head.

  How can you even consider telling her?

  She needs to know everything. Every damn nugget of awfulness and side-splitting pain.

  She will hate you forever. You’re a lunatic. You don’t deserve happiness.

  She hadn’t changed a fraction, yet she was so different. I took a long drink of beer to numb that reality and clutched at my chest, bunching up my shirt in my fist as the sting of conscience whipped across with fury shouting: ‘Fuck your libido, arsewipe!’

  Tonight had to end well.

  I was thinking I could make a stab at friendship, a bit of small talk to break the ice. I could make her laugh like I used to and she’d get this look on her face that told me it was OK to be civil and that we could eventually be best friends but with a history that didn’t have to define us. I could buy her a drink as a peace offering and we could start a new us. Then, when our new best friends status was confirmed, I could go home and worship her in the privacy of my own bathroom.

  Oh fuck. I was fucked.

  I felt like a voyeur at a private club. The pink vibrator she held up like a prize wasn’t going to help my attempt at friendship. I assumed she had given it to Kate as a birthday present. I overheard her muttering about Elle and how she’d never allowed Abi to buy her one, feigning embarrassment that her parents might stumble across it. She stood on a leather stool, wobbling but undaunted as she made a speech detailing how determined she was to offer a gift that would at least change one best friend’s life for the better.

  ‘It’s totally fantastic that I have at least one friend I can turn into a filth bag!’ Abi shouted as she held the vibrator against Kate’s back while they gave each other a hug.

  She ended her speech by offering to have a threesome with Elle and her boyfriend, a sound bloke called Ben who I chatted to on and off all evening. I couldn’t say the same for Kate’s boyfriend, Steve. Describing him as mind numbingly boring wouldn’t come close. I cut his voice off after round three of how to make the most of a bumper crop of courgettes by repetitively singing Ed Sheeran’s latest song in my head.

  Abi’s bouncy laughter caught the crowd like an infectious yawn. People couldn’t help but be taken away by her. She was all front, though. I laughed when she admitted in a quieter group that the threesome she’d offered earlier would be her worst nightmare, she wouldn’t know what to do with herself and would probably end up sitting on the end of the bed awkwardly holding the lube.

  She was still so fucking fascinating.

  I felt like I had been watching her for years. Her wrists were so small and delicate. I first noticed them when she was deep in thought, a pen often pressed against her lips.

  As she twirled her hair around her fingers, I swear to God I was so hard I couldn’t even remember my address. I watched her laughing, her head rolling back offering a fantastic noise, one I hadn’t heard for so long. She sauntered over to the dance floor and wrapped her arms around Elle, whispering in her ear as Elle rubbed circles on her back, knocking the shoulder of Abi’s dress. She pulled away and backed herself further into the dancing crowd.

  ‘She always was the first on the dance floor while you were always the one on the sidelines looking in,’ I said as I moved over to Elle. She looked up and smiled softly.

  ‘Holding her bag usually.’

  It’s like stepping back in time,’ I sighed.

  ‘Only it isn’t, is it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I knew full well where this was going. I had a best friend trying to sort out the mess situation on my hands.

  ‘You’ve been staring at her all night. She’s trying to ignore it, but I’m warning you, she’s had three tequilas, so soon she won’t give a fuck what she’s saying.’

  Abi was dancing with a dark haired gonk of a man who was now pressing his hands into her hips. I fought the urge to run over there by imagining his penis on the end of a sharp stick. ‘There are things I need to explain, but I need to find the right time and the right words.’

  ‘What’s your secret?’ she asked.

  ‘Elle, I have many.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound good.’ She drew her arms around her body like she had just felt a chill. ‘You know, I used to be so envious of what you two had.’

  I looked to the floor and waited for the guilt to swallow me. ‘Did she tell you about the letter?’

  ‘Not until recently,’ she sighed. ‘She knows she’s messed up, but in some weird way, she thought that by making you jealous, you would fight for her.’

  ‘Fuck me.’ What a mess. A mess I didn’t know how to clean up.

  We returned our eyes to the dance floor where Abi had her arms around the prick with the shit-eating grin. She darted her gaze back to him when she caught me looking. He smiled and waved at me.

  Prick.

  ‘That’s Rob. They have a thing occasionally.’ Elle eyed me tentatively.

  Words. Bile. Floor. Devastation.

  ‘Thing?’ I asked, my voice getting hooked on my tonsils causing a combination of squeak and gruff.

  ‘Just a couple of nights of fun, but he wants more.’

  ‘He can fucking want,’ I gruffly squeaked again, swallowing hard to try to unhook my vocal chords.

  ‘You have no right to say that, Jamie. You’re contradicting yourself. She’s been hurt too. I’m not saying what she did was right—’

  ‘It wasn’t right. It killed me thinking she was with someone else. Now I get to watch! Fucking hell, this is sick. I’ve got to get out of here.’

  My need for Abi was growing stronger every day. I couldn’t watch another man touching her the way I used to.

  ‘She does this to punish herself. She used to do it regularly,’ Elle said, drawing her eyebrows together. Before I could ask her what she meant, I was met with Abi and the man I wanted to punch. He dived off to my left, saluting me from the top of his head like a full on bastarding cock. What was she doing with this twat of an excuse?

  She hid her smirk behind her hand, and when I followed her hand to that beautiful mouth and down her body, I saw it. Her necklace. Our names. The peeking edge of her collarbone. Fuck, she was the blood in my veins, the beat to my fucking heart.

  She dropped her hand and whispered into my ear.

  ‘You should have joined me. From the way you were watching me, I thought you might.’

  Her hand caught my arm—accidentally or on purpose? I wasn’t sure, nor did I give a flying fuck because it ignited everything in me that was dull and tame. She picked up the necklace between her fingers, rubbing them up and down the bar, trailing her thumb lazily over my name. She leant in again, pressing her hand to my cheek. I could smell her perfume; it was pinching memories from the back of my head. ‘I wanted to get a rise out of you, so I wore it especially.’

  I caught her hand under mine. ‘You don’t have to do anything to get a rise out of me.’

  ‘Still?’ she gasped, exposing her neck as her head tipped backwards in shock.

  ‘Always.’

  Before I could even review the heaviness of my words, or think for a s
econd about regretting where this would take us, the cocking twat was back at her side, warily watching us as she removed her hand from my cheek and withdrew herself from me.

  ‘Pimm’s for the lady.’

  Jesus wept, had he stepped off the hills of Wuthering Heights?

  ‘Still on the Pimm’s?’ I asked, smiling as better times flooded my brain.

  ‘Old habits die hard.’

  ‘That they do,’ I mumbled as I threw back my beer in a harsh slug.

  I wanted to bite the swell of her breast. Instead, I bit the edge of the beer bottle. It didn’t stop the urge. Nothing could.

  ‘Do you know each other then?’ Cocking twat piped up with a look of confusion on his face.

  ‘He’s my boss,’ she replied.

  ‘We’ve known each other forever,’ we said in unison, causing a deeper look of confusion on the bloke’s face until the register of something changed his frown into a knowing grin.

  ‘Ah, you know each other.’

  I was seriously going to punch this guy in the face if he didn’t stop.

  ‘Rob here wants to be my boyfriend,’ she said on a challenge. Her folded arms and hip-dipping stance gave her away. I ignored her and took another slug of beer. ‘I’m still thinking about what I should do. You see, I’ve been spoilt. I’ve had the best, and once you’ve had the best, no one else quite measures up.’

  I ignored her as Rob—fuck, his name was hard to say— eyed her cautiously.

  ‘Hold that for me?’ She held out her glass, side stepped Heathcliff and pushed Elle in the direction of the ladies’ toilets.

  Rob smirked at me like a dick. ‘I saw you watching her.’ His voice lay thick and heavy across my ear. ‘So you’ve been taken in by her charms too? Was it just the once, or did you manage to make it more than that? I’ve got the badge for twice. I’ve been fighting for third time lucky ever since.’

  ‘I really have no idea what you’re talking about.’ I tried to sound gentle and non-affected.

  ‘Listen mate—’

  ‘I’m not your mate.’ I slammed my words into his gut. I was on the last nerve that would catapult me into beast mode. This man had touched her. This twat had explored the places that belonged to me, the places that were stamped bold and clear with my initials not light and barely seen.