by Katie M John
Sam was not usually so showy in his feelings. He wasn’t given to corny clichés and often took the piss out of the sort of grand gestures Matt made to Sara on an almost daily basis. However, the simplicity of the flowers and the inscription showed that Sam was aware that something was wrong, and he cared about it enough to put it right. I knew he deserved to be loved and not hurt and I promised to put things right. But even as I made the promise, I knew it wasn’t one that I’d be able to keep. Something had changed and it wasn’t going to change back.
I pulled on my deep emerald jumper, which was Sam’s favourite and looped my string of green glass beads around my neck. Sam had bought them for me on my last birthday. He said they matched the colour of my eyes and I loved them, yet tonight when I looked at myself in the mirror they reminded me of a beautiful noose.
*
Dinner was already on the table by the time I arrived downstairs and Sam was lighting the candle with a firelighter lit from the wood burner. With his spare hand he went to reach out and take mine but stopped as if thinking better of it. Instead he cracked an awkward smile before saying,
“Hello, stranger. I’d started to think about sending out a search party.” His voice was trying to put on a comic edge but it was tense. I smiled and shrugged, unable to give him either an unhurtful or rational explanation as to where I’d been. He deserved better than a lie. “Thought maybe you had been kidnapped by aliens or that you’d finally made good your promise to run away with the circus.”
I could barely meet his eyes, thinking that there was nothing more genuinely painful then when somebody you loved tried to hide their hurt and confusion with a joke.
I hoped a half-truth would satisfy him. “I went to the bookshop.” He nodded. I panicked. “Thank you for the flowers, Sam. They’re really lovely. Look I…” but before I could finish, Mum busied into the room carrying the gravy and interrupting my apology.
Dinner was chatty, a result maybe of all of us trying to hide the weird atmosphere. Mum fired questions at Sam and me in quick succession, and Sam, seemingly satisfied that things were hopefully on their way back to normal, was happy to indulge her.
By nine o’clock, Mum had already gone up to bed, book in one hand and a cup of tea in the other, and Sam was on the sofa under the throw and flicking through the T.V channels. I snuggled in beside him, feeling the warm certainty of his body. Out of habit my hand traced the muscles of his forearm causing him to turn towards me. He smiled and leant over, kissing my cheek before putting his arm around me and pulling me in. His lips found mine with the ease of familiarity. Sam was a good kisser, firm and soft all at once. Being together for almost two years, he’d perfected his skills and when he kissed me, it was easy to believe that the world was a silent place and that we were the only two people in it.
This evening was no different and as he kissed me I could feel all the doubt and uncertainty heal over with warm acceptance and love. I felt the comforting contact of skin on skin as his hand moved under my clothing, his kiss becoming more urgent as we headed towards a place I wasn’t ready for. I pulled away but Sam moved himself so that I was pinned to the sofa with nowhere to go. Panic hit me as his kisses became increasingly aggressive. All at once everything was wrong. I pulled my face away as best I could, putting my hands out in defence.
“What the hell are you doing?” I shout-whispered.
He looked at me, almost as shocked as I was and pulled himself away to the far end of the sofa.
“I’m so sorry, Mina – that was really out of order. I don’t know what came over me.”
I stood up and looked down on him crumpled at the edge of the sofa, his eyes filmed with water as he fought back tears.
“What the hell was that all about?” I said, pulling down the bottom of my top.
“I’m sorry, I got carried away. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to – shit, I’ve really messed this up. I just wanted to check that everything was okay.”
“What? You thought that the best way to check that was by forcing the situation?”
“I didn’t mean to… force…. God, Mina, don’t use that word, it’s not as if I was going to… as if I was going to do that to you. I love you. I just thought maybe you wanted me to… Shit, I don’t know what I thought!”
The situation was spiralling quickly out of control and I knew that whatever Sam had been thinking, it wasn’t that he’d meant to hurt me. The whole day had been weird and it was no real surprise we’d ended up here.
“It was a mistake, Sam; I’m not happy about it but I know you wouldn’t hurt me. I’m going to bed. We need to sleep on this and we’ll talk about it tomorrow.” I pressed a tight smile. “Night, Sam.”
As I went through the door I heard Sam whisper, “I’m sorry. I love you.”
From upstairs in my room, I could hear the sound of the television travelling through the white painted floorboards and in order to drown out the ghost, I stuck in the ear buds of my iPod and turned the volume up to the borderline of pain. The deep rhythmic drums of Florence and the Machine drowned out Sam’s presence but they didn’t make me feel any better, for as I lay there, I realised with startling clarity that falling out of love with someone was like pulling a plaster – shockingly painful but surprisingly quick.
The deep, rich scent of the hyacinths filled my room and it was so overpowering that it made it almost sickening to breathe. Opening my window to let in the cold air seemed to have little effect and seeing no alternative, I took hold of them roughly by their slender green necks and threw them out into the night sky where they fell into the garden below and scattered across the navy-green grass like grounded stars.
*
All that night, I was attacked by dreams that made no sense. Dreams full of blood and mud, of cold grey, glinting steel and a winter sky cut through with a flock of cawing black birds. And even though I couldn’t see her, I knew the old crone was there; standing at the side of my bed, her one crone hand pressing the air from my lungs, the other injecting my heart with a terrifying love poison. “A storm is coming! A storm is coming!” she croaked. And I knew that she was right; it would be the storm to end it all. When I woke, breathless and half terrified at the breaking of the dawn, I felt I’d been through the ravages of battle.
The Forest of Adventures by Katie M John
