by Lisa Swallow
His simple words smack understanding into the situation around us. “When? What did she do?”
He ignores my response. “And she died yesterday.”
Jem’s despair washes over me, sweeping away the wall, and dragging my heart back to him on the tide. I’m on the verge of breaking down with Jem because this is something that would kill me too. Jem faces a resurrection of the past, heart ripped open for one last time by the person who failed him. My mum left once and forever. Jem’s did it multiple times, mending the wound then tearing it further open each time she did it again. I had Quinn. Jem was alone.
Jem’s alone now, struggling to swim against the tide of the memories he’d fought to keep away. In front of me, the devastation drowns him, he’s fighting his pull to relapsing; but he reached out – for me.
I have no words. I grab Jem’s stiff figure and bury my face into his chest, holding as tightly as I can. I want to give Jem some of my strength, help him cope.
Jem remains stiff. “Yeah. So that.”
“I didn’t know she’d been in touch with you.”
“No. Only Dylan knows.” He disentangles himself and rests against the wall, arms tightly crossed as if he never wants to let anybody in again. A bolt of realisation hits.
“Is she Marie? Was that who I was accusing you of cheating on me with?”
“Yeah.”
“Jem. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Couldn’t.”
“Why? I’d have helped, been there for you. I care about you more than you realise. I can’t stand to think you were going through that alone.”
He peers up at me from beneath his fringe. “It hurt. I didn’t want to go back there.”
“Back where?”
“To the guy who let someone in, and then got fucked over again.”
Every word he says adds more sense to the last few weeks but this isn’t the time to dig into there. “If you’ve finished destroying your house, will you sit and talk to me?” I ask gently.
For a moment, I think he’s going to tell me to leave again; that he’s closed down. “Jem, you asked me to come. There must be a reason.”
He nods and heads to the sofa, picking up the leather cushion and pushing it back onto the seat so he can sit. I turn the coffee table the right way up and perch on the edge.
In stilted terms, Jem gives me a bare minimum explanation about his mum’s illness, his decision to see her. Anxiety joins the words, his breath short, as he continues. I place a hand on his. “Don’t say more if you don’t want to talk. I understand now.”
“Do you? I don’t.”
“I understand that you’re stronger than you think. The broken bottle in the kitchen tells me that.”
His eyes darken. “Yeah. That was you.”
“It was broken when I got here, Jem.”
In a shift in mood that takes me by surprise, Jem grabs the side of my face, digging his fingers into my hair. “You stopped me. I had a choice - lose myself in that shit or lose myself to you. That’s why I called. I remember now.”
His grip hurts and I extricate his fingers. “That was a big ask after how you treated me.”
“But you came. I hurt you and you came. Why?”
“I honestly don’t know. Because I pictured this - you needing help and reaching out.”
Jem stares ahead. “I fuck everything up.”
“No, you don’t, only the things you choose to.”
“I fucked us up. I didn’t want the pain.” He grips my hand. “That didn’t fucking work because the pain came anyway; and now when I need the good to deal with the bad, it’s not here. You’re not here.”
I shouldn’t be here. This goes against everything I promised myself; but the distress on this man’s face, the destroyed look I see in his eyes, is why. “I am.”
“Why?” he repeats.
“Because I can’t switch off how I feel about you. I can’t stop caring about the man who’s a mirror of me. If I can help you, then I know I can survive shit too when it’s my turn.”
“I fucked up.”
Jem’s not in a place to talk, like a child he’s seeking reassurance; but I doubt anything I can say will help. He needs what he always did; quiet understanding from somebody who cares. Jem can’t be alone with options that would set him careering into the past again.
“I’ll stay if you promise you’ll talk to someone tomorrow. Your counsellor or one of your friends, somebody you trust to help you through this. If I stay tonight, you don’t get to push this into the ‘not dealing’ part of your mind because it’ll never stay there.” I climb onto the sofa next to him.
“You, I can talk to you,” he says quietly.
“No, I can’t help with this. I’m in the middle of that screwed-up mess of hurt in your head. I’ll be a friend to you until you decide if you want more.”
Who am I kidding? I love this man. Why else would I be here? I’m risking so much and possibly for so little.
I take Jem’s hand; and for a few minutes, we sit side by side, but the waves of suffering coming from him are palpable. Giving in, I wrap my arms around Jem, and pull him close. Jem responds by gripping my hair, mouth crashing onto mine. He told the truth; he doesn’t taste of alcohol, but of a kiss that wraps around my soul and drags mine into his.
I recognise this urgency of Jem’s mouth, the sheer force of the desire rolling from him. With the kiss, comes Jem’s frantic need to fill the empty spaces inside, as if I’m the only one who can. But this is the man who emptied me and pushed me aside, and I don’t have the ability to give him what he’s crying out for now. One day, I will if that’s what he wants, and when he’s dealt with whatever is happening here. For now, I’ll lose myself too, in the illusion that the man with me now is my Jem.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Ruby
Jem doesn’t sleep. He calmed after we kissed, pulled away, and held me tightly as if I’d change my mind and leave. How could I? Jem can’t be alone right now. I doze on the sofa as Jem repeatedly gets up and wanders around. When the sun filters through the curtains, I wake to find him attempting to straighten out some of the mess in the lounge.
“Do you have work today?” he asks, holding a broken lamp in his hand. The wild confusion held in his eyes last night has softened but the stress hasn’t left his face.
“Yeah. This afternoon.” I rub my bleary eyes. “I’ll go home when somebody else gets here. Have you called anyone yet?”
Jem says nothing, walking to the kitchen instead. Great… I follow. “Jem?”
The room still smells of alcohol but the glass has gone. “Not yet. It’s early.”
“It’s an excuse.” I drag my phone from my pocket. “Who do you want me to call? Bryn? Dylan?”
“Dylan.” He sinks against the bench. “I need coffee. You want some?”
“I’ll get it. Sit down.”
Jem nods and leaves. He’s compliant, definitely not back with us yet. I chat to Dylan briefly as I make coffee, tell him the minimum about last night, and ask him to come. He sounds surprised to hear from me. Yeah, I’m not entirely sure why I’m here either. I return to the lounge where Jem sits, chewing a nail, the way he does when he wants the nicotine his body misses. For the first time in months, I crave a smoke too. We worked on kicking our nicotine habit soon after we got together, which worked more easily than expected. Someone told me it was the endorphins from being in love that helped us break the addiction. You can imagine mine and Jem’s reaction to that.
Five months ago, I saw Jem Jones in a bar and I fought between the desire for his attention and the excitement he’d come to see the band. I was in a bad place; a fucked-up place that he gently eased me out of. Our lives entwined because of Ruby Riot and then because of the place inside we live. There’s a piece of Jem in his music that he shares with the world when the rest of the time he hides. I’m unsure if everybody sees this or whether he realises how much this pulls people to him. When Blue Phoenix’s music spoke to me as a
teen, Jem was speaking to me too.
Did fate bring us together when we needed? Two broken people recognising each other’s demons and understanding how to begin to exorcise them? The man on the sofa, lost in the place he’d begun to drag himself out of, still has his demons. Jem can’t shake his as easily as I’m able. His have lived with him longer and he feeds them. Jem needs to sever them and live his own life again, not one full of pain from being strangled by a past that needs putting back where it should be.
“Dylan’s on his way. I’ll need to leave when he gets here.”
Jem looks up and his eyes tell me so much. Jem knows I’m here for him too; the suspicion I saw in his face the first time I tried to help him that night amongst the broken glass in the kitchen has gone. Nobody has looked at me in this way before. He sees through everything I have built around, looking straight into my heart.
The one he shattered.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Jem
I hang outside the Chapel of Rest, watching people I don’t know talking to other strangers; I’m on the fringes as always. The sombrely dressed men and women climb into cars, negotiating who travels in each. A few tried to talk when they noticed me at the back of the chapel, but I deliberately arrived late in order to avoid them. There isn’t a single person here I recognise. When the service finished, I ducked out of the place before anyone else could speak to me and hid around the corner of the building with Dylan and my grief. Do they know who I am? Did she ever tell people about me? Or was I something Mum tried to forget until she couldn’t anymore?
The early December weather freezes the afternoon and the coastal wind smarts my face. The physical numbness helps dull the pain gnawing my insides too. I don’t think I hurt; I don’t know. I’ve hurt so much in the last month I don’t know what feels normal and what feels wrong anymore. I’m terrified because I’m slipping into the lost place in my mind, where a path leads to the old methods of oblivion.
As I watched the coffin leave the Chapel of Rest for cremation today, the pain of the battle to stop the tears split my head; and as the room spun, I realised I was holding my breath against the final goodbye. Dylan’s quiet support helped, he understood my need to be left alone and didn’t touch or attempt to speak to me in the service. Heaving in the breath I’d neglected, I pictured my suffering and memories burning with her. If Mum doesn’t exist anymore, how can they?
But if Mum takes away all that with her death, what am I left with? An emptiness I need to take and fill with something, but what with is my decision.
Dylan steps forward hands in the pockets of his dark suit. “Are we going with them to the wake?” He inclines his head to the funeral goers.
“Nah. Don’t know any of them. I’m done now.”
Dylan places a hand on my arm and I brace myself. I don’t want his comfort. He hugged me fiercely the day I told him Mum had died, rewinding us to who we are and always have been. The twelve year old Jem and Dylan— the boys who forged a bond that loosened, but never broke— are here. Brothers. “You okay, man?”
“No. But come on.”
I wish Ruby was with me, but I couldn’t ask her to come. We haven’t spoken properly since the night she appeared like a scarlet-haired angel and pulled me out of the Hell I was falling back into. Ruby left the day after she helped me. I called a couple of times and we chatted, but Ruby says she’s not ready to see me. I’m proud of my beautiful girl who found the strength finally to believe in herself, to know she deserves love and happiness instead of walking back into my mess. I will fight for her when I’ve finished fighting for myself. Until I’m in the right space, there can’t be anything more.
Will I ever be in the right space?
Today I’m laying to rest my past and I’m not including Ruby as part of today for a bigger reason. I don’t want to lay us to rest.
“What do you want to do?” asks Dylan as we climb into his black Audi.
“Dunno. Go home.”
We return to my house empty of life, tidied and fixed, back to my barren life in just one or two rooms. Dylan stayed with me the last week, refusing to leave because I have nobody else. I once had somebody else. The woman who I reach for in the night and she’s not there; the one who would sit half-naked on my bed with her guitar and play when she knew I needed her to, but never asked why. There was a beautiful, loving girl who held my face, looked me in the eyes, and told me she cared and just as easily told me when I was being an asshole. And I fucking threw her away.
Ruby Riot has a gig tonight and on the drive home through the greying skies, I suggest to Dylan I go there. He launches into a lecture about being around alcohol when I’m in a mess, considering my almost relapse when I heard Mum had died. I explain that’s why I need to be around music, the good that can drown out the thoughts looping in my mind.
No, I can’t wait until I’m in the right space because until I have Ruby, I never will be. A year ago, in this state of mind, all I would’ve wanted was drugs. The only thing I want at this moment in time is Ruby.
****
I’m late to the gig, Ruby Riot’s familiar sound blasts through the open doors as I arrive. There’s a strange irony in Ruby Riot being here tonight; the venue I first saw her in months ago. The last time Ruby Riot played here the crowd was half the size, the band relatively unknown. The few tables are empty as most people are standing and under Ruby’s spell. I slide onto a seat so I can stay in the shadows.
Watching the band achieve what I hoped, the shit of today is wiped from my mind and filled with colour and sound. Dylan offered to come with me and when I got snarly with his undertone that he wanted to keep an eye on me, he backed off. Dylan knows I need to be alone; this is me locking myself into a different space and not slipping. The band gets tighter as they gig more often. As Blue Phoenix’s support act for the next tour; the whole world will get to share them. Accusations they only got the gig because of Jem Jones’s involvement with the lead singer fall away as the music world recognises what I did that first night at this same venue. Talent.
The power Ruby had over me the first night never wanes. The woman on stage, hair tumbling across her face as her powerful voice competes with Jax’s heavy guitar for supremacy and inevitably wins, is a fucking goddess. This goes beyond her looks: her strength, her passion, the new self-belief all make up this phenomenal person who reached into herself, grasped the vines of the past strangling her, and tore them out. I saw Ruby grow in front of my eyes and this allowed her to turn away from me when I started to break her apart.
She’s the Ruby she deserves to be, free from assholes who can’t tell her when they love her.
I imagine the colours we talked about swimming around her head; the ones I see too if I close my eyes. Regret coils around my heart the longer I look at Ruby. She’s me, or the me I would like to be.
If I were in the movies, I’d walk on stage and kiss the girl beneath the strobing lights. I’d confess my undying love with a song dedicated to Ruby. But life isn’t like the movies, and we’re certainly not typical when it comes to that shit. Probably, she’d tell me to fuck off. Instead, I watch and wait. When the set finishes, I don’t move. The crowds thin as the evening ends with only a couple of double-take glances thrown my way, most don’t notice me.
Half an hour later, the band reappears to get drinks and dismantle their gear. Ruby sits on the edge of the stage, long legs crossed and barefoot. Her skin shines, hair damp, my post-gig Ruby soaked in happiness. Jax approaches with a bottle of water and she smiles as he passes it to her.
Then he kisses her forehead, running a finger across her face as he steps back.
My world of colour darkens as I watch them, the old insecurity niggling. Are they together? Is this the real reason she’s keeping me at a distance? Jax wanders over to where Will and Nate dismantle the drum kit, and I’m on the verge of leaving as the turmoil of my day is joined by more. This is fucking exhausting. A few minutes later, Ruby disappears and my inner debate rages
. Do I follow or stay?
She’s better off with Jax.
But I can’t let her slip away, not without a fight.
The door to the Green Room is open and Ruby sits on the edge of the dilapidated sofa, gripping her water. The dampness on her face isn’t only perspiration. Tears travel slowly down her cheeks and she stares at her boots, mouth turned down. But she looked happy?
“Ruby?”
Looking up sharply, she scrubs away the tears with the back of her hand, but new ones shine in her eyes.
“Can I talk to you?” She nods but doesn’t speak, and her distress radiates across the room. Quietly, I close the door. “Are you okay?”
“I’m surprised to see you, Jem,” she replies, turning concerned eyes to mine. “It was the funeral today, wasn’t it?”
Now it’s my turn to nod.
“You were good tonight,” I say after a few moments of silence that shouldn’t be as awkward as we make it.
“Thanks.” She pauses. “How are you?”
“Pretty crap. You?”
She gives a small smile. “About the same.”
“What’s wrong?”
Ruby’s hair hangs in her eyes and she blows it away. “Jax is still worried about the tour in January.”
“Why?”
“In case we… this between us means Blue Phoenix don’t want Ruby Riot to support anymore.”
“Huh. I’m not that unprofessional. I put a crap load of time and money into you guys.”
“Okay.” She’s still fighting tears. This isn’t her; this isn’t about the band.
“Stop avoiding my question. What happened? Is Dan back on the scene?”
“No! He’s gone, moved somewhere else with another girl. I don’t know where, a fucking long way I hope.”
“But I haven’t seen you like this before, not for a long time. Is this because of me?”
Ruby fixes me with a curious look. “Don’t flatter yourself, Jem Jones.” I smile and she half-smiles back. “What did you want?”
“You.”
The words echo our first meeting and she recognises my lame attempt to reach out. “This time do you mean Ruby Riot or me?”
