Messed Up and Magic: (A New Adult Romance Novel)

by Stone, Holly

  “God, Jess,” I said, blushing some more. “How would you know anyway?”

  “Girls talk,” she said, with a wicked grin. “I wouldn’t mind getting up close and personal with it though, well…” She trailed off, looking guilty. “I mean, who wouldn’t? He’s a good looking bloke, isn’t he?”

  “I guess. I always think of him as younger, you know.”

  “Not by much…and anyway, what about that Jack that’s been staying at yours? He’s only just stopped sucking his mum’s tits.”

  “God, Jess…that’s disgusting,” I said, and she laughed raucously.

  “You’re really raiding the cradle there, girl!”

  “At least I’m not robbing graves!” I said, meaning Steve and some of the other sleazy forty-somethings she’d dealt with over the years. Jess’s face changed in a flash, going from teasing to blazing anger, and her posture became defensive, shoulders rising as she leant towards me.

  “She told you, didn’t she?” Jess spluttered out. “I knew she would, the stupid interfering bitch.”

  “Who told me what?” Jess went from looking angry to looking uncertain again, and my back was up immediately. “Jess, what the fuck’s going on?” I blurted out just as Steve was heading our way with two huge plates of roast dinner. He looked between us, hesitating with the plates.

  “You girls want this food? I don’t want to put it down if you’re going to end up throwing it at each other!”

  “Why the hell would I throw it at her?” I asked angrily.

  “Well, under the circumstances…” Steve raised an eyebrow. “You know…Jess and your dad…” He put the plates onto the table cautiously, looking between us, as what he said settled in my mind.

  I looked between him and Jess, who was noticeably paler and looking down at her bloody fingernails again.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Oh!” Steve said, looking sheepish. “I’ll…um…leave you ladies to your food. Enjoy.” He backed away towards the bar, but my eyes were fixed on Jess.

  “What’s common knowledge? What’s he talking about?” I said, with dread slipping through my bones like lead.

  “I didn’t want you to find out like this. Not until I was certain of things.” Jess shifted in her seat, looking like she wanted to bolt out the door.

  “Find out what?”

  “…but Bobby saw us and then word started to get around and…” Jess trailed off, and I froze, putting all the bits together and coming up with something so disgusting I thought I might throw up.

  “No,” I said. “Fuck, Jess, my dad?”

  She rubbed her hands over her face. “I don’t know what to say.”

  I got up then, unable to stand the sight of her anymore. As I pulled my bag and coat from the seat next to me, I couldn’t hold it in. “I can’t believe it, Jess. I can’t believe you would do this to me. How the fuck could you think this was acceptable? What were you looking for? An easy lay? A fucking daddy replacement? You want him, you can fucking have him.”

  As I turned to walk away, I caught Roy’s eyes with my tear-filled ones. He looked at me with sympathy in his expression and I realised that he knew too. Everybody knew and I couldn’t bear it.

  Chapter 9

  JACK

  It was late by the time I hit the shower, needing to wash off the filth from a day’s hard work and the effort of getting Stan’s artist studio clean enough for me to sleep in. It was an okay place, a bit draughty and in need of some furniture, but it was paradise compared to where I could have been spending the night. Stan’s pallet idea had worked a treat. I had three to rest the mattress on, and a couple of wooden fruit boxes as makeshift bedside tables. I would need a fridge and some small appliances, but I could get by on orange juice and bread and jam for a couple of days while I sorted myself out.

  Stan’s house was big, the biggest home I’d ever been inside. He lived alone but I wondered if he might have shared it with his mum at some point because the décor was more floral than I expected for a single middle-aged man. He had managed to not make my situation seem pathetic, talking about how I was doing him a favour moving in so that I could keep an eye on the place. I’d always thought he was a kind person. He was good hearted, making time to speak to people like they mattered. The lonely old ladies loved him, cornering him around the supermarket and bending his ear with local gossip and complaints about the price of fish (and everything else!) and I never heard him moan about them. He knew all their names and acted as though it was his privilege to share some conversation with them. He had always taken time to chat to me too, even when I was a lowly trolley boy, taken on to cover the Christmas rush.

  Stan would have made some lucky kid a brilliant dad. Not like my loser of a sperm donor.

  I rummaged in my holdall for the shorts and t-shirt I’d used to sleep in the night before, realising I was going to need to make an urgent trip to the laundrette. When I was clothed, I rubbed the towel over my hair, used my fingers to comb through the tangles, then settled on my bed and checked my phone. It was the first time I’d looked at it since leaving work and I found a message from Amy that she had sent hours before.

  AMY: Where are you? I’ve just come home and found the key and your note. You don’t have to do this, Jack. I know I was angry last night but I didn’t want you to leave, not if you’ve got nowhere to go. Look, I’m sorry about everything. Let me know you’re okay. Please. I’ve had such a shitty day and I don’t think I could take worrying about you as well. A x

  I messaged her back straight away. Things were awkward between us but I had no intention of turning the situation into some kind of game-play, or to make it bigger than it needed to be.

  JACK: Hey Amy, I’ve found somewhere else to stay. My manager lives up on Alperton Rise and he’s got a double garage converted into an annex. He’s letting me move in for practically nothing. Look, I’m sorry about last night too. I never wanted to hurt you. You did something amazing for me, something I’ll never forget and all I did was fuck it all up. I’m so sorry. What happened today? Did your dad not take the news well? I’m around if you need to talk okay…anytime, Amy. Just call me. J x

  I watched my phone for a while, hoping Amy would message me back, or maybe call, and I could provide her with a shoulder to cry on if she needed one. It wouldn’t be enough to repay her kindness but it was better than nothing.

  The small fan heater I’d plugged in next to my bed was blowing out welcome heat but the noise it made was grating. With no television, I resorted to watching some Youtube clips of my favourite bands on my phone. Then I picked up my guitar and strummed away some of the silence, playing an Arctic Monkeys song and half-humming, half-singing the lyrics. When I heard a knock on the door I internally cursed myself for making so much noise, thinking it was Stan coming to complain. I opened the door with an apology on my lips but it wasn’t Stan standing in front of me; it was Amy and she’d been crying.

  “Jack. Can I come in?” she said, her voice hitching as she tried to hold back more tears.

  “Course,” I put my hand on her shoulder and drew her into the room. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m…I’m sorry for barging in on you like this. I…I didn’t know what else to do. I parked at the end of the road and was going to call you to find out which house but I heard your guitar.”

  “Hey, it’s okay.” I said, trying to sound soothing. We were standing over a foot away from each other and it was awkward. I wanted to draw her close to me as I’d done before but I wasn’t sure what she needed from me anymore. Amy looked around, glancing at the bed and my belongings that I’d piled in the corner, swiping at her eyes, trying to regain control.

  “So this is your new place.”

  “Yeah, it’s not much but...” I shrugged my shoulders, embarrassed at the pitiful sight of my possessions resting in such basic looking accommodation.

  “It’s nice…maybe a few pictures on the walls, some furniture, cushions.” Amy smiled and it was so timid and flee
ting it broke my heart.

  “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” I went to sit on the bed – it was the only place available bar the floor – and I motioned for Amy to do the same. She perched on the low mattress, clutching her bag in her lap, her shoulders hunched around her problems, eyes on her feet.

  “It’s all falling apart, Jack. My dad was so awful when I told him about the robbery and I walked out. I…I just couldn’t take it. And then…and then I found out that Jess – my friend that you met the other day – has been sleeping with my dad, and my other friend knew about it but didn’t tell me.” She began to weep so I reached out and placed my hand on her shoulder, rubbing over her back in a way I hoped was soothing. I wasn’t very experienced at this kind of thing. I had no siblings – well, none that that I’d grown up with – and no friends who had called on me for comfort in an hour of need. I just did what I thought would help, or rather, what had worked the day before.

  “Hey, Amy,” I whispered. “Don’t cry.”

  “I just feel so betrayed, Jack, by everyone in my life. This has all been going on behind my back… Oh God, maybe my sister knows about it too…if she knew and didn’t tell me…well, I don’t know what I would do. I just can’t believe it. What the hell are they thinking? It’s so humiliating!”

  I really didn’t know what to say. I’d grown up with men passing through the revolving door to my mum’s bedroom. None of them stuck around for very long unless they had nowhere else to go. Most of them were scumbags. A few were nice enough to actually show an interest in me and try to get my mum to stop drinking, but I didn’t like their kindness. It just made it harder when they left. I guess I’d grown quite detached from what my mum did, not that I didn’t feel the humiliation of knowing what other people thought of her, more that I’d learnt to accept that nothing was going to change. When you accept that you can’t control the way other people live their lives, you lose the stress that comes with fighting against them. It helps. But Amy was neck-deep in her family so I could understand why what had happened felt like such a betrayal. Add in the resentment she felt about the way she was expected to live her life, all the feelings of treachery had become magnified.

  When Amy hid her face with her hands I shuffled closer and put my arm around her and she seemed to collapse into my chest as if she had been waiting for my comfort. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s gonna be okay,” I whispered into her soft, honey-coloured hair that tickled my lips and smelt faintly of apples.

  “I don’t think it is though. I sat in my car for most of the day not knowing what to do or where to go. I don’t think I can go back, Jack. I don’t think I can go back to working in that fish and chip shop like nothing has happened. My dad’s been calling my phone but I can’t bear to answer and have to sit through his attempt at justification – if he’s even bothered about what I think – and Jess, I just don’t think I can forgive her for this.” Amy pulled away and reached into her bag, retrieving a tissue to dab at her face. “All I can think about is if I don’t…if I can’t forgive either of them…well, my life here is over. There’s nothing to keep me.”

  “There’s your sister and your other friends…if you want this to be your home, Amy, your dad and Jess, they don’t have the power to change that. You make that decision. Look…I don’t think you can think like this right now…you only just found out about what happened. You need to give it some time to sink in. Maybe you’ll feel different when you’ve had a chance to talk to them. It’s hard, but people make mistakes. They haven’t done this to hurt you. They’ve done it for their own reasons, however warped. Maybe you need to let them explain before you decide what you are going to do.”

  Amy looked up at me then. Her swollen, grey eyes looked so tired and bereft I couldn’t stand it. I stroked over her cheek, wiping away an errant tear and tried to come up with something to say that might give her solace. “You know, no matter how bad things seem now, there will be a time in the not too distant future when you’ll feel better. That’s just how life is. We get through it and then, when we look back, all we see is our own strength. The hurt fades and we grow stronger.”

  “Is that how you got so strong, Jack?”

  “Me? I’m not strong. I just do what I have to do.”

  She shook her head, but didn’t verbalise her disagreement. “You didn’t have to leave like that. I know things were a bit awkward but I wasn’t expecting you to move out because of it.”

  “Don’t worry about all that now,” I said, getting a memory flash of how she had looked after she had come by my hand; an angel undone. I’d spent most of the day thinking about what she had let me do to her. My hands had smelt of her when I woke in the morning and I hadn’t wanted to wash it away.

  “I guess I don’t have to now that I know you have somewhere to go. Funny, isn’t it, how the tables have turned?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t go back to the flat, Jack. My dad will come over and I’ll be cornered.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, ready to offer a place to crash. I would take the cold floor if I had to for the chance to repay the kindness she had shown me.

  “I don’t know. I have an aunt in Manchester, my dad’s sister. I can call her tomorrow and find out if she would put me up for a bit. It’s awkward though…having to tell her the reason things are bad at home.”

  “What about tonight?” Amy didn’t reply but looked towards the door as if ready to make excuses to leave. “Stay here,” I added quickly.

  She looked unsure, as if she wanted to accept but didn’t believe my offer was genuine.

  “Stay, Amy. At least let me do this for you. I’ll feel less pathetic for having to accept your hospitality.”

  “I don’t need your charity, Jack.” Her eyes were suddenly as dark as steel, ringed with red and I realised my mistake. We had ‘history’ now, and she obviously hadn’t taken on board any of what I’d said the night before.

  “Was it charity when you offered me help? I took it though, didn’t I, and we didn’t know each other like we do now.”

  “I should go,” Amy said, standing awkwardly from the low mattress, her arm crossing her chest as she clasped the handle of the bag on her shoulder. “I shouldn’t have come. I just…I needed to talk and you were the person I wanted. I didn’t mean to put you in a difficult position.” She turned and walked towards the door as I scrambled to my feet, following without knowing what to do next. She was right. Things were difficult. We had done things that friends didn’t do to each other. I had feelings for her that friends shouldn’t feel. She needed a friend but all the awkwardness made it impossible, and ultimately nothing had changed. I still had nothing to offer her outside of a physical release and some juvenile attempts at advice, and Amy was even more of an emotional wreck than she had been the last time she turned to me for support. But I knew that I needed to convince her to stay. Letting her go, upset and alone, into the dark wintery night was not an option.

  “Fuck, Amy. Just…don’t, okay?” I put my hand over hers on the doorknob and squeezed so she wouldn’t turn it. Her back was to my chest, the top of her head level with my chin and she was still, as if our point of connection had rendered her temporarily immobile. I felt it too, that sizzling static between us that overloaded my senses and froze me temporarily.

  “You hurt me,” Amy said, her voice quiet but firm.

  “I know,” I whispered into her hair, putting my free hand over hers, holding it tight as I did the other one. “It wasn’t what I wanted.” She flinched against me and I realised she had misunderstood what I’d said. “I mean, I didn’t want to hurt you, Amy. I got carried away by the way you looked, the way you felt, how much I wanted you…but you deserve better than me and I didn’t want to take advantage of you when you were upset. I didn’t want to be that man.”

  “But instead you decided that you knew what I wanted…what I needed better than I did. You made the decision for me and I didn’t need that, Jack. I have
enough of that from everyone else. I just wanted something for me…not because I was upset but because I was greedy for my own choices. I chose you, not because I’m an emotional wreck or because you were the only thing available. I chose you because I wanted you.”

  Amy turned her head to look at me over her shoulder and I felt the burning heat of her gaze on my skin. She was a different woman than the one who had walked through my door. She was now determined and intense, and I could understand her need to control this small part of her life, away from the other expectations she felt bound to meet. All my resolve crumbled away under her scrutiny, her stormy eyes calling to me as much as her sweet, pink lips and the curves I could feel pressing against me. We stood like that for several seconds, breathing slowly and deeply, in sync as the tension stretched between us.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered again, but this time for different reasons.

  “Don’t be sorry,” she whispered back. “Just let me choose, okay? Let me decide this one thing.”

  I could only nod my head, the tension in my throat too severe to voice my agreement without revealing how affected I was by her disquiet and her desire.

  “Will you kiss me, Jack?” she breathed against my lips, turning in my arms so she could lay her hands on my chest. Every part of me seemed to come alive; the skin under the press of her fingers absorbed her warmth, the palms of my hands that reached around to hold her against me hummed for more pressure. The nerves on my mouth that brushed hers gently woke up, until I was tugging on her top lip, then her bottom lip in turn, buzzing when I felt the first lick of her tongue against mine. Her hands moved up under my t-shirt, running over my back and leaving a trail of sensation in their wake. When they moved to skim my chest and graze my nipples, my cock jerked in response. I reached in between us to unbutton her coat, hating everything that now stood between us so fiercely that my hands shook. Her handbag hit the floor as I pushed her coat roughly off her shoulders, then I worked at the pretty green cardigan that made her eyes sparkle with flecks of jade.