Let Me Be Your First (Music and Letters #1)

by Lynsey M. Stewart

I welcomed the silence like an old friend. It was an immediate remedy for the banging in my head and the throb of pain in my shoulder. Sleep soon consumed me.

  When I opened my eyes again, Mum was sitting in the chair Luke had occupied as I’d closed them. She was reading a magazine; her glasses perched on the end of her nose.

  ‘Hey sweetheart, that sleep will have done you the world of good. Sleep heals the body. Best thing you can do.’ She stroked my head like she did when I was little and couldn’t sleep. It was such a beautiful act of care. Pure mother-daughter love and affection. She offered me a drink, but I shook my head and closed my eyes again. ‘I have something for you.’ I opened one eye and peeked over. I saw that she was clutching an envelope. I recognised the writing immediately.

  ‘Where is he?’ I asked, confusion blurring any chance of rational thought.

  ‘Abi saw him outside earlier. Is everything OK with you two? She said he asked her give this to you, but you’ve been asleep for hours, so when she left, she gave it to me.’ She passed me the envelope and I held it to my chest before running my finger across the front where my name was written in his handwriting.

  Dear Elle,

  I stayed outside your room tonight. I thought about us and I thought about you and how much colour you’ve brought to my life.

  I was so terrified. You’re not even mine, but I knew I couldn’t bear to lose you.

  After today, I’m still terrified of losing you.

  When you told me you needed space, I totally understood. I was happy to take it slow, but what I can’t do is stand by and wait whilst you’re still being pulled in two different directions.

  I don’t want to be a distraction. I want to be your first choice.

  When I said I couldn’t bear losing you, I think I finally have.

  Ben

  Mum held me as I cried. She read the letter over my shoulder and cried with me. We were crying for what had happened that day. We were crying for what had gone before. We were crying for the loss of what could have been.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Ben

  Hospitals made me nervous. The smell of disinfectant and pumps of hand gel at every corner should have been comforting to me, but all I felt was sick to my stomach. She was starting to become everything to me.

  How could I get her out of my system?

  I sat with my head in my hands on a chair outside her room. A pad of paper and pen had fortunately been abandoned at the side of me after I’d failed to find the right words to explain how I was feeling. She was fast asleep when I looked in, and I was glad for the time to think without having to face her directly. I felt a whisper of air as a girl rushed past me and went straight into Elle’s room. She was wearing jogging bottoms and a black sports bra. She must have just come from the gym. She was carrying her life in her hands; her phone, purse and keys were jangling as she ran. Not more than a minute later, she came out and dropped herself down on the chair next to me.

  ‘Fuck,’ she whispered, clinging on to her belongings like her life depended on it.

  ‘Are you a friend of Elle’s?’ I asked. She snapped her head towards me and smiled.

  ‘Ben?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied as I picked up the pad and paper from the chair she promptly sat herself in.

  ‘I thought I recognised you. Nice to finally meet. Sorry it’s under these shitty circumstances.’ She held out her hand after dropping her life to the floor with a loud clatter. She tipped her head towards the door. ‘She’s fast asleep. Shit, she scared me today. I can’t imagine not having her in my life.’ She shook her head and turned away from me. I watched her shoulders drop and jerk twice before she straightened them and pulled herself back up. ‘I’m Abi. Best friend number one, but don’t tell Gem and Kate that.’

  ‘I’ll take it to the grave.’

  ‘Poor choice of words there, Ben. At least wait until she’s woken up.’

  Sarcasm. I could see us getting on.

  I laughed shortly as she knocked her shoulder into me.

  ‘Have you spoken to her?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah. She was awake when I came, but she’s had a lot of visitors and they’ve tired her out,’ I said thoughtfully.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Luke.’

  ‘Don’t fuck with me,’ she said loudly. I’d never met a girl like her. I wondered how they had ever become friends. They were so different.

  ‘He brought her flowers and kissed her as he left.’

  ‘You’re talking a different language. I’m having trouble making sense of what you’re saying to me,’ she said, circling her hands at the side of her head. ‘He doesn’t give a shit. They spilt up months ago. She hasn’t seen him since the day at the embankment.’

  ‘When was that?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh fuck, let me think. Oh, it was the day she met you. After your first…’

  Her words trailed off to nothing as she realised what she had said and how it had come across.

  ‘She saw him after our date?’

  ‘He made up some bullshit about his father, cancer or something, said he needed to talk. There’s nothing in it. She’s not seeing him again in that sense. It was just a one off,’ she said, trying to take the bruise of her previous words away.

  ‘So why was he here? Why was he kissing her?’ I said, trying to make sense of the words coming out of my mouth.

  ‘I have no idea. He’s a different kind of special, believe me.’ She emphasised the word believe and started to laugh.

  Her phone started to ring and she immediately answered it, giving me time to finish writing the letter I’d discarded without knowing how to finish it.

  I knew now.

  ‘She’s OK. Sleeping, but OK.

  Yes, of course.

  As soon as she’s awake.

  Yes.

  Try not to worry and give the kids a squeeze for me.

  Love you too.’

  She dropped the phone to the chair beside her and turned to me. ‘That was Gem just checking in. She couldn’t get a sitter or she’d be here. She’s worried sick.’

  ‘She has good friends.’

  ‘The best.’

  ‘Can you give this to her?’ I placed the letter in an envelope, sealing it firmly.

  ‘What’s this?’ she said, looking into my eyes and taking in the sad look on my face. ‘Oh no, no. You can’t. What are you doing?’

  ‘I can’t stay if she’s still in love with someone else or if she’s not sure about us.’

  ‘I’ve just spent a boozy night trying to convince her that she needs to let her guard down and trust you. Do not walk away now. Grow some balls and get back in there!’ she shouted as she sprang to her feet.

  ‘She doesn’t know what she wants,’ I said, staring into her piercing gaze.

  ‘She wants you, fuckwit.’

  ‘She needs space. I turned up here when she asked me to give her space, and then he turned up,’ I stuttered.

  ‘What did she say when she saw you?’ She was still standing over me and was as intimidating as fuck as she stood with her hands on her hips.

  ‘She missed me,’ I said, thinking back to the only good part of the afternoon.

  ‘See! Fuck, Ben. You’re letting her down. Do you know how many romance novels she reads? She can go through six books a week. Six books a fucking week. She dreams of that sappy shit. Luke was crap at it, but you? I had such high hopes for you,’ she said shaking her head. ‘You might be OK with letting her down, but you really don’t want to let me down.’ She tapped her foot on the floor and regained the hand on hip stance.

  ‘I need to get out of here. You scare me.’ We both laughed lightly until I handed her the letter. ‘Give her this for me. It was lovely to meet you. Look after her.’

  I started walking down the corridor, ignoring Abi as she shouted, ‘I will hunt you down, Ben.’

  I knew that I was retreating. I had pulled back but I wanted to see her.

  Knowing that she was hur
t because someone had intentionally harmed her was driving me mad. She hadn’t just been hurt physically; she had also been hurt emotionally. The scar that I had left would take longer to heal.

  I should imagine it would always be difficult to come face to face with a girl’s ex. Knowing that the man standing in front of you had once been such a big part of the person you are in love with is difficult to say the least. I had come to terms with the fact that the arrogant bastard had touched her, kissed her, and held her in ways I could only imagine doing myself, but I also believed she had put all of that behind her and was ready to move on. She was ready to take a chance and put her trust in me.

  He proved me wrong that afternoon when Elle was lying in that hospital bed.

  I walked away. Did that make me a coward? A heartless bastard? Or did it make me sensible, stopping myself from suffering further pain before getting in too deep? I was already in deep. That’s why I found myself sitting on the floor of my bedroom writing a letter I wasn’t sure I would ever send.

  The little OCD person living in my head had been talking too loudly during the last few days. Most days I could drown out the incessant chatter and only give in to a few of it’s demands just to appease it, but today it was louder than a fucking Jumbo jet landing in Disneyworld. Only one person had caused the ache in my heart and noise in my head.

  Elle.

  Over the years, I found the best way to keep the little person from drilling into my skull was to feed it the occasional treat. Initially, hand washing was its favourite. It was easy for me control and didn’t make me look like a patient short of a straight jacket.

  We can all get a little obsessive about things at some point in our lives, but believe me, OCD is more than just the urge to have a tidy house and orderly cupboards. It comes in many forms. For me, hand washing was common, but hand washing developed into the need for my body and everything around me to feel clean: restaurant tables and chairs, train seats, clothes, bedding, towels. It wasn’t uncommon for me to throw socks away after wearing them once. My quirks could be exhausting, but there were periods in my life when the good days outweighed the bad. Elle coming into my life didn’t change my rituals. I knew there was no cure, but she offered a welcome distraction to the loneliness and the never-ending patterns I had inflicted on myself.

  I’m certain my mess of a childhood resulted in my struggles with OCD. My life story would make an action packed, emotionally draining novel. My parents’ relationship bore the scars of alcoholism, addictions and adultery. My brother and I were welcome distractions between the bad times but ultimately the cause of further decline. My parents finally separated when I was eleven. Great timing for the start of puberty and laying the groundwork for becoming an adult.

  She needed to know this. I wanted her to know this.

  I picked up the pen.

  As I wrote, the pen took on a life of it’s own and the words tumbled out onto the page. It was cathartic and releasing. I was finally ridding myself of a life that I’d tried too frequently to forget.

  Dear Elle,

  Despite my parents’ shortcomings and disastrously shitty life choices, I idolised them. Dad was a big brute of a man. He could carry my brother (Paul) and I on each shoulder without breaking into a sweat. He worked in the steel mills and we would often follow him around the factory during school holidays. It was a health and safety nightmare, but I loved to watch him get lost in his craft. It was a particularly good day when we witnessed Dad’s friend slice his thumb clean off with a heavy-duty saw. I dined on that gruesome story for years.

  Mum was quiet, smart, loving, and all the things you wanted a mother to be. All of those good things withered away and died when she started making crappy choices that would impact hugely on Paul and I. There’s a backstory to those crappy decisions, so it’s only fair that I tell it.

  Mum married the wrong guy. She was in love with my dad’s best friend at school. Complicated doesn’t begin to cover it.

  My dad’s gambling and subsequent alcoholism didn’t make for a happy marriage. I have vivid memories of sitting at the top of the stairs when my dad would come home late from the pub. He would throw his pay packet at my mum. She would cry because it would be empty after he had lost it on the horses. Mum was a scrap of a woman, but she worked three jobs to keep a roof over our heads and put food on the table. Our diet mainly consisted of baked beans in a bowl with a few slices of bread on the side. A weekly treat would be chips from the local chip shop after she’d count up the loose change in her purse.

  We were looked after on a rota system by various family members. This allowed Mum to come home from one job and leave half an hour later to go to another. My aunty was like a second mother to me, and my grandparents were my lifelines, often buying me toys and sweets, or slipping a five pound note into my hand when no one was looking. I always gave it to Mum, but I would never have told them that. My mum was proud and tried to hide our secrets.

  My life was fairly consistent, but it all changed. The day my mum left was the day that shaped and moulded me into the man I am today. Arriving home from school and finding your dad, typical alpha male, sinking into a bottle of whiskey, clutching a Dear John letter in one hand and wiping the tears from his face with the other, would change anyone.

  She had gone, leaving us to manoeuvre our way around a dad who literally crumpled in front of us. He was a mess when they were together but apart, he was broken beyond repair.

  Life changed again when I returned home from school one hot sticky day in early July to find Mum peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink like nothing had happened. It was like she hadn’t been missing out of my life for the past few weeks, which actually felt like years. I wasn’t angry at her because she didn’t write, phone or visit. Life was confusing for that eleven-year-old who duly pulled up a chair and started to help put the potatoes in the pan.

  Ignoring the silent tears of my mother, I sang her favourite song to try to make her smile.

  She left again a few weeks later. We were never told where she had gone. It just became part of our normal, everyday lives.

  Every few weeks, my grandma would put us on a bus and tell us to meet Mum outside the cinema in town. We would watch classic Disney films and eighties sci-fi. Those days feature highly in my internal list of good memories, and directly led to my love of films and passion for writing scripts. When it was time to be put back on the bus, I would cry and cling to her legs. She would cradle my whole body and sob quietly. Weeks would pass, and then we would do it all over again.

  I didn’t think life could throw any more crap in my direction, but I was wrong. One Sunday afternoon, a car pulled up outside our house. I didn’t notice it at first as I looked out of my window, but I did notice my dad pulling at the driver’s side door and beating his elbow into the window to try and smash the glass. I could hear my mum’s threats to call the police and couldn’t fail to notice her tear stained cheeks.

  Memories can be beautiful or complex, depending on the situation. For me, they are also disjointed and confusing. They just don’t make sense. They don’t explain anything, or tell my story.

  A good example would be the day my mum took me from my dad. I had no recollection as to how she got me into the back of the car, but I do have a vivid memory of my dad running behind shouting and waving his arms. I don’t remember arriving at the new house or being introduced to the man who would be my mum’s new husband. I only remember that he didn’t look at me like my dad did.

  The emotional abuse started almost immediately. There was no settling in period or attempts to win my affections. He already had two children. We were all thrown together through no fault of our own. We bickered and argued. We hated each other. His eldest son made my life tough at school; bullying was commonplace. I never got a break from the taunts and jibes as they would trickle over at home into a never-ending confidence obliterator.

  Paul was six years older than me and had chosen to stay with my dad before finally leaving home
. Because of that, he didn’t get the same kick in the teeth. There was no question that I was treated differently in my stepdad’s house. I would always be his enemy’s child. My face was a constant reminder of the love he lost as a teenager and the epic fuck-ups along the way.

  My life was controlled with military precision. I could only wash on a Sunday evening, my curfew was always earlier than everyone else’s, and my dinner would be scraped into the bin if I was late for mealtimes.

  We grew to hate each other, so when he tried to stop me going to university because he wanted me to get a job to financially contribute to the household, I broke away and moved into my current place. I made a decision that I wasn’t going to let him control my future like he had controlled my past.

  For much of my adult life, I lived like a hermit. University life wasn’t for me, but I painted a smile on my face and acted the part. I loved learning. I soaked up my classes like a sponge. I would return to the four walls of my room every evening to craft and develop my art. Working with computers drove my love of anything technical. I would buy a computer with the sole purpose of taking it apart and teaching myself how to put it all back together again. The sense of irony in working with computers and not directly with people wasn’t lost on me. Computers didn’t care about emotions. I was the captain of the ship telling the piece of machinery what to do. Not the other way round.

  During school, I often heard friends talking about the fear of rejection when they started dating. Rejection wasn’t a fear for me. It was more than that. I lived with the sting of rejection during my childhood years. I had been through the worst rejection possible. The first woman to reject me was my mother.

  I threw myself into the student drinking scene. I spent some nights passed out on park benches after attempting to make my way home from a heavy night. I would wake up with random cuts and bruises and a huge sense of shame that I had let the demons of my past affect the prospects of my future.

  Relationships were non-existent and I fell into a string of disastrous dates. After hook-ups and fuck-ups, blind dates, speed dates, and bloody awful dates, I gave up and chalked it all down to bad experience, but my perspective changed again when I became an uncle. Paul and his wife are parents to a copper-haired, cheeky, and downright adorable little boy named Sam. Through Sam, I have a whole new outlook on life. Most importantly, he provides the opportunity for me to see my mum as a grandma, to watch the adoration, pride and love that she must have bestowed upon me in the early years I sadly can’t remember. Sam fills over the cracks of the relationship with my mum, and I have a newfound respect for her.