that.was.surreal. xx
_________________________________________________________________________________
.::C H A P T E R O N E::.
MAKE A DECISION, RENETTA.
I spent three years of my life just trying to stay alive.
Life seemed meaningless once Ant was stolen. I didn’t know where he was, I didn’t know if I’d ever see him again. I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that there was no Anthony Gray anymore.
I couldn’t think about the way I was blindfolded before I even had a chance to look at his capturers, to even have anything to go by. I could pass them in the street and never know, the deep threatening voices maybe just a sinster disguise. Maybe they had Ant, my Ant, chained up in a basement, locked in a bedroom. I didn’t know why they took him and left me. I didn’t want to think about why.
For a while I was in deep despair. I self-harmed till I was hospitalised, then I was put into therapy. My family and Ant’s family were there always, trying to help me through it. Ant’s mother was as bad. She just couldn’t believe the light of our lives was gone. Nobody could. From that day onwards it was like the sun had gone out, and it would never come back.
We all assumed he was dead after the first year. Even Ant’s mum came around to that in the end. Only I couldn’t let it go. Of course I started my life again. I couldn’t become involved romantically again though, nobody could compare, and I was terrified it would happen to me once more. I’d fall in love and I’d lose the one I loved, that was my mentality. Besides, I didn’t really see them anymore. Men were just men. The opposite sex, that’s all it came to.
After the second year I stopped feeling. I started being able to go outside more often without fearing somebody would bundle me into the back of a car. I think I even stopped wanting Ant to be found. After all that time I really guessed if he was going to be found he would be found dead. My friends worried about me, saying I should try and find a man. I tried a couple of times but I quit with one and the other quit with me. I was the problem in both relationships. I was stuck inside a black hole that neither swallowed me up nor let me go free. Life just carried on with me not enjoying it, as if in a kind of shock, a kind of subconsiousness. I didn’t cry, I didn’t hurt. I was distant.
It was this state of mind I remained in until one April morning, still strangely frosty although winter should have been long over by then. A thin mist hung over the trees as I walked past them in the park, not knowing where I was going and struggling to remember where I was coming from. I lived with Charlie (full name Charlotte) these days because she was the only one who would put up with my company and who had always understood why I was as vacant as I was. I knew one day I’d have to find my own way when she finally married somebody. I didn’t dread the day that news might come. I could work again. I just chose not to. I had some savings from the odd jobs I had done, and I could probably buy a small flat, but I just crossed bridges as I came to them those days. Outside myself, where nobody else could tell me I was wrong.
“Renetta? Is that you?” Turning, I knew the familiar face almost immediately, more tired now but still with the same ineffably cool air about him and lazy smile on his face. His shock of scruffy brown hair tousled like he’d just got out of bed, and he was wearing a “Noah and The Whale” t-shirt and black jacket combo that suited him perfectly. I couldn’t help smiling at him.
“I’d recognise those blue curls anywhere,” Travis ruffled my hair and the light broke through the clouds for a few seconds. “Good to see your mother still dissapproves of you dyeing them. If she got used to it, your locks would be pink by now.” A wide grin spread across his face.
I was having a rare blast from the past, in happier times when Ant was still around, when Travis was still around. I pretended to be cross with him.
“Travis f**king Turner it has been two and a half years!” I punched him in the arm. “Where the hell have you been?”
He said with a touch of guilt, “Hiding from Charls. Still don’t think she’s forgotten me. I just blew into town for the weekend, where are you now? Everything ok with..” he broke off. He didn’t like to bring up my feelings as much as I didn’t like talking about them.
“Since you mentioned your ex, I’m living with her,” and upon saying that, the corner of Travis’s mouth twitched nervously and he raked a hand uneasily through his hair. “And life is…slow.”
I watched a flicker of pain momentarily strike Travis’s features, and a feeling of sympathy crept into my heart. Anthony was his best friend, and knowing that it pained him maybe as much as it pained me now he was gone, I couldn’t help but warm to the man I’d watched break Charlie’s heart, the man I’d watched run and keep on running. He loved Charlotte, and maybe he still did, but I guess when Ant left he broke all of us together. I guess Travis didn’t want to stay around, didn’t want to promise Charlie he could make her happy when he couldn’t. But that didn’t make him leaving right. We all felt the light go out, but when we needed each other he shouldn’t have made rekindling the fire so hard by taking his part of Ant away. Besides me, Travis was closer to Ant than anybody.
I touched his arm. He looked up with glassy sad eyes. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said, shaking off his sadness like he’d always shouldered on. Like he didn’t really hurt.
I linked my arm with his and he smiled. He liked that and so did I. Even after all this time I was newly determined to keep the closeness of friendship between us.
“So…. What have you been up to? Still with that band? Still broke? I must say, you haven’t changed a bit..” ‘None of us have…’ I added in my head.
“No actually, Jimmy and Daryl quit to go to ‘bigger and better things’ and then it suddenly didn’t seem worth it. With just me and Squirrel left making music, it didn’t really feel like the ‘Fantastic Four’ anymore…”
I giggled; “I don’t know, T. Some of the best music acts in the world are duo’s..”
“Yeah I guess. But when you’re just backing keyboards and a not-quite drummer you should probably pack it in. Cut my losses, y’know? I got into publishing instead. Just a small job, nothing big. And life’s been too unkind to me for me to get any kind of promotion on that. Squirrel and I share a flat. It works out. ”
I understood.
“Did you never think about coming back..” I mumbled, knowing I was probably crossing into dangerous waters. Travis was always the one to lose his temper where Ant would talk things out, the sensible one, the peacemaker. But Travis didn’t lose his cool today. He sighed a sad sigh.
“Of course I thought about it, Ren. Weren’t a lot of days that went by where I didn’t miss Charls, or you. But I just couldn’t. Skipping town meant skipping town. I couldn’t hurt Charlie again. I couldn’t see the disappointment in that pretty face.” I imagined that. I imagined him walking through her front door like I always wished Ant would walk through mine, standing there like a soldier come home. But if it was Ant, I would throw my arms around him and cover him with kisses and tears. Charlotte would stand blank, cold, almost unsurprised, unaffected. As much as she’d cared for Travis, she never spoke well of him these days, and she’d turn her lip up, bitter, and swing her blonde head around. And like Travis, she’d cry about it later, when she thought no one else could hear. Like she thinks I can’t hear her at night.
Suddenly Travis took my hand like he’d just remembered something. He lifted it up to study while I looked at him, puzzled. Then he put it down again, something like relief gracing his features. He stared up at the leaves of the trees and I stared with him. “Stay,” the word came out of my mouth before I’d really considered saying it.
“How?” Travis looked close to tears, his voice wavering. “I’m only in town for the rest of today.”
“Unless… Ren...” Those green eyes suddenly lit up.
“You could always…come home with me.”
_______________________________________________________________________________________
for anyone who's interested, Renetta means "reborn.."
next part coming sooon.
I love it 
