I woke up groggily sometime later, almost gagging on the dryness of my throat. I had no idea how long I’d been throwing up for, but judging by the way my head and heart were pounding loudly and simultaneously, I had to assume I really didn’t want to know.
I blinked painfully, trying to block out some of the bright white light that threatened to burn my retinas until I couldn’t see anymore, and I did my best to force my aching body into a sitting position. What the hell was wrong with me? Why did I deal with my issues in such a shitty, over the top fashion? Why couldn’t I just…talk things through like a normal person?
Luckily, at some point in the night, I managed to get my head together for long enough to sort out a pint of now-warm water, which I grabbed and gulped down gratefully, hoping it might cool down my body for long enough for me to figure out exactly what I’d done. Unfortunately, it only resulted in making me feel even sicker, so in the end I abandoned that idea and I grabbed hold of my phone instead. I needed to know the time, to figure out how long I’d been asleep for, but what I found myself faced with was a ridiculous number of missed calls from Danny, bringing it all flooding back to the surface…
The heartache from seeing those pictures.
The stupid message I sent to Joe, unleashing something that had been locked up for years.
My dad…him and one of his other children.
Oh God, what the hell was I supposed to do with any of that?
Almost as if Danny could sense me touching my phone, it started ringing again with his number plastered across the screen. I didn’t want to answer it, I was nowhere near ready to deal with him again, but at the same time I needed to shut that damn noise up before it burst my aching skull in two. Of course, I could have achieved that by simply cutting him off, but my foggy brain wasn’t thinking straight enough to be able to work that out.
“Hello?” I croaked into the phone, slamming my head back down into my hot, sweaty pillow. I shut my eyes, trying to block the rest of the world out, but unfortunately all that left me with was his voice. At any other time in my life, that would have been a very welcome thing, but right now it grated on every single one of my organs, creating an itch I really couldn’t scratch.
“Oh my God, Lottie…thank goodness you answered. Are you okay?” he gushed in a thick-sounding voice. I’d only heard that tone before when he hadn’t slept all night—and considering all the calls I’d had, it felt like maybe that could be the case.
“Erm, yeah,” I replied, not really knowing what he expected me to say to that one. Of course I wasn’t okay, how the hell could he even ask me that? He’d probably worked himself up into such a frenzy he didn’t even know anymore.
“Look, I just want you to give me the chance to explain,” he pleaded desperately. “I need you to hear me out before you jump to all kinds of crazy conclusions…”
Urgh, I wasn’t anywhere near in the right frame of mind to hear any kind of excuse for being caught with some other woman, especially not over the phone. If he was going to deny it to the death, forcing me to get the truth out of him, then I couldn’t do that now, and if he was going to admit it, to tell me all about his long list of affairs, effectively finishing things with me, then I needed to hear it face-to-face. It might damn near kill me, but I felt like I at least deserved that much.
“I don’t want to talk about it now,” I told him wearily. “I’m not feeling great. When are you coming home?” I asked this as a formality, feeling certain he would already be making his way to me. After all, there was no way we would be able to deal with any of this from opposite ends of the country.
“Oh, erm…about that…” he started, an uncertainty to his voice that sickened me. Was he being serious? Was he actually picking his life in the band over me? Even if he didn’t want to be with me anymore, that was completely disrespectful.
“What?” I shrieked angrily, and much louder than I expected to. My own voice shot painfully into my brain, sending that headache radiating even hotter through me. “What the fuck are you saying?”
“It’s just this tour…the management is really pissed off with me. They’re basically telling me I can’t come home because I’m contracted to do this, and the ticket sales have been amazing…I guess I can’t let anyone down now.”
This wasn’t the first time Danny had been thoughtless, and I was sure it wouldn’t be the last, but that didn’t stop it from cutting deeply into my chest.
“But it’s okay to let me down?” I asked, no longer bothering to keep the hurt from lacing my tone. He needed to see what he was doing to me, how badly I was destroyed. I wanted him to understand there were consequences for his actions, and dire ones this time. But he remained silent, telling me all I needed to know. He wasn’t coming back, no matter what I needed, and that was the end of it. “Fine,” I eventually sighed, resignation consuming me.
“It’s not like that, babe,” he whined. “This is just…it’s my career, you know?”
I couldn’t listen to that anymore, I needed to shut it down quickly, and I had to get myself the space I so desperately needed. “Okay then, you go and focus on your career. Just…don’t bother to speak to me until you’re coming home. I can’t even think about talking to you before then.” I felt a little bad cutting him off so quickly, but I was doing it for me. No one else seemed to consider my needs, so I had to. Before he could even answer me, I cut him off and shut my phone completely, giving me some time to think.
I shifted my body to the end of the bed, where I hung my head in my lap for a few seconds, needing the nausea to stop twirling in my stomach. I felt angry because I could tell that Danny thought I was being unreasonable by needing him to come home, for asking him to put me before his career, but I just assumed he would this time. I knew his job was incredibly important, I was perfectly aware of that, but I considered my job huge too, and I would have taken the time off to explain something like this to him.
We couldn’t all be damn rock stars at the grand old age of twenty six, some of us had our creative dreams stolen from us for whatever reason. Not that I cared about that anymore, I thought that teaching was great career choice for me.
I mean, given the choice, I would have become a photographer—that was what I always wanted to do—but when the foundation of my life was ripped out from beneath me, just before I started university, I lost my passion for it. The colour from my life simply disappeared, and all I was left with was a monochrome existence—how could I be creative in that?
So I changed my major from Photography to English Literature. I felt it would lend itself to a lot of reading, which meant I could lose myself in a whole range of other worlds. A distraction from reality was exactly what I needed.
As it turned out, I actually loved it. I relished finding meaning in text, looking at structure, grammar, symbolism…it brought out a side of me I didn’t know I had. I rolled with that, glad to have something going well in my life, and it led me to the place I was today. At first, as soon as I left university, I got a job in a library for three days a week, allowing myself to lose myself in even more books. I was happy there, satisfied, but it wasn’t enough, so when the teaching opportunity swung my way, I grabbed onto it with both hands. It came in the form of a random flyer, and it actually turned my life around. The community college gave me a chance to teach adult students all that I’d learned in my course, and that sparked a new version of me. A much happier, more fulfilled version.
Passing on my wisdom and knowledge to people who really wanted to learn, who were thirsty for information, was incredibly rewarding. It gave me a purpose, a reason, and I honestly didn’t believe that made me any less important in the world. My students loved me, and I enjoyed their company, plus I felt like I was helping to further other people’s lives…and who couldn’t be happy with that?
I eventually slid off the end of the bed and took myself into the bathroom to have a shower. I needed to get ready now, there was no lazing around for me and simply recovering from my hangover. I had work today, and if Danny wasn’t about to take time off to sort this shit mess out, then neither was I.
I would just have to get through it, one way or another…