I kept looking back to the start of it all. Not that night, but the start of Alex. My life was flashing before my eyes in a twisted, technicoloured laser show. Every flash of green and blue dragged up a new memory of the two of us together. The laughter, the familiarity, the tears, the things we’d both witnessed inside our family homes… I was being tormented. I just couldn’t figure out where it had all gone so wrong. When had I become someone for him to want to hurt rather than love?

Sitting there in Club Nostalgia, staring at the table in front of me like it held all the answers to questions I hadn’t even asked out loud, I felt like a fraud. A fraud of what, exactly, I wasn’t sure. Life? Love? Being an adult? My world felt like it had been built on foundations made of cotton wool since Lizzy’s death. It was amazing how she was always the first person I wished to hold tightly whenever I was this uncertain of everything around me. I needed her guidance. I needed her voice. I needed her to show me the sides of the puzzle I was too blind to see.

I needed her to tell me what Alex was doing. I needed her to reassure me he was a good guy. This wasn’t who he was. This wasn’t him.

My breath got caught on a sharp, broken-glass-like pain in my throat. I wanted to reach into my chest and pull shards of my heart out to show the world – to shout and say, ‘Look! Look! Can you see what he’s doing to me? This is shattering inside.’ Who knew I could be so dramatic when I wanted to be?

“Natalie?”

Looking up, I saw Suzie sat in the seats opposite me with Paul’s arm wrapped around her shoulder as he spoke to his friend beside him. Their display of love-without-effort shouldn’t have made my stomach twist as much as it did.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly.

I stared at her for too long. I was empty as I tried to pick out an emotion to cling to deep down inside, and I knew she saw it, too. “Yeah. I’m just tired of people asking me that question.”

“Sorry,” she mouthed. Paul’s arm tightened around her, and I had to look away. Reaching for my drink, I swallowed it all down in one and felt the rush of the alcohol go straight to my head. “Don’t be sorry, Suze.” I gasped as I slammed the glass back down on the table. “Please don’t be sorry. I love that you care. I’m being a bitch. It’s just one of those things.”

“No, it’s not. It’s not just one of those things. I don’t know what he’s doing. I had no idea he was such an arsehole.”

“Wait. Who’s an arsehole?” Paul chipped in while I tried not to let my eyes scrunch together as though I'd just been slapped. It was one thing for me to insult Alex in the quiet of my own thoughts. It was another thing to hear someone else do it out loud. It was hard to fight my instincts and not defend him.

“I wasn’t talking about you. Take your prying eyes and ears elsewhere.” Suzie chuckled before she leaned up to plant a soft kiss on his cheek.

Paul’s eyes, however, turned to me, and for the first time since I’d met him, there was a seriousness there that looked a little out of place on his naturally bright face. “Were you talking about Alex?”

“No.”

“Yes,” Suzie countered, both of us speaking at the exact same time.

“Yes,” I corrected myself.

Paul turned further into our conversation, huddling into Suzie as he dropped his eyes to the table that sat between us. With his free hand, he began to trace awkward patterns on the surface, and there was something completely fascinating about his languid movements.

“Can I say something?” he asked quietly.

I frowned. “What is it, Paul?”

“Give Alex a break, okay? He's not got as many choices as you think he has.”

That’s when I knew Paul knew something he wasn’t telling any of us – not even his girlfriend. My heart began to gallop in my chest at the realisation that he could have answers, and I found myself needing more and more, but I tried to play it cool. I had to.

“Give him a break?” Suzie snapped back. “Come on, Paul. Even you can’t be Team Alex.”

“Team Alex?” His eyes shot back up to his girl, and his brows rose high. “There’re teams now?”

“There better not be,” I mumbled as I turned my attention to Suzie. “Don’t do that. Don’t put us both up against one another.”

“That’s not what I was doing,” Suzie said through a heavy sigh. “I just don’t understand what Alex is doing. It's obvious he fucking loves you.”

“No, he doesn’t,” I told her with a shake of my head.

“Don’t be blind, Nat.” Suzie looked as hurt as I felt before she turned to Paul and waited for him to put me out of my misery. “Tell her, babe. Tell her how he feels.”

“It’s not my place.”

“Tell her why he’s behaving like this.”

“He’s only doing what he thinks he has to do, baby,” he eventually said, and there was no hiding the tension in his voice.

“What do you know, Paul?” I dared myself to ask him.

Paul didn’t look at me when I spoke, instead keeping his eyes on his woman’s as if to gain some control from her. They were staring at one another as though they were communicating in silence. It reminded me of the early days of me and Alex, when the subtle glances and gestures said more than either one of us ever could.

“Help her,” Suzie eventually mouthed. “If you know something, help her understand that it’s not her. There’s nothing wrong with her.”

“Paul…” I wasn’t too proud to beg.

Rubbing his lips together, he paused for a moment before the scales eventually tipped in my favour, and when he turned to me, I held my breath and waited for the truth to hurt.

It definitely hurt.

I was up and on my feet within seconds. All the self-pity and all the doubts drifted away the moment Paul had spoken. This was no longer about me. It wasn’t about me at all – just him. If Alex was going to determine I had nothing to do with him ever again, he was going to get one final goodbye from me. He was going to get what he so obviously wanted, just not as quietly as he’d probably hoped.

In my hurry to push through the group of people that had surrounded our table, I heard Suzie, Danni, Paul and even Sammy call out my name. I could only assume the look on my face was enough to warn them all to stay the hell away while I did what I had to do.

It didn’t take me long to find him. My dress swung and fanned around my knees when I eventually brought my body to a halt. I was behind him and had yet to tap him on his shoulder when he began to turn around. I waited for his eyes to make me weak. I waited for the twitch of his jaw to turn my legs to jelly. I waited for the butterflies to take flight as they celebrated being home, because near him always felt exactly like that, but as his surprise shone down on me, none of the usual things came with it.

There was just anger mixed with disbelief, tainted with disappointment and topped off with even more fucking pain. Staring up at him hurt. Physically hurt. Everything I wanted was just an inch away, yet everything I was mad at was suddenly there, too.

“You should have told me,” I eventually spat out. My hands fell by my thighs and twitched until they’d curled into two balls of tension that I knew I had to keep a grip on. “You should have told me what was happening instead of making me feel so–”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t you do that to me,” I snapped back. My hand flew up in the air and without any control whatsoever, I was pointing a finger straight in his face. “After everything, don’t you stand there and look at me like I’m a fucking stranger, Alex. I’m not. I'm your friend. If nothing else, I was your friend goddam–”

Alex reached out to grab my wrist quickly, pushing it down until he was holding it tightly between the two of us. “You’re making a scene,” he pushed out through gritted teeth.

“Making a scene?” I scoffed. “I’m sorry. Should I book an appointment? A time that’s more convenient for you, perhaps? Maybe then you’ll have the decency to sit down and tell me why you're pretending to enjoy being with Bronwyn for my benefit, while also filling me in on exactly what you have planned for next year.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, cut the crap, Alex. Don’t pretend like Chamberlin has fucked all sense out of you.”

He, at least, had the decency to look like I’d just slapped him with my accusation of sleeping with Bronwyn, but he didn’t deny anything. Instead, his jaw set tight in that usual way of his, and his grip on me became more urgent, more un-Alex like. I would have cowered and asked him to let me go any other time, but I was angry, and I didn’t give a shit. I was hurting. Maybe physical pain would provide a nicer distraction than the stuff going on inside.

“You have no room to talk to me about that shit. Not when you're cosying up to your new beau.”

“Who? My what?” I asked, completely bemused.

“You know who. Mr. All-Hands, No-Rhythm.”

“Sammy’s brother?”

“Don’t pretend like he’s fucked all sense out of you,” Alex hit back quietly.

“Oh, for God's sake.” I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “He's a friend. That's all. Unlike you, he’s someone who wants to make me smile instead of cry, but nice try with the deflecting. We both know exactly why I'm pissed at you and what it is I am talking about.”

“You don’t know anything, Natalie. Trust me.”

“Don’t I?”

“No. You don’t.”

“So you’ve not quit school then? You’ve not dropped out of your final year, and you’ve not decided to move miles away from me without so much as a ‘See ya later, Nat. Remember all that time we spent together? Well, it was real nice knowing you, and perhaps using you, but now I have to leave. Remember me fondly when you’re old and grey.’”

“What the hell has gotten into you?” he hissed as he leaned even closer – so close that there was barely an inch between our lips now, and as his breath washed over me, I felt the ache in my stomach that longed to taste him just one last time. I just didn’t have the guts to do anything about it before he spoke again. “And who the fuck told you I was leaving?”

“Paul,” I confessed a little too quickly. I was running out of strength in all corners of my mind. “It was Paul.”

“The fucking idiot.”

“It doesn’t matter who told me, though, does it? It doesn’t make it any less true if that’s what you’re really doing.”

“You need to go.”

“No. I need the truth. Are you leaving?”

“Yes.”

“Just like that?”

“It’s not that simple, Nat.”

My short huff of laughter was more to release the tension in my chest than anything else. I didn’t find anything about that night funny. “Nothing is ever simple with you, Alex. If I hear that line one more time, I swear… You talk in riddles. You make me believe you care for me and then you leave me. You don’t just leave me like normal people do, either. No. You do it coldly. You leave me in ice, just not quite enough ice to numb me completely. There’s still that little bit of warmth flaming away inside for you because you know that I know you. You know I know this is all bullshit. Don’t you see how cruel that is?”

“I've tried to be honest. I never meant to hurt you.”

“Then stop doing it!” I cried as my brows rose high. Leaning forward, I grabbed his hand and tried to pull it away from my wrist, but he wasn’t having any of it. “Stop pushing me away. Tell me why you're leaving. Is it your parents? Your father? Let me help you.”

“Help me? You can no more help me than I can help you. It’s you that doesn’t see things clearly. Remember? You have eyes, but you do not see,” he whispered, repeating the words of my sister. “It’s all right there in front of you to figure out, but you just can’t, can you?”

“Obviously not. So tell me. Put me out of my misery.”

“Fine,” he growled through his exhale. Releasing me all at once, he stood taller and pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Alex’s nostrils flared as he studied me and it was then that the old me returned – the one who sagged under his gaze and turned to nothing. “The truth is that we can’t be together, no matter how much you want it or I want it. It's never going to happen. It’s not right. You’re too…” He paused, swallowing down whatever was hurting in his throat, only it looked like it caused him more pain than it should have done when his face scrunched up tight. “Intense. You’re too intense for me, Nat. You love me too much. I've seen what that does to women. I can’t have that in my life right now. I can’t have that around my neck. The weight of it, the pressure to get things right, the… the responsibility of not dropping you...”

“Responsibility? Alex, I’m not a child. I can take care of myself. I never asked you to be there for me. I don't know who you are when you're like this.”

“Maybe you never have known me.”

“You're so full of shit. I knew you. I know you still, and that's what terrifies you, isn't it? That's what makes you scared. I can see straight past all the lies you’ve created to protect yourself. I can see beyond that mask you’re wearing.”

“I'm not scared, Natalie. I just don’t have room for you in my life anymore.”

“Since when?”

Alex’s jaw began to flex furiously, and he had to look away from me again as his face began to look as though it was fighting off more pain. That’s when I knew. That’s when I knew he doubted what he was saying, and that’s when I knew that no matter what he thought of me, I had to tell him how I felt about him, one way or another, just one last time. I had to say it so there was no confusion. He’d saved me when I was drowning in the darkness. He’d given me hope in a world that was starved of it. He’d made me me again. I couldn’t hate him no matter how hard I tried. I was seeing everything more clearly than I’d seen it in a long time.

“Alex, look at me.”

He didn’t. He couldn’t. My hands reached up to grip the tops of his arms, and I had to stand on tiptoes to try to catch his attention. It took longer than it should have, but when his sad eyes eventually fell to mine again, I knew this was our final time together.

“If you don’t have room for me in your life anymore, that’s fine. I can’t make you want me the way I want you. I know your life is complicated. I know you have things, people more important than me. I just need you to know that I can wait if I know that’s what you want. I could wait. I will wait for you to clear your head if that’s what you need. All I need is for you to be honest with me – to say once and for all whether there’s something there inside. No matter what happens, though, you need to know I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me. I’ll never forget that night we spent together, either.”

“Nat, don’t…”

“No, don't you. Don't. Please don’t do this for me, for my benefit.”

“I’m not,” he whispered. “I’m doing it for us. For our benefit. I’m doing this to keep you safe.”

I didn’t have time to respond to him. The sound of Bronwyn screeching my name had me turning to the side and my feet falling flat to the ground in an instant. I knew that look she was wearing. I’d seen it on a thousand high school drama queens before now. I’d just never seen it directed my way.

Stepping forward, Bronwyn held two glasses in her hand, and I tried really hard not to focus on the fact that one of those was for Alex. It was such a simple thing – a girl buying a drink for a boy – but in my mind, he was my boy and I’d never done that for him before now. I had to look away from her, and Alex soon seemed more appealing… until I saw that the coldness had returned to his face.

I’d lost him.

It was all over.

Natexus was done.

Taking two steady steps backwards, I let my hands fall away from his arms and pulled in a breath before I turned to face Bronwyn again. Then all I could do was wait.

“You don’t get it, do you?” she eventually shrieked, tilting her head to one side as she narrowed her poisonous, but oh so gorgeous, eyes on me.

“What don’t I get, Bronwyn?” I asked, completely resigned to the abuse that was about to come flying my way.

“He’s with me now.”

“Okay.”

“He’s mine.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“You need to crawl back into your little hole. You know? The one where you throw pity parties for yourself in your fleecy jammies and overdose on cake to make your arse look even bigger than it already is.”

“Bronwyn…” Alex mumbled in quiet warning beside me, but all I could do was smirk as I stared back at her. I didn’t know what I found amusing. Nothing about being called a fat arse was funny, or at least not usually, but I guess there’s something to be said for laughing at funerals, and it definitely felt like I was about to bury my first love.

Folding my arms across my chest, I shook my head at her and made no attempt whatsoever to hold back my smile. “You jealous, Bron?”

“Of you? Please.”

“I mean…” I shrugged, faking breeziness. “It kinda looks like you think I’m some kind of threat to your budding romance here.”

“You’re not a threat, honey. You just tend to taint the air with the smell of cheap ‘n’ nasty.”

I snorted as I looked all around me. “Well, when in Rome.”

“Huh?”

My eyes flickered down to her extremely short skirt before they crawled back up to the low cut top that left little to the imagination. Bronwyn was more desperate than anyone to bag Alex, and if she knew anything about him, she’d know that all she had to do was find his soul and tickle it with a friendly smile. But someone like her never could and never would figure that out. They saw a handsome boy and they went straight for the obvious. They wanted to tickle his balls instead.

“Forget it. You’re too full of ego to hear anything you don’t want to.”

Bronwyn stepped even closer, but not before she placed both her drinks onto the nearest surface. I should have at least been worried about her clearing her hands. I should have known she was going to try and get aggressive. The shove to both my shoulders had me stumbling, but only briefly, and somewhere in the hysteria of the moment, I heard Alex growling her name again. Only I couldn’t see him anymore. I was too focused on this girl in front of me – the one who had my face as a target in her mind.

“He doesn’t want you, you know?” she squeaked. “He’s with me now.”

“Brilliant.”  

“Nobody ever understood why he spent so much time with you. He’s always deserved better.”

“Is that so?”

“That is so, so.”

A weird feeling of strength washed over me when I closed my eyes and saw Lizzy standing there. She was with me, even though she wasn’t, and that was all I needed. Opening my eyes once more, I glanced at Alex only to see him staring down at the floor. When I looked back at Bronwyn, I began to laugh, albeit weakly. “You think we’re different, you and I? Tell me what’s so different, Bronwyn. You have a heart. I have a heart. You bleed the same way I do. You cry tears, too, I’ll bet. Don’t think that just because the wrapping paper God dressed you up in is shinier than mine, that it makes you better than me. ‘Cause it doesn’t.”

“I don’t even understand what you just said.”

“Surprising,” I muttered.

“But I do know one thing.”

“And I’m sure that makes your parents feel like they failed just a little bit less.”

“I am nothing like you. I could never allow myself to be so… so…”

“So?” I asked, raising a brow.

“So fucking… desperate.”

“Desperate?”

“You make me cringe, Natalie.”

“Desperate?” I repeated a little louder.

“Nat,” Alex whispered beside me, but all my attention was on her as I moved closer towards poison. Bronwyn took a small step backwards – one I clearly wasn’t meant to see as her attention flickered to Alex before returning to me.

“You think I’m desperate because I dare to show my feelings? You think I’m desperate because I don’t play games? Because I’m not afraid to tell Alex how important he is to me?”

“Natalie!”

“Shut the fuck up, Alex!” I snapped, still staring into Bronwyn’s eyes. My body trembled with an anger I’d been trying to hide for far too long – an anger at the entire world. “Let me tell you a few things I learned a long time ago. I learned not to care if I fit in. I learned not to care how I was perceived by the narrow-minded people of the world – the ones who like to cast judgements on others, simply because they don’t have the guts to enjoy the glory of being their true selves. I learned that if I love someone, it’s okay for me to tell them. I should tell them. I should tell them every damn day how I feel in case there is no tomorrow.

“I learned too much is never, ever enough for the right person, because it’s better to live and get hurt than to just exist and feel nothing at all. I’m still learning that. I learned that I’m probably at my strongest when I’m at my absolute weakest, like right now, and that’s a-o-fucking-kay. I learned what true desperation is the hard way, and trust me, it has nothing to do with pining over a boy or hoping that he will choose me. It isn’t even close. Being unafraid of rejection, begging someone to love you like you love them isn’t desperate, you stupid girl. It’s hopeful. It’s passionate. You know what? It’s fucking brave!”

I stopped to take a breath, straightening myself up while also trying to calm the trembling of my limbs.

“You want to know what real desperation is? It’s watching a good soul die too soon and clinging onto its fingertips for as long as you possibly can, just so you can still feel its warmth on your hands. Desperation is watching the rise and fall of their chest through the sea of tears in your eyes and begging – and I mean really, truly begging – the afterlife to take you instead.” I somehow managed to look at Alex again, and it was as if certain pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place for me. The clouds were starting to part, and with every word I dumped to the floor, a weight got taken from my shoulders. “Desperation is seeing a good person get beaten down by life and not knowing a way to save them because they don’t want to save themselves. It’s a feeling of helplessness, or not being of any use, of not knowing what the fuck to do.”

He didn’t look at me, but I somehow felt his response. The small shuffle of his feet and the usual tensing of his jaw as he stared at the floor said it all. I should have chosen that moment to leave, but I didn’t. Instead, I turned back to Bronwyn and took my final step closer. I needed her to see the certainty in my eyes. I needed her to know there were bigger things in life to worry about than her.

“Don’t you dare talk to me about desperation. You throw that emotion around like a harmless insult, but you have no idea how deep it cuts. You use it against women you see as weaker, just to make yourself feel stronger, to be part of a crowd, a gang of girls who wouldn’t know the meaning of true love, not even if it waved its palm in their faces and hit them up the side of the head with a definition. But, you see, where you go wrong is that you actually believe I give a shit. When you try to insult me, it doesn’t work. It will never work because your opinion of me is irrelevant. You are irrelevant. Your words bear no weight in my mind because it will never change the cold, hard facts. And the truth is that, yes, I love Alex. So what? There’s a history between us that only we understand. He saved me when it felt like no one else could, but if he doesn’t love me in return, that’s his prerogative. It doesn’t dilute my feelings for him or make them any less real. I may be young, and in some people’s eyes I may be foolish, but I’m suddenly past caring what is right and what is wrong. Playing safe hasn’t got me anywhere in my life yet, and from the looks of things, it sure as hell isn’t going to get me anywhere in the future. So screw you, Bronwyn. Screw your judgement. Screw your lack of fucking self-respect, and screw you for even attempting to make me feel wrong about something that I know to be right, deep down in my heart.”

Alex’s intake of breath was the only thing that seemed to cut through the tension, besides the music in the club, and as I remained standing there, looking down on someone who probably didn’t deserve my aggression, I knew that it was time to leave.

I’d made my feelings clear and so had he.

All our cards were laid out on the table.

The only thing to do now was walk away and move on.

So that’s exactly what I did. The walking away was easy. The moving on, however… that was always going to be hard. Not just that night, but forever.