Bad Days (Four Days Book 3) Page 3

  “Alex…”

  “I’m serious, Jason. Don’t get close to me or I might not get out alive this time.”

  —

  ALEX

  I was too harsh. After five years of distance between us the only thing I am able to do is attack him. It’s the only way I’ve got to keep him away from me.

  Just the vision of him is enough to destroy me, and I’m not talking about a slow destruction that comes in degrees—one that slowly bends you until you’re no longer able to stand, but rather something that hits you full-on, knocking the wind out of you in a few seconds without giving you time to think of how to avoid the blow.

  “I’d never hurt you on purpose, you know. Not you.”

  His voice is as dark as his face is. We both knew that sooner or later that we would have to face this moment, it’s more that I wasn’t ready for it just yet, and I’m sure he wasn’t either.

  We were little more than kids, I was eighteen and he was just two years older than me. We were friends, the best of friends. He had just lost his mother and spent most of his time at home with my family. His father was just gutted after the loss and wasn’t able to even get out of bed. I tried to be close to him, to be there for him and to show him my affection, to console him and help him not to feel so alone, but it was really difficult.

  Jason was feeling lost, he was upset and full of anger. He was angry with everyone. He’d get into arguments with anyone just to vent the emptiness he had inside. He wouldn’t talk to anyone, he refused the help of his friends, even his closest friends. He couldn’t deal with his emotions or face his pain.

  He was alone and against the world that had really dealt him such a cruel blow.

  That afternoon we were in my room and I was trying to help him study for his finals. I had convinced him to finally try and pass the last year but he wasn’t able to concentrate.

  I knew something was about to happen.

  Sitting on my bed Indian style, with a book on my lap and a pencil between my lips, I was trying to control a sense of oppression that was spreading in my chest.

  He was sitting on the floor, with his back resting against the bed, staring off at the emptiness in front of him.

  Out of the blue, he jumped to his feet and ran his hand through his hair. I was shaking and I could feel my throat closing around my vocal chords which had suddenly gone dry and it was making my breathing difficult. My heartbeat sped up and it felt like I was sweating even if no perspiration was dripping down my forehead.

  Jason was my best friend. He was cute, more cute than any other guy in the neighborhood or at school. He looked a lot like his mother. He had the same facial features and same color hair, but his eyes were identical to his father’s: a penetrating blue. When he looked at me for more than a few seconds, prolonging that contact made me tremble with emotion, I felt lost. I felt like I was drowning in everything that he had inside, like I was being swallowed into his soul.

  He sat next to me and took the book from my hands and the pencil from my lips. And he caressed my cheek.

  Something had changed between us and would never again be what it was.

  He moved in towards my lips and I froze for a moment before letting myself meet his kiss.

  He ran his hand through my hair as he timidly slipped his tongue into my mouth. At first I felt clumsy, not knowing how to move or what to do, where to put my head or my hands; but above everything else he was sweet, and I was in heaven and scared at the same time, because he was Jason, my confidant, my right-hand man and I was the same for him.

  Then I had a panic attack. I had blurry vision and a wild heartbeat, but not from the emotion.

  All I remember is the darkness and the fear, and all this happened before I woke up in the hospital, with a bip sound in my ears and the cry of my desperate mother ringing through the room.

  That’s how we discovered my illness.

  You see, there’s something wrong with my heart. The medical diagnosis is ‘Long Q-T syndrome’. It can be triggered by anything that provokes a strong emotion, for instance a terrible fright, an extended physical effort, the sound of the alarm, a ring tone that is too loud: in fact just about anything that provokes a sudden change could kill me. My heartbeat could accelerate dangerously, leading to cardiac conduction defect, which in turn can go on to cause shock, fainting, convulsions, or my heart could just stop beating with no forewarning, ending in a stroke, just like it did that time, when it came on like a lightning strike.

  I’ll be on prescription drugs for life, and these have a boat-load of side effects. There are no cures for my condition.

  I am thin enough to make you think I’m anorexic, although I’m not. I adore food but I don’t eat a lot, because of the nausea the medication causes. I’m tired, always out of breath, and I have a natural skin tone that makes me look as if I’m ill. No one would think otherwise.

  Anything could kill me at any moment.

  What’s more, discovering such a terrible thing, right after a fantastic guy like Jason kisses you isn’t the greatest way to find out. I never said anything about the kiss to my parents. I didn’t tell them what I was doing to cause it to happen. I was stressed out about exams, graduation, I had just been out running with Jason, that was my official version of how things went down. This was because I didn’t want anyone to discover the truth and somehow try to blame him. As I see it, I would have discovered it sooner or later and maybe on another occasion it might have been fatal. It’s just that…I wouldn’t have wanted it to happen the way it did.

  It was difficult for me to accept, but it was even harder for the people around me. Especially for Jason. He had just lost his mother and was about to lose me, his best friend. And he felt responsible for what happened, as if he had caused me to have a stroke.

  The doctors explained to me that it could happen in any moment and that this type of illness rarely shows symptoms until it’s fully and quite suddenly exploding, just like it happened with me. I seriously risked my life there and if I hadn’t been whisked off to the hospital, and if Jason hadn’t been with me that afternoon, I would not have survived.

  And he was already hurt, so weak from his own pain, so lost. Seeing me in that state just pushed him into the oblivion of misery. And I should have been there to help him. I knew he wasn’t able to make it on his own, that it was all too much and that he couldn’t have born the burden of it.

  So, I decided to distance myself from him. To deny myself his constant presence, his friendship and also maybe something more.

  And now he’s back in my life, and with one glance, he’s managed to cancel the last five years. And I feel like I’m in danger, because I’m not a little girl anymore, I’m a woman with strong feelings and desires that I can’t suppress, especially when I experience the heat of his reawakening of my senses and have the desire to feel those emotions that all women my age have daily.

  I’d like to be kissed and caressed, to let myself surrender to my instincts and fall into his arms without fearing for my life.

  Or his.

  4

  JASON

  I can’t look at her without feeling my chest constrict. I can’t think of her without feeling guilty about what happened.

  I am once again so close that I’m messing with her emotional balance and sense of control. So much so that I’m putting her life in danger.

  We were just kids, it’s true, but even then I was nurturing something for her that went beyond friendship, more than affection.

  Something beyond that.

  I have hated myself for what I’ve done. A kiss, a simple stupid kiss could take her life away and I, idiot that I am, was about to do some irreparable damage.

  In a few seconds her whole world changed and with it, mine too. A few seconds that should never have happened, that for me, meant everything.

  I was just starting to taste her lips for the first time when she broke away from me and brought her hands to her heart, a moment before collapsing in my a
rms. I laid her down, trying to keep her awake, but unsuccessfully.

  I didn’t know what to do, we were alone in the house and so I called an ambulance. They stayed on the line with me the whole time I was waiting, telling me what to do, how to try and stimulate her and I went into a total panic.

  She seemed like she was dead.

  I had lost another person.

  I held her in my arms, I caressed her hair while my tears fell relentlessly, wetting her pale, stony face.

  Then the paramedics showed up and immediately understood the situation. They put her in the ambulance as they tried to revive her.

  I couldn’t hear anything but their voices in the distance and the sound of the defibrillator. I was sitting in a corner of the ambulance with my head in my hands, as I rocked myself back and forth, crying, completely taken over by my grief.

  I thought I had lost her forever.

  In the hospital they asked me a thousand questions that I wasn’t able to answer. I was confused, scared and in shock. I was just able to provide her parents’ phone number and they arrived a few minutes after the call. They found me sitting on the floor in the waiting room.

  I was still rocking back and forth.

  Her father made me stand up. He hugged me tightly and thanked me for saving his daughter, but I knew that he couldn’t have known she was in that condition because of what I had done.

  When they allowed her parents to go into intensive therapy I wasn’t able to stay there. I couldn’t take the sight of another person I loved in a cold sterile bed with that damned bip going off in my ears, that was eating away at my heart.

  I couldn’t face it all again.

  Selfish, angry, desperate.

  I went to the first pub I found on my way out. I drank until I threw up everything inside me, including my soul, in the bathroom of that shithole of a dive.

  I was not steady on my feet. I hit up against something thick and massive, which turned out to be some guy, and after telling him to go fuck himself I went back to the bar for another round, but it didn’t go down well with him. He grabbed me by the shirt, he spun me around, and lifted me off the ground, yelling something in my face that I was not able to hear as I was completely drunk. I just remember repeating my advice through clenched teeth, telling him that he should go fuck himself, before his fist hit my nose.

  I collapsed on the bar counter and grabbed my neighbor’s bottle of beer, turned on a dime and wacked him over the head with it. I don’t remember much after that except for the fact that I woke up in a prison cell, even more pissed off than before.

  Aaron got me out of trouble that night, he cleaned me up and gave me a place to stay. He gave me a family, together with Rain. We all helped each other and took care of one another.

  They are the only family I have.

  I broke that idiot’s head, but luckily someone in the pub saw all of what happened prior to that ugly scene. There was a hearing to determine who was at fault. I was able to avoid jail time but was sentenced to six months of community service. Aaron took care of the expenses. I never could have asked my father to do it. I’ll owe Aaron for as long as I live.

  Three days later, sober and partially back to being myself, I went to the hospital.

  I had to see her, to know how she was doing and to try and understand what had happened.

  I went into her room and froze in the doorway: I wasn’t able to take another step. I was completely paralyzed. Alex was covered in needles, tubes, electrodes…I felt the earth open up under my feet and swallow me up.

  It was a situation that I knew very well. One which I had lived through the last few years at my house and one I wasn’t willing to go through again.

  She turned to me with her pale, drawn face and looked at me a few seconds and I was able to read in her expression what my eyes were telling her.

  “Go away Jason. You can’t stay here. I can’t have you next to me. You’re dangerous…for me. We can’t…” she sighed, barely holding back the tears. “We can’t be anything. There can be no me and you. Ever again.”

  My heart shattered in a million pieces that day.

  It wasn’t just her words that did it, but her eyes, the way they communicated that there would never be an us.

  She didn’t need me, a hurt boyfriend that wasn’t able to be by her side. She knew better than I did that I wouldn’t have been able to bear it.

  I turned and left her room.

  I didn’t go back. I didn’t call. I didn’t go to visit her at her house.

  I turned away and left her life.

  From that point onwards everything went to hell.

  My father was always absent and depressed, inconsolable, quiet and solitary. Angry, like me, angry with everything. We lived with anger and regret and we nurtured the darkest thoughts that can only come from damned souls.

  We’re just the same he and I.

  We love and provoke death.

  We are destined to remain alone.

  I was resigned never to let myself be touched by anyone and to not get caught up in any relationships.

  To not love.

  Ever.

  Then I saw her again and that melancholy veil she wears in her eyes was enough to bring me back to the boy I was, the boy who was about to kill her. Back to the insecure, lonely kid that was trying to find consolation in his best friend, my saving anchor. Someone to pull him out of his shitty life. But instead of pulling me out, I dragged her down, risking everything.

  It can’t happen again.

  —

  ALEX

  “So, will you come?”

  Rain was calling me to invite me to the pub tonight. The guys are going to play live as they apparently do a few times a week.

  “I don’t know…”

  “Please…I hate to always see you alone at home.”

  Rain always knows how to convince me.

  “Who’s going to be working at the pub if you’re all busy?”

  “There are some guys that give us a hand and we’ve called them all in tonight. There are three of them and then we’ve also got Erin, who keeps everyone in line with just a glance.”

  “I don’t know, I’m not ready to see him,” I confess.

  “Haven’t you already run into each other?”

  “Yes, well…”

  “So you’re going to try and avoid him forever then?”

  “No, of course not. But the last time was so strange and embarrassing and…painful. I’m not sure I can do it.”

  “If you really don’t feel like seeing him, it’s no big deal, Alex, I don’t want you to get upset about it, that’s the last thing you need.”

  No, it’s not what I need and it’s not necessary for me to see him to think of him. I haven’t stopped thinking about him since I’ve come back.

  I thought I was stronger than that. I figured that the distance between us would have helped me to forget that us that never really was, that has remained suspended in the moment, just waiting to mix with faded memories that with the passage of time could hurt a bit less.

  And yet, that’s not how it went, despite my efforts.

  It never stopped hurting me, it was like one of those deep, thick scars that reopen if you try breathing too deeply, that bleed at night, as you turn in your cold, empty bed that you would have liked to have shared with the person you think of every damned instant of your days.

  I hang up, saying goodbye, conscious of the fact that I will not be able to stay away from him.

  And that I can’t think about anything else but him.

  And that I’m still, painfully, in love with him.

  And only him.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hey! You came!” replies Rain.

  “My father brought me.”

  “I’m glad you’re here. The guys will be too.”

  “Hmm. You think so?”

  “Surely at least one of them in particular.”

  I smile to myself. Rain is so sincere that a
t times she just floors me.

  She doesn’t have any filters, and I love her for that, because she’s so real.

  “And that someone has already noticed you,” she adds after a few seconds and I don’t know if I have enough courage to lift my glance and look at him.

  “Hi.”

  His voice is like a caress on my face.

  “Hello.” I smile, because despite the agitation I feel, I can’t pretend not to be happy to see him.

  “I’m going to talk with Liam.” So saying, Rain leaves us alone and suddenly I’m not sure it’s a good idea to be so close.

  “How…are you?”

  There it is, the same old question.

  “Fine,” I force myself to say. “Don’t think I’ll die today,” I conclude, feeling like a jackass immediately for my choice of words.

  “Don’t do it,” he responds in a serious voice. “Don’t joke around about it. Don’t joke around with your life.”

  Sighing in frustration, I reply, “I’m not the one who’s playing around with my life, Jason. It seems like someone else is and I hope he’s having fun with it, because it’s not fun for me at all.”

  “Alex…tell me what I can do. Anything, and I’ll do it.”

  If he had asked me five years ago, that afternoon in the hospital after I had fainted and didn’t find him at my side when I woke up, I would have asked him to stay with me, to hold me in his arms and never leave me. But he wasn’t there and I woke up afraid with the awareness that I had lost everything. That I had lost him, my best friend and my only love.

  When he showed up in the hospital three days later, with that lost, desperate look in his eyes, I understood he didn’t have the courage to come close to me and that his suffering was there, oppressing his heart, and the only thing I was able to do was to send him away to allow him to have a full happy life. And to be able to look in the mirror, knowing that with my perilous health condition, I hadn’t got the right to tie someone to me.

  I did it in order to not destroy his life and to allow me to have a life of my own.

  If he had asked me then, before I read in his eyes the terror of seeing me dying in his arms, I would have found a million things to say; but now, after five years between us, of silence, of nothing, I don’t even know who it is I’m talking to. Is it Jason, the boy I used to know? Funny, sweet and ridiculously sexy? Or is it this shell of a man on the edge of the precipice I have in front of me now?