Six Letters
Fate.
Fated to be here.
Late.
Too late to change that now.
Hate.
What did he hate? Pretty much everything on this bloody island.
Love.
Did Claire fit on his hand?
Hmm. C-L-A-I-R-E. Nope, six letters. Two bloody letters too long.
Addiction. Stop it. Just stop it. You're going to scare her, obsessing like this.
There. Two hands. Four letters on one, two on the other. Claire. CLAIRE.
Claire. Sweet-voiced, mild-tempered, friendly Australian. Gentle smile. Nice laugh. Yeah, he liked her laugh. He liked it a lot.
He'd like it even more now that he got to hear it everyday. Now that she was here. In the caves. With him. And her peanut butter. And him.
Stop it.
Really, why should he be so attracted to her? It wasn't as if he was unused to being around attractive women before. But, but she was Claire.
His Claire.
His Claire who looked so cute in that little bucket hat she loved to wear.
His Claire who was so beautiful and sweet, and the tiny baby she carried within her.
His Claire who thought everyone was afraid of her. Afraid of the responsibility she represented.
Responsibility.
Now that was a word he used to hate. Responsibility was not something he needed to worry about. Hell, he didn't need to worry about anything.
Rock stars didn't need responsibility. Rock stars didn't have responsibility. Wasn't that what he'd learned from being in DriveShaft?
He hadn't needed it before. It hadn't mattered. What did he have responsibility to, except remembering the cord shift in the latest song. He didn�t like being tied down with responsibility, and it was the last thing he wanted.
As for women, well, he'd been with women before. It wasn't as if he was inexperienced in that department. One night stands, faceless and nameless girls, girls he wouldn't even have remembered the next day because he'd been too stoned anyway. Girls he really didn't care about, and who didn't care about him.
Ooh, you're in DriveShaft? I thought you looked familiar. I think they're fantastic. Care for a drink?
Care for a fuck?
Sure, it'd felt good at the time. He'd been too busy to want a real relationship. Or at least, that's what he told himself.
But Claire. Claire didn't want him because he was a rock star. Because he was the bassist in DriveShaft. Because he was the nearest available guy.
But because he was himself.
Because he was Charlie.
Before, just being himself wasn't enough. Just being Charlie hadn't been satisfactory.
He'd always needed something to feel complete. First it was religion. He had depended on it for so long, until conviction seemed to fade away and become so unreachable, and, amidst the frantic shrieks of girls crowding around the stage as he screamed into a microphone, insignificant. Religion had slowly dissolved, and in its place he turned to music. Music, DriveShaft, was his life. But eventually, he seemed to be the only one who cared about it anymore. It was his life, but to the others, it was something that would give credit to a proud boast, that drew the girls with empty eyes to them.
And then, suddenly, DriveShaft was over. In his renewed need for something, anything, to make him whole, to take away his insecurities, he'd turned to drugs. It really wasn't Liam's fault, no matter how hard he tried to persuade himself, as if that would grant exoneration. Heroin became his new addiction.
Heroin.
He turned to heroin, and it became his mainstay. His support. It was his brace, and it was his freedom. Freedom from a life that was falling apart. Freedom from all his troubles and difficulties. Freedom from anything. Freedom from everything.
His shield against the world and everything in it that was so very wrong. Including him.
Freedom from himself.
Freedom from the Charlie he wasn't sure he liked anymore.
And now, on this island, in the middle of god-knows-where, he'd found his freedom from the drug and its empty promises. He didn't need it anymore. He just needed Claire.
His heroine.
Claire and her unbelievable strength. Claire and her determined sense of caring, no matter how tough the day had been. Claire and her unquenchable cheerfulness.
She made him happy. She completed his void. Just a smile, a laugh, a spark of happiness in her eyes, and he had his fix.
And he could learn responsibility.
Responsibility.
Somehow, he didn't mind so much anymore.
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