Hello readers.
This is a bit of a inbetween chapter but it introduces Ana's way of coping so I think it's necessary.
Thank you so much for the reviews, esp the extra kind ones referring to my Anastasia as a "national treasure" - that made my day :)
PLEASE REVIEW SO I KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS OR IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS XOXOX
PEACE & LOVE
––Stars Walk Backward.
Reminding y'all that the songs I post at the beginning of chapters are Ana's playlist because the lyrics either inspire me as I write the chapter, or I feel that the lyrics are relevant to Ana's mindset in the chapter - so I strongly recommend giving them a listen before and during reading :)
HAPPY READING XOX
Ana's iPod
Now playing:- "Sad Beautiful Tragic" by Taylor Swift
Good girls, hopeful they'll be and long they will wait
We had a beautiful magic love there
What a sad beautiful tragic love affair
In dreams I meet you in warm conversation
We both wake in lonely beds in different cities
And time is taking its sweet time erasing you
And you've got your demons, and, darling, they all look like me…
Distance, timing, breakdown, fighting
Silence, this train runs off its tracks
Kiss me, try to fix it, could you just try to listen?
Hang up, give up, for the life of us we can't get back...
(The song Ana writes in this chapter is by Lauren Aquilina - a beautiful, beautiful song that fits the situation perfectly.)
4.
There he is, the man I was beginning to think I had made up, less than three metres from me, still as beguilingly, enchantingly beautiful as I remember, if not more so with his solid, cool, sober composure. A woman, with platinum blonde hair and a sickeningly glamorous dress, has her hand on his, sitting too close to him.
I think back to me all the nights I sat and waited for him to call, or text, or something. All the nights I would lie in a hot bath and think of his touch, barely able to contain the urge to call him. All those occasions where I would wake with a start at 3am in a hot flush as my mind would cruelly torture me with fantasies of suffocating, humid, undeniable sex with the beautiful man with copper hair… Yet, all those nights, he was not thinking of me at all, may have been laughing at me. He may have been with her.
The thought makes me sick to my stomach. How could I be so stupid?
He looks at me, wide-eyed, as though he's been caught unawares. That's right, asshole. I've caught you. He moves away from the woman a little, to stand and move toward me. I want to move, but I'm paralysed.
"Anastasia. What a lovely surprise––"
"––Save it, Grey," Kate snaps, unapologetically, taking my hand in hers and pulling me to her side.
Christian pulls a face that says he's bemused by Kate's tone, his expression darkens to one of a man in charge who had just been denied his way. I watch his gaze flicker down to Kate's hands as she holds onto me and I grip back. The blonde woman gasps at Kate's words, as though she had just slapped him and I roll my eyes, already completely drained by this situation. Please, Kate, just get me out of here.
"I wish I could say the same," I murmur, knowing that he would here me. I try my best to portray the betrayal I feel cutting into me like barbed wire, determined to make him feel the remorse he should. Yes, we were never a thing. Yes, it was only one night… but you could have called. What happened to common decency?
"Kate…" I croak, swallowing hard, determined for my voice not to crack. I look down at the floor as Kate and Christian glare at one another, with Kate about to fire on all cylinders. I tighten my grip on her. I will not cry. Not here. "Please. Can we just go?"
My tone must be strikingly weak and resigned, as she instantly looks me with concern etched across her features. She knows I'm serious.
I feel numb as she guides me away, my need for the bathroom forgotten. I try my best, with my back turned, to hold my head high, walk with my as straight as possible. Please don't fall. Don't fall. Don't fucking fall.
"Ana!" I hear his exclamation as we stop out into the corridor for the elevator. I look at Kate in a panic, breath catching in my throat. I hastily push her into the arriving elevator, as in the way Kate mutters aggressively under her breath tells me she is likely to explode any second. I don't want a scene. I just need to get away from him.
"Ana, wait!"
"Back off, jackass!" Kate bellowed beside me, clicking the button for the ground floor repeatedly.
"Ana!" He reaches the elevator and places his hands on the doors before they can close. I feel myself shrink towards the back of the elevator. Why is he chasing me? Why does he care? "Please. Just, give me a chance to explain––"
"—You had months, Christian…" The reality of all that could have been shakes my foundations and any resolve I have left. I lift my eyes to his as the elevator doors close between us. "You had months."
–x–
Mope. Drink. Write. Cry. Write. Sleep. Repeat.
The situation is chronic, I know that, but I know there's nothing I can do but breathe through the pain. It's either that, or I give in, but I will not give in.
That night, after we had been to The Mile-high Club, which I now know was owned but the asshole, he called me almost continuously from the moment I stepped out of the elevator and out into the street. With each shrill tone my phone made, j found myself even more melancholy—because he left messages, he called, but he didn't come after me. (Kate summed it all up pretty well in a tirade after his twentieth call. "He cant even bring himself to get off his ass! Still! Forget him, Ana. Really.")
I go through stages, much like grief: I'm sad, until I'm angry, and then, once I'm drained, I'm sad again. I've blocked him number from my phone—well, Jose did it for me, I wouldn't know how. My phone is eerily silent now, the texts he sent lying there, unopened. Kate has been policing me not to look at them, so I won't answer.
I know the level of betrayal and sadness I feel is disproportionate, ridiculous even, because I knew him all of one night... But I soon realise it's not even really Christian's absence I am mourning, but the loss of what could have been; the comedown from the high; the fleeting nature of it all.
Words and metaphors flow from my pen erratically and almost exhaustively, as images of his face when I walked away race through my brain. His eyes looked afraid of losing something, but we were never anything, surely?
Let's start at the end,
becoming strangers once again...
Or maybe that's all we ever were?
He never called. He simply says all the right things, has a beautiful face, undeniable grace with saying what people want to hear. I had replied, he had not acted on it. He had deemed me not enough. I'm always not enough.
Do you know how it feels,
to crave body made of steel?
To give your all, for no return?
My hands shake as I write the words down frantically in the middle of the grocery store, or in the parking lot, or at the movies. I go through the motions, but all the while my mind is distracted by all the things I should have said, or daren't say; all the arguments I should have made to defend myself from his behaviour. All the anger behinds during these imaginary conversations, but I find that as I mentally argue, the sentences I formulate are more forthcoming and accurate to how I truly feel than in if I tried to speak to anyone else about it.
Kate doesn't challenge me, nor does she push to read the songs I write, or make any comment when I play acoustic guitar at 2am. The lyrics seem to flow unlike any time before. It's as though I've never felt so much, and suddenly I'm feeling it all at once.
"Ana…" I blink and see that Jose and Kate are sat the kitchen counter, eating, both gazing at me with such a cripplingly look of pity, and suddenly all I feel is anger. Burning, consuming, suffocating rage.
"I just fucking hate him!" I explode. Throwing my notebook away from me, watching it shatter to the floor with a sound that sickens the book lover within me. "How dare he be so ignorant, but then the minute I cut him out, he thinks it's okay to start contacting me? I mean, who does that?!"
Kate gives a blasé, repetitive lecture about how I should have expected this from a guy who felt me up before I even knew his name. I sigh, and just like that, the anger dissipates.
"Why, though? It's not just Christian. I just don't understand why all my life, no matter how hard I try, no matter how much effort I put in, people don't put in the same effort for me?—with the exception of you two..."
Suddenly, as I'm about to continue, I stumble on a simile and instantly dive to pick up the papers scattering the floor to scribble it down before it's gone from my memory. Suddenly, the next words of the song come to me, as though they were there all along.
'Cause I've been running marathons,
while you're still standing still...
I'd be anything for you
but I'll never fit the bill.
Because I'm irrelevant.
Later, as I watch the news when Kate has long gone to bed, Christian is featured—something about Eco-projects in Africa—and I am suddenly struck but how tiny I must seem to a man who literally has the world at his feet. If only I had known, I would never have hoped, I think...
...but then I realise that's just not true.
"Ana," Kate had said to me as she went to bed. "Remember what you're worth. You're the same beautiful girl you were before that party. Don't let him change you." As I watch the clip of him talking passionately about his business, I find myself angry that he couldn't transfer even the slightest of that conviction to caring for me. I deserve better. I know I do. Damn him.
Inspiration seeps through me as my blue mood begins to transform to one of drive and creativity. I dig through my notes from the day after Christian didn't answer my messages and soon enough I find what I'm looking for: the confused, disappointed scribblings I made when I thought I'd never see him again, when I really, truly thought he had intentionally forgotten me.
I set to work pairing more recent lyrics with those of a previous mindset, playing chords on my old and tired guitar—Ray's guitar—as I go. I set my voice recorder by my side as the song begins to form, and suddenly, gratification rolls through me as I say in song exactly what I was trying to say. I close my eyes, hoping Kate is fast asleep as I sing, because even though she's heard me countless times, I only reveal songs on very, very select occasions. It's not even about bashfulness as much as...it is the equivalent of reading someone my diary... and diary entries about Christian feel like an open wound.
As I finish the full lyrics and cut out the recording, I underline the title that names the rhymes that litter the page, feeling like a finite reaction has begun with one realisation: This is an open wound only I can heal.
Irrelevant
Let's start at the end
Becoming strangers once again
Or maybe that's all we ever were...
Do you know how it feels,
To crave a body made of steel?
To give your all for no return?
'Cause I've been running marathons,
While you're still standing still...
And I'd be anything for you,
But I'll never fit the bill.
'Cause I'm irrelevant,
You'll be fine without me.
And it's evident, it shows...
And in your excellence,
I forgot I used to have my own.
You won't even notice that I'm gone.
You consume my thoughts.
I'm not sure that I'm in yours at all...
Your mind is too far gone to see.
The worst part of it all
Is that I desperately still want
Someone who never wanted me.
'Cause you've been burning bridges while
I've been building homes.
And I'm only your everything
When you feel alone.
'Cause I'm irrelevant.
You'll be fine without me,
And it's evident, it shows.
And in your excellence,
I forgot I used to have my own.
You won't even notice that I'm gone...
Gone are the days that I'll cling to you.
Throw me to the lions and start anew.
And who the hell are you
For the hell you've put me through?
'Cause I'm irrelevant...
You'll be fine without me.
And it's evident, it shows.
And in your excellence
I forgot I used to have my own.
You won't even notice that I'm gone...