Hello again peeps!
So i was going to wait until tomorrow to post this but it's just too juicy to keep from you all.
WARNING: Drama is about to kick off in this story so if you don't like overly active books then I would stop reading now.
Enjoy love doves.
Nessa
xoxox
Chapter 10: Long goodbyes and wrong goodbyes
New York looks just the same as I remember leaving it, the sky the same beautiful blue, the skyscrapers kissing it good morning. The buildings hugging each other and the people below them going about their important lives in the most important city to me. I can't help but smile as I remember times that have happened in this town. I see the street corner that Dallas first kiss me on and I blush a deep red, the place at which my dad taught me to ride my bike and I ended up grazing my knee on the concrete. The bench where my mother sat me down, ice cream in hand, to tell me she had incurable cancer, the place at which I first saw my brother get into a fight. The last place I said goodbye to my friends from school. This city sure held a lot of emotions in its walls.
Austin squeezed my hand as we pulled alongside the hotel we would be staying at, I knew this one and had recommended it for its guarded doors. No one got into that place without a reservation and it was seen as the safest hotel in all of New York. We told the bouncer our name and he let us past quickly, not wasting anytime in showing us where to check and wishing us a happy stay. I smiled, this was the New York I never got to experience, the side of New York that no one that lived here really got to ever experience.
The room was nice and from the window I could see the old building that used to be sonic boom, it was now just an abandoned space with no meaning and that made me more upset than I could have ever imagined, if it wasn't sonic boom I wanted for it be at least occupied. Instead it stood desolate and alone in the city of lights and people. Tomorrow was the day of my mother's death and I can still picture finding out the news.
"Ally, I can't get this freaking guitar on the wall!" shouted an exasperated Dallas as he stretched over a stand of tambourines to put the Yamaha back up in it's place. Laughing I moved the instruments and looked smugly over at him as he could now put the guitar in its place without any inconvenience. "Alright hotshot." He sulked and I couldn't help the blistering laugh that escaped my lips.
The door opened and all at once my laughter was cut short and the room was left with a thick silence hung over it. In the door was my father, his eyes red rimmed with shed tears and a look of sullen defeat upon his face. "Dad? What's wrong?" I had asked but instead of answering he just shook his head and I just knew, right then I knew she hadn't made it out.
"No…" I begged anyone that could hear me; anyone that would listen and my legs gave way, as did my heart. I fell, only held up by Dallas' arms around me and wailed to the heavens the unfairness of the situation. I cried out my sorrow and I didn't care who knew it. Let them know that my whole life was upside down, let them know my heart had been torn from me with one simple shake of my father's head.
A kiss to my shoulder brought me out of my daydream and I was all of sudden back in the room, across the street from that place and on looking as a young girl's life was shredded into a million little pieces. Austin's arms around me were an anchor to the world around me and I was all at once aware of the tears travelling down my cheeks, gravity pulling them to the streets below. "You'll be okay Ally." He whispered in my ear and I knew he believed that but all at once I realised something, I had not been okay since that day, since that one simple shake of my father's head had shattered the world around me.
Sleep did not come easy that night, I kept dreaming of that day in the abandoned place across the street and I could not relax knowing those memories were mere seconds away. I could not bring myself to face them again by looking at the place but I could not peel myself away from them either. I felt like a lost child searching for their mother in the supermarket, getting more and more panicked as time went on and they still could not see her. I was lost.
When morning finally did come the skyscrapers did not kiss the sun hello, nor did the streets sing with the hum of another new day. Instead there was a silence amongst the world, the buildings loomed as if mourners peering over a coffin, the sky a bleak grey, the same as my emotion. New York was not alive as it usually was, it was dead as I was on this day. I wished nothing more than to stay in the comforting warmth of the bed around me, the sound of the sleeping Austin peacefully sighing by my side but I knew that would be wrong. I was in the very city that took her from me and I had to pay her enough respect to say hello.
I got up and showered, dressing quickly and feeling anxious for the day ahead, what would it be like, to see the grave as it was ten years early when I huddled into Dallas' side and my father cried and told us stories of my mother's craziness. As my brother held my hand and wept as our mother was lowered into the ground, the feeling of the shovel cold and heavy as I flung dirt on her grave, burying her a little more. Would I relive the events or would I just feel…empty.
Austin wore a dark suit, his hair slicked back and I looked at him with awe. Even though today was about me saying goodbye I wish my mother could see the man I had married, to appreciate how good his heart was. He told me he dressed this way because in a way he was saying goodbye to his family too, mourning his own mother's death. All at once I realised how entwined my life had become with the man in front of me.
…
As Austin pulled up to the cemetery I mentally prepared myself for what I was going to say. How I would tell my mother I was the luckiest woman in the world to have the beautiful man beside me in my life, to tell her the funny stories of how I overcome my stage fright and how it felt to be in front a crowd of one million people. How it felt to hear my songs on the radio and to be able to accredit it all to myself, and the man beside me. To say thank you for raising me to believe that I could be anything I wanted to be and for never letting me forget it. I was preparing this speech when we walked towards my mother's grave. That was why at first I didn't notice the dark figure standing between my mother's and brother's graves.
I was instantly on edge, how did she find us here? But then I looked closer and realised the figure was distinctively male. Austin froze up beside me and I could see the protective stance he suddenly took but this was my family, mine to protect. I stormed across the lot, determined to find out who threatened my personal time with my family.
"HEY! YOU! Who are you? What do you want? Get away from my family." The figure froze in the crouch they held, their hand shaking as it grazed my brother's name. Then, all at once the figure rose and turned very slowly towards us, a look of pure shock on their face.
Recognition finally set in and I am sure my face mirrored the expression this stranger held, as this was no stranger at all, in fact it was…
"Elliot?"