AllFreeNovel
Share Us
the deal
Now
“I love you, Freddy.”
It seems so silly to be telling him, but he’s giving me this reproachful look, with hurt flashing in the depths of his eyes. A look that asks me where I’ve been, and what I’ve been doing. “I’ve never forgotten you,” I whisper and then snuggle back down to sleep.
A smooth finger touches my cheek. It doesn’t feel quite right, but then it doesn’t feel wrong either. It’s familiar; like a frayed blanket you don’t want to lose. “Mum?”
Mum.It means something. It should mean something.
With a start, I wake. Freddy fades into every recess of my mind just like he always does when I get woken and Isaac fills my consciousness in his place.
“Baby?” I pull Isaac into my arms and wrap him tight. The comfort blanket I can’t live without. “Go back to sleep, my love.”
Isaac has crawled into my bed every night since the sides were taken off his cot bed. I know mums aren’t supposed to admit it. We are supposed to be stern and use all that tough love, ‘You must sleep in your own bed’ bullshit. The truth is, I love my snuggles with my fair-haired wonder.
I especially love the fact he always sleeps in when he wakes in my bed. None of that bouncing around, chanting, ‘Let’s watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ as he karate kicks me in the head.
Quickly, his breathing settles back into an even, heavy breath. Leaning back against my pillow, I take a deep intake of air. I don’t know if it’s the wine, or the conversation with Dani, but that dream felt so real, being dragged from it feels like being ripped out of the womb and delivered straight into a sterile theatre room. My heart thuds in my chest, uneven, a bit like a suitcase being dragged over cobbles as I stare up at the dark ceiling, the glow from the streetlights outside casting shapes across it. The hours in the dark are my personal nemesis. Those moments where I wonder what I have done, the path I have been on, and what in hell I am going to do. I made some big decisions ten years ago, decisions I based on entirely selfish reasoning. I know it’s not going to take long for those selfish choices to come out into the open. Then I will no longer just be living under my own judgement, but that of everyone else as well.
Being in this town is making it all the more painful. The realistic dream, plus the flush of memories which have waved over me every moment since my return, makes this dark moment feel like it might not end.
Freddy Bale.
All my adult life I’ve run from the memories of him. How it was before his racing accident, the days in the hospital afterwards. How I lived and breathed him. How for those few hours in the hospital that cold January day, I thought he’d died, and how my heart felt like it was going to cave with the pressure of the moment.
Groaning, I sit back up in bed and stare around me. The shape of my old bedroom furniture looms back at me. Nothing’s changed in the room since I’ve left. Not that it’s been left as a shrine either. I had to shift a fair few boxes of junk yesterday to make room for us, but the bare basics of furniture, curtains, and carpet are all the same ones I thought made me look like a sophisticated grown up when I was a teenager. I now realise they made me look like a colour-blind psychotic. The only things missing are the pictures of Freddy that used to brighten the room. I’m guessing they were trashed after I left.
Unable to resist, I get up and head to the old built-in wardrobe. Shoved in the furthest corner of the top shelf is a shoebox labelled ‘Keepsakes’. Grabbing the box and dodging a cascade of dust and cobwebs, I lower it into the safety of my arms and move to the window. I pull back the curtain and allow the streetlight to stream in and illuminate the contents buried so long ago from prying eyes. There in the corner is the keepsake I’m looking for. Shining dimly in the light is the tarnished silver locket Freddy gave me for my eighteenth birthday. I rub my thumb over the engraved front, and a smear of the tarnish transfers itself onto my hand. The locket still weighs heavy in my palm. I used to think it was because it meant so much to me. That’s why I could feel it more than an average locket.Now I realise it’s because it’s old and heavy. Simple as that.
I know inside there will be a picture I don’t want to look at. Me: younger, prettier, happier. Freddy, just being Freddy. Not the man who turned up hours ago on my doorstep, looking like a boy I used to know but who was really a stranger.
All the uncertainty of the last couple of weeks hangs heavy over my heart and just for a split second I hesitate over the choice I made all those years ago. It was selfish, but I have to keep telling myself it was the right choice to make.
I walk back to the bed, the locket dangling from the chain. As I tuck myself back in, I wrap the chain loosely around my fingers, so the locket is securely held in the centre of my hand. Then I finally fall asleep and dream of Freddy Bale all over again.
“Mum?”
“No. No Ninja Turtles.”
Isaac pokes me hard, straight between my ribs. “I haven’t watched TMNT since I was six.”
“That long?” I mumble. “It seems like yesterday.”
“What’s this?” he asks. I still have my eyes firmly shut, but I feel him turn my hands and tug at the locket still weaved around my fingers.
“Just an old necklace,” I say, hoping he will drop it.
“Who gave it to you?”
“Isaac, I don’t even have my eyes open. Do we have to do that question thing?” He peels one of my eyes open and I roll away from his fingers.
“Now you do. It’s pretty. Maybe you can give it to me to give to someone else one day?”
My hormones must be doing something crazy because his words make my eyes sting and I blink rapidly to try and stop the sting becoming a droplet of something tragic. “Maybe.” But what I mean is, maybe not, because in all truth, I think I have to give it back to the person who gave it to me.
“Mum?”
