Free Gone by Anna Bloom

shining, and for a moment I started to relax. I nearly told him how I lost you. I didn’t. I can’t. It’s my secret to carry.
    I think he is keeping secrets too. I wonder if they are as sad and as dark as mine.
    I wish you were here, smelling the salt, feeling the sand and giggling on beaches with me. If you were then I would truly be able to enjoy it.
    Miss you as always.
    B
    xx

    Rebecca
    Breakfast
    I am not even going to bother going downstairs, what’s the point? I have nothing to get up for today. Last night was an unmitigated disaster. Joshua looked most bemused and was grinning as I walked him out to Daisy.
    Once we were in the lane outside the cottage I leant against the garden wall, completely loitering. I didn’t want to say goodbye to him. For some completely irrational reason I wanted him to lean in and kiss me. I was waiting for it, holding my body tight with expectation. He didn’t. He lifted his hand smoothing a piece of my crazy orange straw hair behind my ear, and then grazed his thumb ever so lightly across my mouth.
    I’ve never wanted to be kissed more in my life. Actually I don’t ever remember wanting to be kissed before. Not consciously. Kissing is just a natural progression an evening can take when you have run out of conversation with a complete stranger.
    Last night I felt myself leaning in towards him, proper movie style. He just stared at me in the darkness then offered me a wide smile.
    “See you soon, Bex.”
    “Rebecca.”
    “Bex,” he whispered into the night before walking around Daisy and roaring the old engine to life.
    I went straight up to bed and let sleep claim me until the nightmares came again. Last night the words were muddled all wrong.
    “Rebecca, will you just learn to behave, and get in the damn car?”
    The word “Bex,” echoed around my dreams turning the nightmare into a deep dream where I didn’t know where I was, or what I had done.
    Josh didn’t ask to see me today as he left, which is really annoying because I want to see him. I want to know what that prick at the beach meant yesterday about me being different to the person who lived here before. I want to know who lived here before. I want to know why Joshua has secrets about it. But more than that I want to know what his secrets are. I want to know what that wanker at the beach meant by Josh needing to forget. I just assumed at the time he was insinuating that Josh should just sleep with me and get it over and done with. And yes while that’s rude, I’m not unused to those sentiments. But as the evening went on, I watched Joshua’s body language in this house, and around me and my parents and I realised that’s not what that knob was hinting at. He was telling Joshua it was time to move on from something.
    This sensation is new to me and I am not sure how to handle it. I’ve never had this really irritating desire to see someone again before. All I am doing is pacing my room trying to work out how to initiate a meeting, and then hating myself for even thinking it.
    I don ’t want to like anything about this town. I don’t want to like anyone in it. I especially don’t want to like tall well-built men with huge smiles, dreadlocks, inappropriate facial piercings and all sorts of factors that could jeopardise my nine grand. And I especially don’t want to feel like anything, other than my sister will make me want to come back to this town after I leave.
    11 days to go.
    ***
    I’ve wasted time showering, using up all the hot water in the taps, and am now twitching about in front of Emily who is drawing in the garden.
    It’s kind of weird this hanging around thing, but I don’t have anywhere to go. It feels like every second is ticking by in slow motion. Every second of the next eleven says stretched out in front of me. Before, back in London, before my self-imposed imprisonment in my bedroom, I would have called up a dodgy connection, slipped out the house and been up to no good for the afternoon.