Page 53 of The Story of Us
“I can’t,” I whisper, my voice barely audible.
“Why G, why can’t ya, I need to see them, I need to look into them, to see us, when I look into your eyes, I want to be able to see you and me and I need to know that we’re still us, Sean and Georgia. Are we, are we still us G?” Very slowly I open my eyes, hoping for heaven, fearing all that I will get is hell but they’re there, those dark brown eyes with their flecks of gold, my very own personal piece of heaven is staring right back at me.
“There’s my girl.” He smiles that lazy lopsided grin down at me and I whimper. He’s so much taller than I remember, not as tall as Cam but he must be well over six foot now. “Can I kiss ya G, I want to kiss you. I need to kiss you G. Can I?”
I nod my head, which was at that precise moment not attached to my shoulders and was instead spinning off somewhere in the stratosphere and before I can think any more, his mouth is on me, soft and gentle at first, his tongue dancing with mine, gently, then deeper, tasting me, his lips harder on mine, he groans, I groan. He reaches behind me and takes the wine from my hands but doesn’t stop kissing me, he wraps his arms around me and the bottles clang together, reminding me that this is all real. He’s here, I’m here, we’re kissing, we’re here, together, Sean and Georgia; we finally stop kissing but stand with our mouths together, just leaning into each other, mouth to mouth, while we look into each other’s eyes, he has tears rolling down his cheeks and I realise that I do too; I reach up and touch his face.
“God, Gia, I’ve missed you so fucking much.”
“You never came back for me Sean, you just let me go. You didn’t fight for me.”
He frowned and lent away from me, then put the bottles down on the hall table; he turned and looked back at me, his eyebrows drawn together. “Georgia, I came to your Mum’s but they wouldn’t let me see you, so I sat outside the house in my car, all day, all night but then I had to go back on tour, so I called you, all day, every day, for weeks I called and I wrote and wrote, I sent letter after letter. I sent you the songs that I wrote for you, I wrote down every thought and feeling that I had for almost a year, I made videos of the songs so you could hear them, I sent it all to you G.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing, to the point where I’m shaking my head. “No, no, where, where did they go?” I think I’m going to be sick. “Where did you send them? You must have got the wrong address.”
Which was a ridiculous notion; he had spent more time at my house growing up than he ever had at his own house. He knew my address better than his own. Absolute panic is rolling in my belly, is he lying to me? Just when I suddenly had hope that he was here, with his arms around me, was he going to lie, was I going to lose it all again? He looks as devastated as I feel. “You sent them back?” But he’s shaking his head; it’s a question, not a statement.
“No, no Sean, never, I never got them, I never saw them so how could I send them back?” I’m shaking so hard that I can hardly control my jaw.
“They came back, unopened, with a note, saying, please don’t contact me again. All of it came back, the letters, the cards and poems, the videos, it all came back Georgia, you said you could never forgive me and to stay away.” He’s pulling at his own hair and sobbing as he speaks. “I wanted to die; I’ve wanted to die, every fucking day since. Every day, I’ve thought about it, dying, instead of living with this pain.”
He punches himself hard in the chest, into his heart as he speaks through gritted teeth. “I just wanted a chance G, just one fucking chance to explain, to say sorry, to tell ya, that, it’s you, it’s always been you, it will, only, ever, be you.”
I know that I’m pulling the ugliest of faces as I cry and try to speak and try to make sense of what he’s telling me. “No, Sean, no, I didn’t, I wouldn’t do that, I wanted to see you, I wanted you to come back to me, so badly, I almost died, my heart hurts so much, the pain, the pain, it’s killing me, it’s fucking killing me Sean.”
I’m shaking my head and gulping in air and my legs won’t hold me up any more. Lennon appears at the end of the hallway behind Sean. “Fuck… Jimmie!” I hear him call.
“I don’t understand then G, who, who would do that to us? Jimmie and Lennon knew how hard I tried, they knew how hard I tried to see ya, they knew about the phone calls and all the stuff I sent ya. Where did it go? How did you not know about it, surely not your Mum and Dad?” I can’t comprehend this, I just can’t get my head around it, all this time, all this pain and he wanted me back.
Jimmies suddenly at my side, I’m on my knees in her hallway, Sean is sitting cross legged facing me, with his head is in his hands. “Babe, what’s going on? Sean?”
She looks from one to the other of us. Sean looks up, he looks at me, and I think I’m on the verge of an anxiety attack. I’m gulping in air and making sounds that I’ve never heard a human make. “Gia” Is all that Sean says as he pulls me into his lap and holds me so tight it should crush me, instead I start to breathe slower. Air starts to reach my lungs, as I look up at him.
“Who would want to hurt us like that, who?”
Jimmies right down on the floor with us now, Lens pacing the floor behind Sean, then Marley appears. “What the fuck George, what’s wrong?” He moves toward us.
“Will somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on?”
Jimmie is crying too and she doesn’t even know what’s wrong. “The letters Jim, all the letters, you told me that she got them?” Jimmie looks confused and frowns. “She did, you did, your Mum said that they upset you so much that we weren’t to talk about them.”
No, no, this can’t be right, my Mum’s one of my best friends, she wouldn’t do that; she knew how much I was hurting. “No, no Jim, I never knew, I never saw a single letter.”
“What?”
“She told me that Sean phoned for a couple of weeks and that my Dad had threatened him and he had stopped calling and that was it.”
“Georgia, I swear to God, I called your house four or five times a day, I begged them to let me talk to you, I wrote letter, after letter, I begged you to see me.” The hallway falls silent apart from the sound of breathing and sniffing. Sean continuously strokes at my back and my hair with the tips of my fingers and soothes me, calms me. I suddenly feel so tired, like I haven’t slept in four years and now finally, I can.
Sean kisses the top of my head. “G, I love you babe but your arse is fuckin’ bony and mine is going numb.”
I look up at him and giggle. “You love me?”
“Of course I love you, how many times do you need telling, I meant it then and I mean it now, there’s only you G, there will only ever be you.”
He stands still holding onto me and carries me into Jimmie and Len’s lounge; he sits down on the sofa with me still in his lap and says in my ear. “I have been without you for four fuckin’ years. I’ll never be without you again; I might just carry you around like this forever.”
I smile and inside I feel like I did when I first wake up from one of my dreams about him, completely content, cocooned in his arms and his scent but then just like with my dreams, reality comes crashing in, my Mum, my beautiful Mum betrayed me.
