“Nailed it that time,” Paul, the producer, said, crooking his finger. “Come. Listen.”
Unhooking the guitar from my neck, I made my way around to the computer and bent down to get a closer look at the engineer’s fingers. I liked watching him work, seeing the process in action. At least, I did until Lewis’s hand landed on my back. I stiffened against it, felt my heartrate spike.
“Fucking magical, right?” Lewis said as the song started playing.
I couldn’t hear it. I could only hear my pulse in my ear, feel the hand on my back. Fuck. People were too close now. There were too many. The studio tech. The recording engineer. His assistant. Two runners. My manager. Shit.
“This has got number one written all over it. What d’ya think, H?”
Lewis clapped my back, jolting me back to reality. I shot up straight. Blinked a few times. I was breathing too fast, must’ve looked ridiculous. “Y-yeah. Great,” I think I muttered. “Can I take a break? I need a break.” I pulled my phone from my pocket, switched it on to check the time. A series of beeps lit up the screen. Four missed calls and two texts from Helen. “And I need to make a call.” Helen would help. She’d count breaths with me, calm the senseless anxiety, tell me what to do.
“Studio’s only booked for another hour,” said Lewis, snatching my phone. I really wished he’d stop doing that. “It’ll have to wait. We got another track to lay down.”
“Right.” I nodded, tried to breathe slower, deeper.
“And you’re seeing a stylist this evening. Get that hair sorted.”
My hair? What was wrong with my hair? I wanted to ask him, but I didn’t. Like always, I just…nodded.
Kicking back in yet another ridiculously fancy hotel room, I pressed play once more on the voicemail.
“Me again. I’m getting worried now. I saw photos of you on Twitter, so I know you’re alive, but you looked sad. Are you sad? Is this my fault? I didn’t have to go to uni. I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry, Hugo. I broke my promise. Please call me. Please. I just need to know you’re okay.”
I didn’t feel the tear fall until it landed on my chest. “Fuck…” I hit play again. It must’ve been the fifth time. It’d been weeks since I’d talked to Helen, months since I’d seen her, held her. I almost called her back. I wanted to yell at her for daring to blame herself. As much as I needed her, I’d told her to go to university, insisted she accept their offer. I wasn’t prepared to be the guy who stole her dream from her. People thought I didn’t understand others, or that I put myself first. It wasn’t true. Sure, I had a tendency to put my foot in situations sometimes. I didn’t always consider others in the first instance, but I always got there in the end, when I’d been given time and space to analyse things. I knew Helen. I loved her. I’d known what she wanted from life since we were little kids, and it wasn’t to follow me around like a lost puppy, licking my wounds whenever I fucked up. She deserved better, and she wouldn’t have got it if she knew how much I was struggling out here on my own…because she loved me too. If I was honest with her, she’d have been out here, by my side, in a heartbeat, abandoning her own dreams at the bottom of a rubbish pile.
“…I broke my promise. Please call me. Please. I just need to know you’re okay.”
I wasn’t okay. I was lonely. Afraid. Didn’t have a fucking clue what I was doing. But I was coping. I was doing it. I didn’t need to ruin Helen’s life in the process. As I pressed play yet again, however, I realised Helen might just ruin mine. At this moment, we belonged to different worlds, and I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t keep listening to her, hearing the sorrow in her gentle voice. I couldn’t keep worrying about taking her calls, making time for her that didn’t exist. I couldn’t keep fucking missing her. It hurt too much, and I could feel myself breaking, which is what led me to do the most selfish thing I’d ever done.
After swiping another tear from my cheek, I deleted Helen’s message. Then, I scrolled through my contacts and called Ezra. “Hey,” I said before he had chance to say hello. “I need someone to get me a new phone.”
Two
Helen
Present day…
I couldn’t remember when I’d started dressing like this. Was it the funeral? Before? Looking down, I sighed at the drab shades of grey covering my skin and idly pondered when the last time I’d worn a splash of colour was. I had some nerve calling myself a fashion designer, no matter how small my business may have been. Two years of college, three at uni, and five working my arse off from my spare room and I could’ve designed better clothes than I wore now while still in nappies. Made from nappies, in fact. Soiled ones.