JODIE
I had every intention of getting up and heading to Mum’s so that I could grab some things. I wasn’t planning on moving in with Toby, but I figured a couple of days to continue talking was probably a good idea.It’s not like I had anything better to do.
I know that to everyone else, this thing between us looks too easy. And I guess a part of it is. Falling for Toby, being with him, and allowing him to take some of my weight, my grief, my worry, is easy. It’s so natural it almost feels like he’s always been a part of my life. But then there’s this whole other ugly part of us, something that I barely even know how to process let alone attempt to deal with.
My head and my heart seem to be at constant war right now.
I want to be with him. The way he makes my heart race, my skin tingle, and butterflies erupt in my belly is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. But am I just setting myself up for a massive fall?
Is it all too good to be true?
Can I really see past everything that’s happened?
Does love really always win?
I lingered in his flat, poking deeper into his life by looking into his cupboards and trying to find anything that might help convince me that I’m crazy for even thinking this is possible and forcing my hand to turn my back on the whole thing.
But I found nothing.
In fact, I discovered a whole heap of things that just convinced me more that the boy I first met, the sweet, caring, loving guy really is who he is. I found a box at the bottom of one of his wardrobes with birthday cards from his mum and friends over the years. In there were other sweet keepsakes, like drawings done by small kids. Toby doesn’t have any younger siblings aside from Stella, so I can only assume they’re his friends’ little brothers and sisters. I even found his childhood teddy sitting up on a shelf beside a photo of him and his mum.
Everything I discovered just made me fall harder, which only confused me more.
It wasn’t until I was descending through the building, standing alone in the middle of the lift and staring at the lower ground levels that everything hit me at once.
I spilled out of that enclosed space with my heart in my throat and tears cascading down my cheeks.
I had a car key that Toby said I could use today clutched tightly in my hand, and the only thing I could think about was running away.
And that’s exactly what I did.
I don’t even remember the journey across the city. I have no idea how I—or the car—made it here in one piece, but thankfully we did.
Even hours later, my heart aches, my head spins and my eyes burn with the tears that I’ve shed for everything I’ve lost.
But just as I said to Stella yesterday, those men I’m grieving aren’t the men I’ve actually lost. It’s a massive head fuck, knowing that the good memories I have of both my dad and my brother have now been tainted by reality.
I sit on a bench overlooking a play park that Joe and I spent many, many hours at as kids. It’s only a few streets over from our house. We used to play here from sunrise to sunset, often completely losing track of time, ensuring our days ended with Mum coming to find us with a furious expression on her face.
Joe always took the blame. He was older and happily took the responsibility for our screw-ups.
It’s so hard to imagine that little boy ending up so brainwashed that he would try to kill someone. But as unbelievable as I might think it to be, I know it’s true.
I saw the change in my brother first-hand. I saw the darkness set in, his need for violence that I never understood. It was so at odds with the boy I’d grown up with, but it leaves me with no doubt that he did what Stella explained to me yesterday.
I might not have known the truth about my father, but I know how much Joe idolised him. He used to look at him like he literally hung the moon in the sky. I did too, to a point, but Joe was besotted. All Dad had to do was ask him to jump and he’d immediately ask how high. It shouldn’t really be a shock that Dad set up his final fall. I can only hope that he really thought it would have a better outcome, that they would win.
That thought sends a violent tremor down my spine, because if they did win, then Stella wouldn’t be here right now. Toby and Maria would be the ones grieving. Toby’s entire family would be grieving. And haven’t they already been through enough?
What would have happened next? Toby has said that Jonas’s game plan was about power. So who would he have gone after next? Who would the next part of his plan end up hurting?
The faces of Toby’s friends flicker through my eyes, and I can’t help but wonder where they all fitted into Jonas’s sick and twisted games.
My body trembles with the cold, and I wrap my arms around my legs tighter in the hope of both warming myself up and holding myself together all at the same time.
I have no idea what time it is, but I know I need to move. But being here… it makes me feel closer to that little boy I once knew, to that life I once had.
A sob rips from my throat as I watch a couple of kids making the most of the last few minutes of light on the slide.