I didn’t hear Cam’s chair move so I’m assuming he remained seated. The instant I stepped outside, I saw Benny start the Jag up in a car park across the road. He pulled up next to me with his window open. “All right Duchess, jump in.”
I had lit up a cigarette. I hadn’t smoked in ages but he had pissed me off tonight so I felt the need. “Fuck off Ben, I’m not in the mood, I’ve had to sit through dinner with your boss acting like a prick, again, I don’t need to be patronised by you as well.”
“Fuckin’ ‘ell George, was only ‘avin a laugh wiv ya, ignore him, he’s got a lot on his plate right now.”
“Not interested Ben, not interested.” I stepped into the alley at the side of the restaurant and smoked my cigarette, I put it out and waited for five minutes but Cam didn’t come out. Well fuck him, if he thought I was going to hang about and wait, he had another thing coming. I looked down the alleyway and could see that it led out to the next street but was blocked by a bollard to stop cars cutting through, so I quickly headed down it. Ben couldn’t see me from where he was sat in the car and I walked quickly, as soon as I stepped out onto the main high street I was lucky enough to be able to hail a cab straight away. I jumped in and gave them Jimmies address and hoped that she didn’t mind me turning up uninvited.
I got the cabby to stop off at the off license and I grabbed a couple of bottles of wine, if Jimmie wasn’t up for a drink, then I would just go home and get plastered by myself.
I rang the doorbell and stood with my forehead pressed against the door, I was so busy going over tonight’s conversation with Cam and his shitty attitude toward me that I didn’t hear the door being opened, I fell forward and face planted right into someone’s chest and I knew, in an instant, in a millisecond, exactly whose chest it was.
He grabbed me by the shoulders at first and I panicked and thought he was going to push me away, but then he wrapped his arms around me tightly, sniffed my hair, kissed the top of my head and said into my ear.” I love you Georgia Rae, show us your tits.”
Everything fell away, the floor from beneath me, the wall around my heart was gone in an instant, the person that I was, the person that I’d become over these past four years crumbled to dust and was gone, disintegrated, decimated.
I had a bottle of wine in each hand, I didn’t let them go but hung on to them, I gripped them so tightly that my hands ached but I needed to hold on to them, they were real, all the time I had them in my hands, I knew that I had some kind of a grip on reality. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed myself into him, taking deep breaths of him in. I thought that perhaps I was dreaming, or perhaps the front door had opened and I had fallen and bumped my head, so I moved the wine bottles that I was squeezing and my brain registered the chinking sound of the glass knocking together.
“Do you know how long I have waited to have you pressed up against me, how long I have wanted to bury my face into your neck and just breathe you in?” I can’t speak, I’m terrified that if I do, I will scare away the magic and it won’t be true, he won’t be here, with his arms wrapped around me “Do you, do you know Gia?”
My insides curl in on themselves at the sound of him, calling me, that name, nobody, only Sean has ever called me Gia, nobody has ever even thought to.
“Four years G… four years and eleven days if you want me to be exact and every single moment has been absolute hell.” He reaches round and using his index finger, he lifts my chin, I close my eyes, I can’t look, I can’t take that chance. What if I have finally had the meltdown of all meltdowns and completely lost the plot and this is all in my fucked up imagination? In that instant, I’ve never, ever prayed so hard to be mentally insane. “Open your eyes G; I need to see those beautiful blue eyes of yours.”
“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.