Beyond Grace [ON INDEFINITE HOLD]

Beyond Grace: 1

1

5 Years Later...

It was just another arrest. Same old stoned youths claiming the dope ain't theirs and expecting to get away with it. Cash shoved the cuffed teen into the back seat, before joining Keira in front. They didn't talk, driving in silence to the police station. Her brown eyes stayed glued to the road, tanned hands firmly griping the wheel and that straight brown hair remained professionally tucked in a bun beneath a police hat. The boy was taken into questioning, leaving Cash to ponder his thoughts in the sharp autumn wind.

He shoved his hands into each pocket, drawing in a slice of the crisp air through his teeth. 6pm and the sun was already low in the sky. Kicking the gravel, he leant against the seventies red brick 'Harlough Hill Police Department' building. In the old days he would have stuck out a cigarette and taken a drag, but that habit was long gone. Gone like so many other things...

Melody's doting smile and golden curls flashed through his mind. The way she would flutter her long thick eyelashes as she blew him butterfly kisses. That familiar excruciating 'pang' of loss gripped his chest. Throat constricting, he keeled forward. Trying to vomit out the heart break, the torturous memories. Futile, however. Futile like the fresh flowers placed on her grave every Sunday that wilted within seconds of being laid.

Shaky gasps were tearing up his insides, a slight grimace the only vestige of the internal battle. But the show must go on. Clearing his throat, he dredged a warmed hand out of his pocket, focusing on the silver watch. 7pm. Shit. It seemed like it had only been a few minutes. Then again, time flies.

Reluctantly, he pushed the hand back deep into his pockets, forging a path back to the transparent glass doors. He met Officer Dawson on his way out. Exchanging a brief, tight lipped smile, they awkwardly brushed past the other to get out.

Walking through the station; desolate save the cluster of the usual late-night workers, the shiny glass surfaces were imbibed with fragmented projections of himself. The messy chestnut hair, wild and without any-which-way direction. The steely grey-green eyes, destitute of emotion. The sinewy physique; earned, not given. Careful maintenance of his body granted him good looks at the age of 32, where every second man had a bulbous beer gut. He crossed both arms gruffly and picked up the pace. Detouring to his desk to pick up a case file, a post-it note caught his eye;

'Friday drinks?

I'm paying...'

Keira's illegible scrawl signed her name beneath it. He paused. Picked it up and threw it in the trash. He'd stopped going a long ago. Stayed at home and self-remediated himself with coffee, T.V. and video games. Monotonous. Predictable. But, safe; there were no torturous reminders of what once was.

Grabbing a faded leather jacket and motorbike keys, he quickly left. Few looked up as he walked out, not that it was common for people to acknowledge his presence.

Walking in the door, he immediately stripped off the jacket and blue police shirt. Ma had checked in again – his shirt uncharacteristically ironed and the floor was lonely of the usual turmoil littering its surface. Flicking the LCD on, he ended up leaving it on some gardening show that he couldn’t give less of a fuck. Cash sighed, turned the TV to mute, turned up the radio and got an ice-cold beer out of the fridge. 

'Now this is living,' he bitterly thought to himself.

‘This is life.’