Hey You ⌲ Paul McCartney

15 // forever

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July 6, 1957 // 7:56 am
{ Soundtrack; Forever - The Beach Boys }

"Love! I missed ya!" Paul greeted enthusiastically as he entered my room with a bouquet of roses and a guitar slung around his back. "Happy 1 year!"

"Happy 1 year..." I smiled briskly at my boyfriend.

"I brought some red vines and Roman Holiday for the day," he smirked to himself, finding a comfortable spot right next to me on my bed. He moved his attention to the movie and flipped it to the back.

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After a few hours into the movie, he turned to me. It was the scene in which the two part ways. His weary hands clutched mine and he gave me a disheartening smirk. I knew he was about to inform me on some bad news.

"I have to go," he spoke quietly.

"Look, you can't keep leaving me in the dust just because you want to finish that stupid fortune teller machine," I rolled my eyes, clearly fed up with how many times he's ditched me mid-date.

"His name is Zoltar and no, it's for something else - I have to go see this skiffle group playin' at the garden fete of St. Peter's Church... I'm hoping to impress em," he explained with a shy tilt of the head. "Maybe they'd let me in their band."

"I hope they will," I gave him a wooden smile. It obviously hurt me to know that he wouldn't be able to spend the whole day with me.

"Let me play Twenty Flight Rock for ya, I've been practicing." He then took out his guitar and tuned around with it. When he strung the first chord I laid back, looking down at how his fingers were so easily and effortlessly plucking the strings. After every chord he would look up at me, seeing if I was listening - and I always was.

"That was amazing, I'm sure you'll get into their band. That Lennon bloke would be a complete sod for not letting a fellow scouse like you into his skiffle group. You'd probably be the most talented one," I reassured and his light eyes sparkled with resolute. He flashed me a wide and benevolent smile.

That very moment was special. It was a subtle but evident euphoria. My breath hitched and my heart fluttered, feeling a strange sort of twinge that made me absentmindedly lean forward. I felt lust surge into me in waves - a feeling I've never felt and a feeling I quite frankly, never thought I'd feel. He glanced away from the tension as he noticed how close I was to him.

He traveled his wandering eyes up to mine, fixating a gaze as he studied my faltered features and lack of confidence. I knew getting physically closer wouldn't make us feel something otherwise not lustful.

Paul slowly pushed himself off the bed as he saw my old reluctant-self elicit. A hesitant and desperate chuckle emanated from his pursed lips when he watched me giggle. I had stuck his guitar pick into the hollow part of his guitar and believed it was the funniest thing ever. He looked over to it and rolled his eyes playfully.

He stood at the front of my emerald window, traveling his eyes up and down my plethora of poems taped to the pane. His eyes seemed to stick with one though... One I could barely catch a glimpse of; one with the words "unwillingly mine" scrawled with an ink-less pen.

I stood up, trying to distract him from reading the rest because he and I both knew there were poems about him up there. He turned sharply to face me, twirling his fingers around a strand of my hair and then tucking it behind my ear. This was it, I thought. And I soon surprisingly felt his lips against mine. I broke it and shyly looked away, cheeks getting redder by the second.

"And Zoltar is not stupid," he added as he packed up his things and stood at the foot of my door. I then examined my poems and I found one that didn't look familiar - one with sloppy handwriting on a crumpled gum wrapper. It read,

"If every word I sang would make you laugh, I'd sing forever."

After that he dismissed me with a wave goodbye and was on his way to Woolton Street. Perhaps the thought of him was my only salvation during these last dark days. My folks have been in the middle of a nasty divorce and I was forced to choose a side.

My Mum looked at me with suppressed anticipation, dreading the very next words that would spill out of my quivering mouth. My lips threatened to purse, but I couldn't emit even the slightest bit of hesitation. I wanted to stay with my Dad because I knew he could help get me into Oxford... Also because I knew my Mum could easily find someone else, whilst I was all my Dad would ever have left.

I glanced at the both of them with a million ideas and compromises racing around in my head. Even pondering over the fact of seeing the other's reaction tore me to shreds. I hated having to pick between the two people I love the most.

I then looked up to my Dad and gave him a subtle smirk. He nodded and slowly wrapped his arm around my Mum, caressing her and comforting her all with just a light touch.

She remained as stoic as possible, which took me by surprise. I then ran upstairs and cried. I never thought I'd see them together ever again - that very thought broke me way beyond repair.

~

"I can't love you."

"What?"

Paul stood in the rain, a melancholy radiance shining off of his lachrymose eyes. His face was woeful and his arms were tucked in his soaked pants. I've never seen him so morose. Suppose he represented a painting titled: closed fists and clenched teeth. He looked as if he were about to lash out at me.

"I can't love you," he repeated, this time more indignant and contemptuous than the next. His breath was erratic and his eyebrows furrowed.

"I don't know how to say goodbye."

I could feel tears stinging in my eyes as I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. He turned around slowly and tenderly - soon walking out to his car. I watched him climb into it without even giving me one last glance. The car drove away into the vast, virtually invisible road concealed by the impenetrable darkness that now had consumed me and my surroundings.

Oddly enough though, the storm in me fell silent because for once I was at peace. I knew he never loved me the way I loved him. Every single flirtatious syllable he spoke had been completely and utterly artificial since the very first hour we met.

How I had yearned for him - how I had begged and pleaded for him, how my strength had fallen at the foot of my door when he walked away, how at the last I could only whimper,

"I knew it."

And
in the end
all I learned
was how
to be strong
alone.

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Oooh intense. Thank you for reading this and voting/commenting, it means so so much (: