Falling Daisies

Chapter 30

BEN

I couldn’t believe how much I’d messed everything up. I couldn’t believe I’d grieved in a way that had pushed the girl I loved so far away from me that I was never going to get her back. I couldn’t believe I’d fucked up this badly.

My grief for Daisy had been real, I felt so guilty for leaving her to go through those final moments without anyone and I tried to tell myself I was a bad person and just needed to push Lucy away too; before I ended up hurting her as well. I had never wanted to say any of those things to her at the railway. I didn’t mean any of them! I just needed her to see she was better off without me...

I’d considered going the same way but what would that have achieved? Just another dead body to remind everyone that life is precious and fragile and can be gone so quickly if we’re not careful. Plus I didn’t want to die.

Yet it was killing me every day. Just to remember that look in her eye, that last way I had seen her looking, like I had stabbed her right in the chest, was a vision that haunted both my dreams and nightmares although lately they had merged to become one of the same that I couldn’t tell the difference.

At first I had just tried to focus on Daisy. I figured if I thought of her and her death then I could keep torturing myself with the guilt and then I’d be able to keep remembering that what I had done had been for the best. Yet every time I’d vision her, she would just morph into Lucy, until I finally accepted it and just stopped trying to fight her image from coming.

I allowed myself to think of every inch of her body I had kissed. I thought of how every part of her felt to the touch. I thought of the sound of her laughter and the way her nose crinkled when she was thinking or confused. I let myself be consumed by the image of her sleeping - which wasn’t some pretty slumber where she was all content, she thrashed about and snored and slept with her mouth wide open, but it was cute and I loved it. I loved her.

What had I done?

I had spent the past few months in this state. Just wallowing and wondering what she was doing every second of the day whilst I listened to the songs she used to love and let myself be miserable. I hadn’t cried though. I hadn’t cried at all. It wasn’t that I was a guy and too proud to cry... I just couldn’t. I still felt numb and knowing I had lost her paralysed me; a life without her was not what I wanted.

But what life did I have now anyway? When I wasn’t listening to music I was writing it. I had dug up my guitar from the loft and just sat and wrote. I wrote song after song and they were all for her. The lyrics were dumb but at least through singing about her I could feel connected in some way.

I picked up my guitar and strummed a couple of bars as I started to sing the latest song I’d been working on.

When you see my face how do you feel?

Because right now you make me doubt what’s real.

All these feelings burning deep

Shush, your secrets I hope to keep

Until I die.

You took my hand and you held it tight

You held me close,

You saw forever in sight

But I saw darkness and we fell down.

I’m not just going to walk away from this

Without as much as a goodbye kiss