Breakdown - Tom Petty

Here Comes My Girl

She was coming back. Sometime soon, hopefully, like the two had agreed on. Tom smiled and lied down on the couch. It was a wonderful thought. All he had ever wanted since that night they met to the day she left and the time that followed, it was all going to be fulfilled. Sometime soon. It was vague enough to make him wonder, but important enough to make him eagerly seek out for the day coming. Every emotion he felt when he was with Ayla fell upon him. He was smiling with tears in his eyes. As excited as he felt, Tom also felt afraid. Then, just as these emotions had fallen upon him, they left him to be.

Time passed slowly. Tom hardly paid attention to what he ate, just that he ate. He slept away part of the day. The time he was awake was spent with more overwhelming thoughts about Ayla. He wondered if she would stand him up, but the thought was not true. She would have called him, admitted she had led him on. But she didn't call, and that said everything to Tom.

He spent the days sleeping and the nights awake. The only light came from the small ember of cigarettes. He realized, it was totally in option for him to call Ayla, but he had waited long enough to continue. He played that Fleetwood Mac record again, his mind away from the music. He kept thinking about Ayla. He wasn't surprised. She had been in his thoughts for a while. He was fine with that. The waiting, on the other hand, was getting on his nerves.

Tom shaved every so often, trying to think of ways to impress Ayla. These thoughts came to him in the dead of night, so, naturally, they were strange and implausible but appealing all the same. Things like greeting her in ways that scared him by how impulsive they would be; a kiss on the cheek may have been a bit too much, compared with a hug, but it wasn't when compared with a long, lingering kiss he was daydreaming about. It was a stupid thing, a remainder of his teenage years, over by at least a decade, though he found it hard to believe. He did need Ayla, but he could let his desires fade away as best as they could. Ayla was just a friend. That was all she had ever been. Why should he change that now when he was just regaining her trust?

The answer was simple. It came to him when he had just awoken from one of his irregular naps. His fingertips pressed against the bedside table, the wood cutting into the flesh. He didn't feel it, he was concerned deeply on the answer that had drifted into his mind. He could change whatever he and Ayla were, because, as much as he should not have cared to fool around with something he had already broken before, Tom found himself thinking trust was harder to gain back once it had been broken. But he had broken it once and was on the way to gaining it back. All it took was time, and that was all he had.

Years before he had met Ayla, he had been in a band. The Heartbreakers, which were, unfortunately, heading on a steady decline; as a side effect of Tom's excessive worrying about Ayla, he had put what they had agreed on to be a hiatus of the Heartbreakers. It was just another lie, like the ones he had said to Ayla, those many weeks ago. To Tom, they felt like years.

Sitting up in bed, he removed his fingers from the table. He closed his eyes, simply breathing for a few minutes, trying to let his thoughts calm down. The ocean waves crashed against his mind. He had failed.

His hand struck out, and the picture frame on the table fell. The smallest finger and side of his right hand stung. He knew the glass had cut into his skin, which he also knew to be freely bleeding. Tom ran his hands through his hair. It was already a tangled mess, and all he was doing was increasing that. An odd thought of there was no real difference between his hair and his relationship with Ayla was dwelled on. There really was not a difference. Tom had done the damage himself to both. The remainder had been tangled and ran through enough times already. It was a fire, burning brightly, but it could still hold some more fuel. It could still burn just as bright as it had been the first day. That thought provided him comfort for the time remaining, and he left the bedroom to sit outside.