My Love, My Drug, My Release

Chapter 26: Hidden

Okay, so this is sort of how I imagined Jackson, feel free to keep picturing him how you like, I just didn't have anything else to use as the chapter image. Happy reading!

I didn't come back down at all that night, not even to say goodbye to our guests. I hoped Keith would understand. Even after all I'd done, all I said, I left the kitchen feeling used, wondering who had seduced whom. 

My room still smelled of the Rolling Stone, especially my sheets. The air in his lungs was probably tinted grey from all the fags and joints he smoked. Laying on my back under the sheets, I pretended he was still beside me, keeping me company, a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth. It made me feel less alone.

 I'd taken off those tight jean shorts, and my knee-highs (they were starting to cut off the circulation to my lower legs), but made sure to put on a baggy shirt. Even though I longed to sleep naked, soak in what was left of Keith on my sheets, Paul slipping into my room over and over unannounced had ruined that luxury. Was that abuse? Did I have the right to privacy in my own bed? Perhaps not. It was his house, after all, he paid the bills. Maybe it was entitled of me to assume that my bedroom was sacred territory. 

This train of thinking was not conducive to sleep, but I didn't have the mental fortitude to alter it, so I just sat up, resigning myself to a night of insomnia. 

I walked out into the hall, and, against my better judgment, pressed my ear to my stepparents' door. Beyond it, I could hear Linda's sighing exhale, Paul's baritone, grunting snore, and Mary's occasional sleep coughs. The city air wasn't good for her tiny lungs. All of them were probably deep into REM, enjoying the land of dreams. Fuck 'em. 

Downstairs, I paced from kitchen to living room to foyer and back to kitchen, thinking about Yoko and Brandon and Jack, Jack most of all. His birthday was only a few weeks away. Growing up, it annoyed him that we were born just six weeks apart. He said I always stole his thunder. It was rubbish though; Dad never failed to go absolutely bonkers with presents. There was one thing Felix Foxwell was never short on, and that disposable income. And, since his trade was publishing, he'd always give us a book as well, to broaden our minds. Linda loved his infinite intellect. And his bottomless pockets.

"Why did you leave, Jackson?" I asked the wall clock, which ticked on, indifferent to my suffering. "Why didn't you take me with you?"

A thought crawled into my brain, something Jack had shown me, an event I couldn't believe I'd forgotten. Well, it wasn't that I'd 'forgotten' it, it was just that so much else had happened right after, and in such rapid succession, that it got buried. Maybe that's why he called; he wanted to remind me.

I crept back upstairs, struggling to keep quiet in my haste, opening the linen cabinet. This was where he found them the last time. Underneath the heavy winter blankets, it sat, a little dinged up from being handled roughly. God, people never fucking changed, did they?

Please excuse how short this is; I plan on update again either today or certainly tomorrow because this is such a cliffhanger, and the next chapter will develop it directly. Thanks for your patience, can't wait for you all to read what happens next!!! ;)