Chapter 19: Red

"Remembering him comes in flash backs, in echo's. Tell myself it's time now got to let go…."

They say it takes a second to say hello and a lifetime to say goodbye. I wish I had known that sooner so I could never have said hello.

Remembering him comes in flash backs, wave after wave till I'm drowning, gasping for air.

His name was Luke Irons.

I met Luke when I was innocent. It sounds silly to say but back then when someone told me something, I believed it. Back when I thought that people rarely had secret agendas and falling in love was painless and easy. But no one told me that once you fell sooner or later you had to hit the ground.

Luke was a senior and went to a different school but that made it more exciting or so I told myself in the days after I met him.

I'd snuck out with Alice and Amanda to a party, I can't even remember whose it was now. It's like time has slowly eroded bit and pieces of my memory, all the small details that made up that night, yet I still remember the first time I saw him.

I had lost Alice in the crowd and was looking for where Amanda had got to when I felt someone's hands snake across my waist. Usually this would have caused some alarm but as soon as I turned around all thoughts escaped my mind.

He was beautiful. He had closely cropped dirty blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes. I could feel his strong arms as they encircled me and pulled me to him.

"I haven't been able to take my eyes off you the whole night." He whispered in my ear causing me to blush.

Was this really happening? I remember thinking excitedly. I couldn't believe this guy was saying something like this to me.

You can meet people in the strangers circumstances, in choice encounters that can only last a second yet change your life forever.

"My name's Luke." He had smiled and just like that began the memory of a night I would never be able to fully forget.

"Baby, baby, when we first met. I never felt something so strong. You were like my lover and my best friend. All wrapped into one, with a ribbon on it"

The rest of the night is a collage of images, us dancing, him getting me a drink, talking for hours about everything and anything. It's a blur of colours and sounds in my mind. When I close my eyes I can still feel his hands on the small of my back as he leaned in close to say something to me over the loud music.

Luke had offered to take me home and at the time I remember Alice and Amanda's worried looks but I had brushed it off and gone with him. Believing in plunging in the unknown and just having some fun.

My house was only a few blocks away so Luke had offered to walk me home. We ended up lying on the grass in a nearby park. I remember I had never laughed so hard and now I don't even know what we had talked about specifically.

I'd screamed with shock as the sprinklers had come on, he'd dragged me to the nearest one lifting me up on his shoulder and running through the jet of ice cold water so we has both gotten soaked to the bone.

I had kissed boys before; little pecks on the lips or during spin the bottle but nothing like that night. Nothing that really mattered.

That night I had cuddled up close to him and smiled in genuine happiness at how I could be so lucky. We had kissed repeatedly soft slow kisses that turned to hungry ones.

His soft whispers had filled my ears as he had kissed me over and over telling me how beautiful I was that he couldn't believe his luck.

Looking back they were just that, whispered sweet nothings that didn't mean anything because there had been no weight to them, no real meaning. Luke had just told me what I thought I had wanted to hear.

There are words and then there are actions but at the time I wasn't to know this.

I remember the first time he told me he had loved me. We were lying in bed our bodies entangled and he had told me as he had sighed gathering me up to him and telling me just how much.

We loved each other in the way that only teenagers can, with total and complete abandon. The word stopped and ended with us and we thought of only today.

Luke told me about his dreams. His parents and how he didn't really get along with his dad who thought he was a complete failure. He was scared because he wasn't sure if he could get into college and was scared of what the future held.

I wanted to protect him to make sure nothing ever hurt him. I was selfless in a way that even scared myself. I put so much of myself in that relationship I drowned in it, putting him above and beyond anything including myself.

We fought intensely and made up just as reverently. I hadn't had a boyfriend before but he had had plenty of girlfriends. Maybe I felt I had something to prove, to show everyone around us that I was the one for him. There were always girls, girls flirting with him, girls texting him, girls calling him.

Looking back on it I realized just how insecure I had been. There was always something in me deep down that told me I shouldn't trust him. With every new confrontation about another issue he would quickly dispel all my fears by some easily made promise of love and faithfulness. Back then I think I wanted so much to believe that I would be enough for someone that I did believe him.

He had the rare ability to make you feel insecure in yourself yet secure enough in the hope that you were enough for him.

I look back and think how stupid I was but then I know if I went back I would have still believed him because that's what you do when you're in love, isn't it? You believe them, you trust them blindly because without them you feel you're not whole, you feel like you're not anything until someone loves you. Which is silly because you are already people are already whole.

Then it happened.

Luke had disappeared one day while I had been on vacation. We had promised we would call each other everyday yet he still hadn't answered my calls all day and it was now nearly nine at night.

The next morning he called me and told me it was over. He'd spend the night with some girl and he was so sorry. He was so drunk and he didn't know what had happened. He muttered some things about never being able to forgive himself , that he didn't deserve me.

I cried and cried wanting to know why. But every explanation he gave me wasn't enough to dull the now intense pain I could feel in my chest., the pounding of my heart I could hear in my ears and what felt like a tightening vice around my throat.

A week later I heard about another girl at a different party. Suddenly he became a stranger, someone I didn't even recognize as I took a look at the person he had somehow always been.

"I loved you with a fire red, now it's turning blue and you say sorry like the angel, heaven let me think was you."

Luke was like an angel whose words were so sweet they washed away any reason. It wouldn't work out because he had finally realized he didn't really love me anymore he explained. That somehow this had all been my fault.

Apparently Luke found someone else, someone he'd known before and what he felt for her was stronger than what he felt for me and he felt it was better if we just ended things.

Suddenly this person who had once told me I meant everything to them was now telling me I wasn't enough anymore.

I'm ashamed to admit it but I begged I pleaded for him to give me a chance. I told him I could forgive him that this was what love was; it was about forgiveness and second chances.

How could someone just turn off their feelings for you like that? Having someone tell you they don't love you anymore was like sinking into quick sand. I knew it was a losing battle yet I struggled with all my might to make him change his mind.

You can't make someone love you if they don't, especially if they probably never did in the first place.

"And all of a sudden, when you left. I didn't know how to follow, it's like a shot

that spun me around and now my heart left. I feel so empty and hollow."

"What about me?" I had sobbed. My tears were uncontrollable now. He had told me if I continued crying he would hang up, one of the countless times I had called him, so my tears streamed now quietly over my face as I tried to gasp in air and continue to keep him on the phone.

"What about me?"

There has been a long pause and suddenly I had heard him laugh.

"What about you?"

"I never gave myself to another the way I gave it you. You don't even recognize the ways you hurt me do you?"

After that the black walls came crashing in around me and I had felt like I really was drowning. It felt like a physical blow. Like someone had taken a hammer and slammed it into my chest.

The months that I spent after that was bleak, a lot of time spent in bed. I stopped contact with everyone I knew. Alice and Amanda were the only ones who didn't give up on me.

That was the summer my grandmother had gotten really sick so my parents hadn't been around that much and honestly I hadn't told them anything though like all parents they could sense something was wrong. Nate could sense it too I think but like everything else, I shut everyone out.

It's been a year and I still get that feeling in my chest like someone grabbed my heart and is squeezing it, especially when I hear a song or see a movie that we had seen together. Heart break is like the slow unravelling of ones sanity. A year of blind trust and adoration of someone who easily threw you away.

Love is blind and it will blind you. Reason is something that is forgotten and I learned that if there was one thing you could count on it was the ability of people to change their minds.

School was thankfully devoid of Luke since we hadn't gone to the same school I counted it as a blessing thought rumors quickly flew around and soon I heard stories.

He had gotten a new girlfriend, he had dumped me for various reasons, nasty things he had told people about me, intimate things that shouldn't have been shared with others.

I had cried and cried in the girl's bathroom for ages the first time I had heard the things he had said about me. Slowly I just stopped feeling, messing classes more and more.

"There's a side to you that I never knew never knew and the things that you said they were never true, never true. And in the games you'd play you would always win."

Luke's friends who I had hung out with now suddenly avoided me if they saw me on the streets or snickered. I couldn't understand how they could just ignore me and not try to tell Luke that we had been perfect together.

With that final blow I had plunged fully into the darkness.

One night I was so off my face drunk I didn't recognize Alice and Amanda until they had shaken me up and forced me to gulp back some water. They always were there. They listened to my endless ramblings, held my hand when I cried and were brutally honest. Telling me the things I didn't want to hear but needed to hear. That's not to say they were cruel they just told me how I had let Luke change me into something I knew I wasn't and that if I let him ruin my life he had won.

I remember thinking at the time hadn't he already won? I was at my lowest.

Alice and Amanda two friends, had dragged me out the front door of that party and that's when I had seen him, in my drunken haze. My Luke had his tongue down some girls throat and I had run up to him tears in my ears screaming.

Luke had looked down coldly and gone back to kissing the random.

I tried to pull him away from her, screaming how I still loved him and how could he do this to me.

Luke had pushed me off and glared at me. "God, you're so pathetic."

His whole face had changed right in front of my eyes. Gone were the once bright blue eyes that softened when they'd leaned in close to kiss me. Suddenly they were cold and hard as they snared at me.

I came to realize the person I had thought I loved really only existed in my mind.

"Go home slut."

People had gathered around us by then and laughed at his words. I looked around at the group of strangers and some of his friends and felt stung.

How could this person who I had loved with all my heart say such cruel things to me. Do something like that to me?

I ran down the street not looking back.

I remember sitting on the bench in the very bench the first night we had met. Horrible thoughts ran though my head over and over.

I spent a year of my life with someone who only pretended to love me.

I loved someone who didn't even care about me

How can you be so cruel when all I did was try and love you right?

It's a blur but then there were gentle arms around me, picking me up and carrying me towards the car.

Nate was suddenly by my side in the car and wrapped his arms around me.

"Thank god you're safe Lex." He had said. No explanations needed, he was my brother and he just wanted to make sure I was okay.

When I thought of the worry I had caused everyone I let myself cry. I buried myself into his jacket and wept loud slobbery tears that soaked into his shirt. The kind of tears that reverberated throughout my whole body shaking me till I could feel nothing else.

Nate murmured something to whoever was driving and then we were home.

When we got home Alice and Amanda were there, they looked so worried and wrapped me in a blanket asking over and over if I was okay.

I don't think I'll ever trust anyone again I thought numbly.

Nate promised not to tell our parents, they had just flown back to see our grandmother, it seemed she'd taken a turn for the worse.

I think of those months as slowly dying. I had let myself give into the dark and become someone I didn't even recognize and could see the toll it had on everyone who loved me.

I thought of my grandmother and the pain she must be going through. I thought of how someone had it worse than me and I hadn't even experienced a physical pain. I thought of my parents and how I couldn't worry them when they had already so much on their minds.

It's been a year and I still feel my eyes well up when I hear that song. I look down at it now as it plays on my iPod, unable to stop the memories from pouring through.

I should delete this I think to myself as I look down at the playlist I had stumbled upon on my old iPod. It's funny how a single song can send me back to a place in the past I thought I had escaped from.

The feelings of loneliness, abandon and hatred all come back. I had spent months trying to forget him.

I dig it out where I had buried it in my closet, under my old sweater. I turn the piece of paper around and stare at it for a moment letting myself look at the person I was before.

I quietly open my door and tip toe towards the stairs. It's the middle of the night and the house is eerily quiet. I couldn't sleep, it's just one of those nights where i woke up dreaming of old memories, things better left alone. Dreams are a side effect of heart break i like to think, they take you back to a reality where everything you thought you wanted is right there in front of you.

Only when you wake up from the dream do you realise none of it was real and then reality hits you in the face like a ice cold shards of ice.

Usually on the few nights when it gets this bad and i feel my chest tightening i try to listen to some music to calm me down. My iPod was dead but i have found an old one in my drawers, i must have left it here last time i was here. And that's when i had found the playlist.

Sleep was something else that had been taken away from me. The only moments of rest were now clouded with images and insomnia. My body refusing to go to sleep. It had gotten okay over the past few months, so good i didn't need the sleeping pills anymore. I curse silently, i should have brought them just in case.

The months following what had happened had left me drained mentally and physically with feelings of self loathing and biting sadness. I couldn't feel in my own bed, i couldn't eat, i couldn't focus on anything or anyone.

I glance at Alice and Amanda's closed room door as i walk past and can't help but feel a deep fondness for my friends. Without them I could never had gotten to where I am. Alice had been the one who had come to my house every single night to help me sleep. Amanda had been the one to answer my calls at three in the morning when i had woken up from the dreams. It was a never ending pattern being so tired i would fall asleep at five in the morning and then my body would push me from the abyss of oblivion back to reality in less than a few hours.

I quietly walk past Todd's room and I can't help but feel guilt. The part of me I tried to bury deep down still believes in love. The little crush I have on Todd lets me think that love for two people can be possible and I feel relief I can still have these feelings for another person. But I can't imagine putting him through that kind of hurt if something went wrong or letting myself be susceptible to heart break again.

I'm not saying Todd would ever do that but losing him in anyway would still hurt a lot.

Deep down I can also feel I'm not ready. If something were to happen I don't think I would be able to commit because the voices in my head would always wonder what if it didn't work out?

I think of the reason I had focused on Todd in the first place. It was probably because of Alice and Amanda. I didn't' want them worrying about me. We usually laughed off my dramatic declarations that I would never fall for anyone again but I didn't want them to think I actually felt those things, because I did.

Having a crush just distracted me from all the things I had to deal with the past year and it made sure my friends didn't worry about my sanity, as I am sure they had been doing ever since I had fallen into the dark pit of depression.

I creep closer to the stairs and past Josh's room. I get angry then as I think of Josh and how that pig goes around without a care in the world toying with peoples emotions and kissing whoever he likes.

There are certain traits of recklessness in Josh that remind me of Luke which is another reason I hate to admit it but I feel prejudiced towards him.

Is that why you felt something when he kissed you?

The thought is there before I can dispel it. Is that why I feel some sort of attraction towards Josh? Because he reminds me of Luke and the love that I started to depend on like a drug?

I quickly shake my head as if doing so will make the thought dislodge itself from my brain.

There is an attraction between us which I couldn't deny but that didn't mean I was stupid enough to think it would lead anywhere. Especially with someone I had very little respect for. If I couldn't even think of committing to someone as thoughtful and sweet as Todd I sure as hell wouldn't be doing it with someone like Josh.

I used to think loving someone was looking past their flaws. That feeling too much wasn't a bad thing, it meant you cared about people. I used to believe in love. The real head over heels, prince and princess, enchanting evening kind.

That was before I learnt about the nature of people.

I believed that for people like my brother and my friends it was a sure possibility. They were people who were lucky in love and when they found someone I knew they would be strong enough to handle the kind of greatness that is born out of it.

I, on the other hand, didn't trust myself with it at all. I had seen the person I could become when faced with it and I hadn't liked her at all.

I don't trust people easily. I don't think love is like a fairytale and I don't think what doesn't kill you makes you stronger because what didn't kill me never made me strong, never at all.

Something in me broke that day. Some child like innocence that I don't think I'll ever get back and even though the logical part of my mind knows not everyone is the same it's not to say I ever want to be vulnerable like that for anyone ever again.

I hold a lighter up to the photograph in the back porch. And slowly the flame engulfed the Lexie in the photo. The one who is smiling and has her arm around a smiling blond haired blue-eyed boy. Someone who isn't mine anymore and never will be. Someone I wasted my love on.

I feel tears escape from the corners of my eyes as I watch the flames slowly engulf us and I let the picture slowly fall to the ground.

I watch it nearly burnt up and I wonder how long it will really take me to get over Luke. If there will come a day where I wont think of his face and not cry. After all he was my first love no matter how it had ended.

I look at the photo and I cant help but smile a little sadly. The photo was stuck in a moment of time when I was happy. When the world wasn't so heartless and I thought I knew what happiness was. How quickly the flames had now nearly wiped from existence the only trace left of that happiness.

Even when the people in the photos change the memories it holds still stay the same. I wish there was a way to burn all the memories I still had in my head , the moving pictures of us together. I wish I didn't look for his face in every crowd still.

" I threw us into the flames. Well it felt something die cause I knew it was the last time."

The tears slowly trickle down my face flowing freely now. I wondered if it was possible to cry this much?

And then I hear a creak on the steps as I whirl around and before I know it he's there like I somehow knew he would be.

"Trying to burn down the house?" He jokes softly and then seeing the hurt on my face walks forward and envelops me in a warm embrace. One that lets me know I'm safe and he isn't going anywhere.

My earphones dislodge from my ears and they along with my iPod clatter to the ground at my feet but I make no move to pick them up. As I stand and let myself be held, closing my eyes, I can still hear the faint song still playing through the earphones at my feet.

"Next time I'll be braver, I'll be my own savior

Standing on my own two feet

I won't let you close enough to hurt me, no

I won't ask you, you to just desert me

I can't give you what you think you gave me

It's time to say goodbye to turning tables, turning tables"


AN: Whoa whoa whoa! I know that was an intense chapter but it was necessary so people could see why Lexie is the way she is around people and especially around Josh. This chapter is very near and dear to my heart and did take me the right time and place to write it, if that makes sense. Just so everyone isn't confused the bits in quotations and italics are songs that are playing on Lexie's iPod as she is listening. Songs have the power to transport people back to another moment in time and that's what is happening to Lexie, she's remembering the past. This was a pretty intense chapter to write and im still not sure if i'm happy with all of it. I may change it who knows but i wanted to get a chapter in for you guys since you have been amazing and thank you for your lovely comments and reviews. I'm glad you haven't forgotten and are liking the story so far =] I've had a burst of inspiration so i'll be writing more. With awesome readers like you guys i won't quit don't worry we will get through and see what becomes of these characters. Thanks again for all your reviews and comments, you guys make me smile, seriously. Let me know what you think I'm really keen to hear from you guys im not sure how well this chapter turned out so let me know what you thought. I suggest a lot of chocolate and maybe some cartoons to go get our happy buzz back on, i know ill need it. Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Also the chapter title 'Red' refers to the expression 'looking through rose tinted glasses' when love is blind and you are oblivious to others flaws. It is also a correlation between the colour and the feeling of love. Many people have described love as being the colour red and loss as the colour grey or blue so here red is simply referring to the colour red as someone in love would see it, romantic, intense, bright, hopeful and also angry and passionate. Well that's just my rendition but really you can think of it however you wish to.

Also a special mention of the songs (disclaimer) the wonderful song writers and performers who wrote these songs have known love and heart break. These songs are so beautiful and portray such strong emotions they should be shared with everyone.
(In no specific order)

Adele - Set Fire to the Rain

Adele- Turning Tables

Rihanna- Rehab

OneRepublic - Apologize

song at the beginning is - Taylor Swift - Red

Okay i have really talked or typed for far too long I'm outta here in search of sugar.