Owned: An Alpha Anthology (54 page)

He takes a step toward me, his arm out. He’s wearing nothing but a pair of jeans and they hang loosely from his skinny frame. His dark curly hair’s a mess and hangs over one eye. He looks like a mixture of Jim Morrison and Michael Hutchence, and if I were gay, if I did have a thing for men, I’m sure I’d find him attractive, but I’m not, and I don’t.

"But you don’t even do that, do you Reed?" He puts his hands on his hips and I know this is going to end in an argument. I’m mentally and physically drained. All I want to do is to crawl into my lonely bed and dream about her. The only time I get peace, absolute peace, is when I dream of her. The sensation of her lips on me, her taste, the sensation of her small hands on me, her smell. When I dream, it’s all so real and that’s where I want to be right now. Not standing here, having this argument with Jet, again.

Every time we’re due to spend time apart he does this. Whenever we end a tour or have a break from recording and I’m heading back to England, he asks me again. Every time I say no, and it ends in an argument.

"You don’t fuck them, not really. You sit back and watch, you dish out your orders while you touch yourself, but you hardly ever let them touch you and when you do, it’s usually their mouth you fuck or you jack yourself off all over them. Why can’t they touch you? Why can’t anyone touch you?"

I take a swig from the bottle of water in my hand. "Jet, fuck off back to your own room. My answer’s the same as it is every other fucking time you start with this shit. Now fuck off and leave me in peace." He takes another step closer. "Just a chance, Reed, just one chance. I know we could be so good together. I just want a chance."

"No," I shout. "No, my answer’s no now, and it’ll always be no. I’ll walk away, Jet. If you keep this up, I’ll walk away from it all, you, the band, all of it. I’m not working with this hanging over us. You either get your head around the fact that it’s never gonna happen or I’m fucking off for good and I mean it this time. My life’s fucked up enough. I don’t need your shit adding to it." His shoulders slump as he stands in front of me. I feel bad, but I’m still pissed off and I mean what I’ve said. I’m thirty-two years old and I’m so sick of this life that I’m leading. I love the band and the music, but everything outside of that is seriously fucked. The sex, the women, the parties, all of it means nothing. It’s all superficial bullshit and I hate it, and the people that are part of it. I just want to go home to my family and step away from all of it and the last thing I need is Jet and his ‘let’s have a relationship’ drama going on, while I’m at home. I don’t need his phone calls and texts, begging me to just let us try. I want to sleep and I want to dream, and right now, I just need him to go.

"One day, one day you’ll understand," he says through gritted teeth. "You’ll love someone so fucking much that it’s painful and then you’ll get it."

"No, no I won’t. Not again, I won’t. See, I’ve been there. I know what a lying, spiteful, deceitful little cunt love is and I won’t ever go there again. So you just need to make up your mind, you either stop with all this bollocks and we come back in September, or we leave tomorrow and announce the end of the band, ‘cause I’m done this time. I’m seriously done."

"But I love you, I fucking love you, Reed."

I’m done, I can’t do this anymore. "Get out, get out of my room and stay out of my life. I’ll sort out a separate flight back to London tomorrow. I don’t want you to call, text or email me. I want no contact with you, whatsoever. I’m done Jet, I just want some peace. Now, get out of my room and stay out of my fucking life."

He looks at me for a few seconds and I have no idea what the look in his eyes means. He starts to nod his head. "Your call Reed, just remember that this was your call." He turns and leaves the room without looking back. I screw the cap on the water bottle and launch it at the door as he shuts it behind him. Fucking drama queen. I love him, but he does my fucking head in sometimes. I lock the bedroom door, pick up my bottle of water and climb into bed. I turn on the telly with the remote control and flick through the channels. Notting Hill is playing on one of the film channels and that’s all it takes for my mind to drift to her.

We went to see this film together. I moaned, but she reminded me that I’d promised to go with her when she came with me to see the Green Mile, which, she had ended up loving and oddly enough, I didn’t end up hating Notting Hill quite as much as I thought I would. I leave the film on, I don’t usually, any other night it’d be off… gone. I go out of my way to avoid anything, music, films, places, anything and anywhere that might remind me of her, or take me back to that night. But after everything else that’s happened tonight so far, it seems a bit pointless.

I pile my pillows on top of each other, turn off the lights, lay back and attempt to watch the film. It takes all of twenty seconds before my mind starts to wander back to her. December the thirtieth, nineteen ninety-nine was the last time I’d seen her in person. I left her at the end of her drive. We’d spent the night making love in the back of my brother’s car. We had a spot in the local woods where we’d park, climb into the back and worship each other’s bodies the best we could through our clothes. I loved the rare occasions that we were able to share a bed and I could get her completely naked. Five times, that’s all it happened. I’ve worshiped and fantasised about this girl for most of my life and I’d only seen her completely naked five times. I’d only gotten to fall asleep and wake up with her in my arms twice, and yet all these years on, I was still desperate to have that experience again. Despite what she did, despite what her actions caused, I was still in love with her.

Her family had totally forbidden her from seeing me. According to them, I was from a rough family and the fact that we lived on the local council estate didn’t meet with their approval either. So, we had spent a year sneaking around, seeing each other behind their backs. My brothers were good, Ty and Jordan both had their own places and let us borrow a bedroom for a few hours and we even stayed over at Ty’s twice, but it wasn’t enough. We wanted more. We wanted to be together all the time, every day, so we set our plan in motion. I was at college studying music, but we needed to get some money together so we could try to get away. Tyler gave me a job as a labourer with his building firm and I played the local pubs and bars in the evenings and on a Sunday afternoon. Meebs was still at school. We didn’t want to break the law, so we decided not to leave until she was sixteen. She had a part-time job in a clothing shop at the local shopping centre and she worked there two evenings and every weekend. We saved every penny.

The plan was for Miles to drop us at Guildford Station that night and we were going to get the train to Cornwall from there. We chose Cornwall as we’d both always wanted to learn to surf. We loved the beach and we thought, hoped, that it’d be the last place her parents and arsehole of a brother would ever think to look for us. She was going to leave a note, telling them that we’d gone to London. We thought we could lie low in Cornwall for a while, see if we could pick up some work and then once the fuss had died down, we could head over to Europe and backpack our way around. Meebs would do bar work, I’d do whatever I could pick up, but was hoping that music would be a part of whatever I did.

We made love in the car that last night, we were both so excited and so in fucking love, that I still can’t understand why she didn’t show. I kissed her at the end of her drive and she told me she’d go to the ends of the earth with me, and that she couldn’t wait for us to spend the rest of our lives travelling and just being together. She kissed me one last time and walked up the drive to that big, fuck off mansion she lived in with her mum, dad and Pearce, her prick of a brother. By the time I’d walked to the end of her street and gotten back in Miles’ car she had texted me and told me again how much she loved me. She texted me a good morning the next day and told me she was going shopping with Sophie, and then nothing. I didn’t hear another thing. She didn’t show, she just didn’t show. I called her and I called Sophie but got nothing. I finally got a hold of my best mate Josh, who was Sophie’s brother and he told me that his mum had rushed off to meet up with them and they were going to some millennium party at a fancy hotel that night.

I have no idea what happened that day to make her change her mind, but it must’ve been something big, because she never showed and I never heard from her again.

Miles could see I was devastated. He knew how much I loved her and how hard I’d worked to pull our plan together. So, he took me to the pub and we had a few drinks. It was the last night of the millennium and the place was mobbed, so at around nine, we left the pub and went to a party at his mate’s house. It was rammed, people everywhere. The place stunk of weed and as soon as midnight was done with, I wanted to go home. I was tired, pissed off and had a banging headache. I wanted to go home, charge my phone that was now dead and hopefully wake up in the morning to a million missed calls and messages from Meebs telling me we were still on and this had all been one great big fucking balls up. I never made it home, not that night, not any night since.

We were about half way across town when I noticed the blue light flash behind us. "The old Bill’s up your arse Miles, will you be over the limit?" I’d seen him drinking at various times during the night, surely they would’ve all topped up in his system and he’d be over the limit by now.

"Fuck," he said out loud and banged his palm down onto the steering wheel. I looked at him, he was completely freaking out.

"What’s wrong, did you have a tote on that joint earlier as well?"

He shook his head before looking at me. "It’s a cut and shut Reed, the car’s fucking dodgy. If they pull me over, I’m looking at doing time." His eyes were back on the road and his foot was now back down on the pedal as we roared forward.

"What the fuck, Miles. Why? Why the fuck are you driving around in a cut and shut?"

"Because Reed, because for once I wanted something nice around me. For once I wanted something that everybody else was jealous of. I didn’t want to be that poor kid whose mum got murdered by her drug dealer. I didn’t want to be Miles, you know, his dad’s the piss head that used to be in the SAS." He grips the wheel tighter as he shouts. We’re travelling down country lanes and as I look down at the speedo, I can see that we’re hitting tops of one hundred and twenty, one thirty miles an hour. The blue flashing lights of the police car are still following in the distance behind us.

"Slowdown Miles, slow the fuck down."

"No, no Reed, I can’t. I can’t get caught. Don’t you see, if I get caught, I’ll get nicked. I’ll probably go to prison, and all those arseholes that talk about us, the people that look down their noses and think they’re better than us, that think we’re scum, like your girlfriend’s mum and dad, I’ll just be making them right. I’ll just be making things worse for you."

Then everything seemed to happen in slow motion. A car came toward us, I think Miles tried to swerve and we ended up going down an embankment. That’s when the car split in two. The back end of the car rolled and pulled the front with it. A branch came through the window and I ducked down in my seat, Miles didn’t and snap, his neck was broken. We came to a stop with the car on its side. I could still hear the sirens for a while, then people shouting and above it all, while I lay trapped by my seat belt, staring into the eyes of my dead brother, I could hear the Chili Peppers sing about their lonely view.

Physically, I walked away unscathed. I had some bruising, some scratches and the nylon of the seat belt caused a friction burn across my neck and chest but other than that, I was fine.

The car was the result of two insurance write-offs being salvaged and welded together to make one car. Miles was well aware of what he was purchasing, but he didn’t care. He was driving around in a thirty thousand pound car that he’d paid five thousand for, and that’s all that had mattered to him. His safety, the safety of his passengers or anyone else on the road was inconsequential to him. He’d driven my nieces and nephews around in that car. He’d given Tyler’s wife Jenna, a lift in that car when she was pregnant with their little boy Ethan.

As well as the details about the car, the coroner’s report also concluded that he was three times over the legal blood alcohol limit and traces of cannabis and MDMA, otherwise known as ecstasy were found in his system. It turned out, I didn’t know my brother at all.

And because I’d been in a bit of trouble with the police when I was fourteen, I spent three months locked up on remand before the courts decided there was nothing they could charge me with. I had no idea the car was illegal and no idea that my brother was over the limit. Well, maybe with regard to the drink, but I had no idea he’d smoked weed and had popped a pill. I knew he was no angel, none of us were. We were of the generation, and from an area where doing a line of charlie and popping a few pills on a Saturday night, was as normal as going for a few beers and a curry. It’s just how it was. I smoked my first joint when I was about fifteen, which was old compared to a lot of the kids at my school. What we didn’t do though was get in a car and drive once we were stoned or high, ever. Apparently, my brother didn’t live by that rule and that, combined with the condition of the car we were in, cost him his life.

My heart is pounding hard as I relive all of those events. I never normally let any of those thoughts or memories come to the surface but sometimes, sometimes, I’m just too tired to keep them away and that’s exactly how I feel right now. Exhausted. I want to get back to England, spend time with my brothers, their wives and their kids. I want to walk my dogs, play golf and sometimes, spend whole days, doing absolutely nothing.