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But my eyes start to drop, and the words on the page blur together.
When I wake up, the apartment is quiet, but it’s still early.
I check the front room, and Reece has moved all his stuff and tidied up.
Everything’s back to normal.
Bliss.
Monday mornings used to be a drain, but I enjoy getting up and going to work — probably because there was a time when I never thought I’d be able to do anything like that.
There might be hard days, but I try to be grateful for everything I can, and that includes work.
What I do now might not be what I once imagined when studying for my A Levels, but it’s something I’m proud of. Going to university and being away from Mum wasn’t something I could consider after coming out of rehab. I wasn’t strong enough yet.
Being healthy was the focus, so I looked for a job to keep me busy and support myself. And that’s grown and afforded me the opportunity to rebuild my life and find my independence. Answering calls in the sales room was about all I could do at the beginning. Now, I run the sales team of the same company I started with.
The morning goes by quickly, and because of the mess that was last night, I pop out for lunch — not something I indulge in often.
My semi-regular coffee shop down the high street has a great selection of pastries and fresh lunches, and the coffee’s good, too.
I round the corner, hope there’s not a queue out the door, and smile that there’s no line.
But my smile is wiped from my face as I see who’s leaving the shop.
I stutter to a stop as I drink him in.
Everything about him is the same, and the vision of him spears me through my heart.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It can’t be Jeremy.
No.
It’s my imagination, the time of year, getting back from Cornwall, and my mind is playing tricks, especially after conjuring the vision of him last night.
He’s been gone for years. Or rather, I’ve assumed he’s been gone. Our paths haven’t crossed even though I’ve not moved. The temptation to go and see if he was still living at his family house was crippling to start with. Having the possibility of seeing him so close was like my own form of personal torture. He was just like the drink or the drugs — an addiction and a temptation that tested me beyond comfort.
I begged Mum to move away when I came out of rehab so I wouldn’t have to fight that pull as well as everything else. That was the one thing she wouldn’t allow. I think she knew it was all because of Jeremy.
It’s a small town — her home, our home — and she wouldn’t be pushed out by my broken heart and the trail of devastation it left in its wake.
It took weeks to convince myself that he wouldn’t simply be waiting at the end of the street to stalk me when I got home. Of course, he wasn’t. Weeks turned to months, and the fear of what seeing him would do to me faded.
I got stronger, and I became braver to the idea of seeing him, confident that it wouldn’t send me over the edge or ruin my progress and recovery.
And now, he’d only slip into my mind on occasion — but he still did.
Seeing him, if only from afar and only for a moment, was like a kick to the guts. It snatched the air from my lungs and left me paralysed. And I hated that after all this time and all my hard work, he still had that effect on me.
I watch him leave before entering to grab my lunch, my head in a daze of memories and longings.
For the rest of the day, thoughts of Jeremy Archer cloud my mind. I’m distracted — how could I not be? The one saving grace in all of this is that I don’t find myself reaching for a drink or something worse to help. It’s a relief that I draw strength from and cling to it with daggered nails.
When I get home, I go to the small wooden box I keep on the windowsill in my bedroom and open the lid. Inside are over a dozen shiny round coins, my sobriety chips, marking each hard-won month or year I’ve been sober. I pick out my most recent one, three years, and want to put it around my neck like a talisman against temptation.
For the next couple of days, I avoid doing much of anything except work and make sure there’s no reason I need to venture out. It might be weak, but I want to make sure I’m ready for the possibility that Jeremy Archer is back. However, it has put me in a bad mood, and I can sense the need to withdraw in on myself.
