Fading Read online

  Fading

  RACHEL SPANSWICK

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2016 Rachel Spanswick

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author, except that of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews are permitted.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 1523800615

  ISBN-13: 978-1523800612

  Acknowledgments

  Writing this book took a lot out of me. Mostly because some of this story is very close to me and the line between fiction and reality got a little blurred if I didn’t step away from it every so often. But I never could have finished it if it weren’t for the people I have surrounding me and sending me daily encouragements.

  Mum… you know I’ll never let you read it but that doesn’t stop you from supporting me one million percent and shamelessly advertising it to all your book club friends.

  To all my Facebook/Twitter friends that haven’t blocked me and my constant stream of #amwriting. The internet is one heck of a distraction.

  To my IRL friends, thanks for kind of being okay with me bailing on so many things. I’d blame it on writing this, but we all know I’m not going to start going out just because I’ve finished it.

  And to you, the reader, thank you. You make it possible for me to write.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Twenty Five

  Twenty Six

  Twenty Seven

  Twenty Eight

  Twenty Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty One

  Thirty Two

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Dedication

  To the people I love and lost.

  Prologue

  Sitting in my favourite dark corner of the room, I take a second to appreciate the silence. I don’t have a lot of quiet in my life anymore. There always seems to be something going on, whether it’s my dad or my friends, there’s always something happening that someone needs me to fix. Because that’s what I do.

  I fix things.

  Well, I fix everything for everyone else, anyway. Throw a problem at me and I can usually solve it, or at the very least I can take your mind off of it for a while. But when it comes to my own life, those problems remain as messed up as I am.

  Right on time, I get that all too familiar feeling; my stomach feels empty, my chest feels kind of hollow, my hands are restless, my mind won’t stay focused and the need is back. Do you know what it feels like to depend on something so much that your body starts disobeying you when it wants more?

  I could tell you that it’s the worst feeling in the world. I could tell you that knowing how much I’ve come to crave something makes me so weak that I’m disgusted with myself. Or I could simply tell you that I’ve tried quitting, that I’ve tried changing. But it would all be a lie.

  I love the feeling.

  I love that my body has come to need something so badly that it reminds me when it’s time. I haven’t tried quitting or changing because I don’t want to. I revel in the peace it brings me. I embrace it, simply because I can.

  So I won’t’ lie to you. I’ll tell you my story exactly how it happens. No lies, no half-truths and no skipping over things that I’m not proud of.

  Will it have a happy ending? I doubt it, but who knows?

  I don’t know and right now, I don’t really care about anything.

  Well, maybe one thing.

  I reach for my glass of water and use it to wash down the four pills that I’ve been holding in my left hand for the last thirty minutes and close my eyes as I wait for the familiar floating feeling to kick in.

  There is really nothing like it. At first you don’t even realize that anything has happened, but then you start to feel lighter, you don’t need to hold your head up, you don’t need to worry about anything because nothing matters anymore. Everything seems to slow down and finally, you can breathe. So just sit back, relax and stay numb for as long as it lasts because when it wears off, life will be there to slap you in the face and you’ll just want to do it all over again.

  One

  I guess if I’m going be completely honest with you and tell you the whole story, I need to start at the beginning.

  I wasn’t always like this; I used to be fun and happy and I was always out, surrounded by friends. But, it’s not like I went from that to an addict overnight. It took a while, one thing happened and then like a domino effect I started losing control of my life. I suppose I could have dealt with it in a number of different ways, most of which would have been a lot better for me. I could have told someone. That’s probably what I should have done. But I didn’t want to be judged.

  I just wanted everything to stop.

  I was sick and tired of everyone coming to me for help. I was fed up of everyone expecting me to do the right thing. I was bored of being the girl that everyone depended on. I didn’t want to be good anymore.

  That’s not to say I wanted to be bad. I didn’t. I still don’t. I just wanted to be able to make a mistake everyone once in a while. I wanted to blur the line between right and wrong.

  Sometimes, it doesn’t matter though, once you’ve become known as the good guy/girl, there will always be someone who expects you to stay that way, which made things a little difficult. Whenever I wanted to do something a little wrong, something that others would consider out of character or bad for me, I had to do it alone.

  If you learn anything at all from the mistakes that I’ve made and or am about to make, please, believe me when I say; don’t put yourself in the position I did. There will always be someone, a friend, a relative, a co-worker even, just someone, who will be willing to try that bad thing with you. And they won’t judge you, so don’t worry about that.

  So, the whole thing started five years ago. I was twenty one, I had just graduated University about to start working for my father’s company and I was in love.

  But sometimes, just one tiny action can change everything.

  * * *

  “So….?”

  I stretch my legs out and relax into my pillows with a smile. Lexi – my best friend, is on the phone and even though she’s dying to know something, she’ll drag it out as long as possible. Direct questions aren’t her style.

  “So what?”

  “Are you laughing at me?” She asks pretending to be offended. It would have worked if I didn’t know her so well.

  “No at all, Lex. What did you want to know?”

  “Why you and Gavin left the party so early.”

  I laugh, I can’t help it. “What else did you want to know, Lex?”

  “Whydidyounotdrink? Areyoupregnant?” She says it so fast that it comes out as two very, very long words.

  I shoot up into a sitting position; mostly out of shock, partly out of insult. “No, I’m not pregnant, are you insane?”<
br />
  “What? How is that not a reasonable thought process? You’re in a long term relationship, you recently got engaged and now you’ve suddenly stopped drinking alcohol.”

  “How about, because I’m only twenty one. How is that for an excuse?” I pull the phone away from my ear and look at is disbelievingly, as if she will somehow be able to see it.

  “Twenty one year olds have kids all the time.” She answers breezily.

  “Not this one.”

  “Right because your reproductive system wouldn’t dare the risk of embarrassing your family, right?”

  “Are you rolling your eyes at me?” I laugh only to be brought up short when my dad bursts through my door so hard that it cracks against the wall on impact. “Dad? What’s wrong?”

  “Lilith, honey, there’s been an accident.” He’s not even looking at me, he’s looking at the phone in his hand.

  “Mum? Is it mum? Is she okay?” I jump up off the bed and make quick time at getting in front of him, I don’t mean to, and I regret it as soon as I do it, but I grab his shoulders and dig my fingers in. He doesn’t even wince.

  “No. It’s not mum, she’s in work.”

  “Then who?”

  “It’s Gavin. Gavin’s gone, baby. I’m so sorry.”

  And at this point everything stops.

  It’s just stops.

  My world slows down, the room blurs and my heartbeat reverberates in my head. Little black dots dance in front of my eyes and when they roll back, my body hits the floor with a bang that if I could hear it, would make me consider dropping a few pounds.

  Gavin was the love of my life.

  That’s not a lie or some stupid schoolgirl crush talking. It’s real. I’d known him since I was twelve, we started dating at eighteen and we’d gotten engaged a week before he died.

  So, you see, that night I didn’t over react - I’ll admit fainting is a bit extreme, even for me, but he was more than just my new fiancé, he wasn’t just a boyfriend, he was my best friend. I told him everything, we did everything together. I loved him.

  But now he was gone.

  If you’ve ever lost someone that you love, and I say ‘love’ and not ‘loved’ because even when they’re gone, you still love them, you know that never goes away, but your life changes.

  That was the day my life changed. That was the day I changed.

  Looking back on it, I can see the exact moments that were life changing. I can see the bad choices that I made and it all seems so clear to me now, but back then, I was just numb. I didn’t want to see that I was taking the wrong path. I didn’t care that I was starting a habit so strong that even five years later, I still couldn’t quit. Though that could be a lie, I don’t know if I can quit. I might be able to, it’s just that I’ve never tried. I’ve never wanted to.

  I won’t drag you through what happened next, my dad managed to get me to come around, Lexi who was still on the phone the whole time had rushed over and she sat with me, we both cried for hours. Eventually her boyfriend, Nathan came over with another of our friends, Cal, and the four of us spent the night in my room. Under other circumstances, none of our parents would have allowed this, but they did the best they could to help us. They let us try to come to terms with his death together. The only person missing was Jason, he was our other friend, or at least, their friend. We weren’t so close. We didn’t talk much at all actually. But, even though he and I weren’t exactly friends, he was still a part of our little group. He loved the rest of them as much as we all did. I never found out where he was that night or how he took the news. But back then, he was the last person on my mind.

  Something you should know though, is that a week after Gavin’s funeral, my mother died. It was another car accident. This is when things got really bad, my dad, he didn’t cope so well after losing her and I guess that everyone grieves differently because he wouldn’t leave the house. To be honest, he didn’t leave his chair. I spent a lot of time those first few days trying to get him to go out and get some fresh air but I soon realised that he wasn’t going anywhere fast. I took advantage of his grieving process, since he was so out of it most of the time, he didn’t pay attention to me so he didn’t realise when I was out of it too. Only I wasn’t getting lost in memories of my mother, I was getting lost in the numbness that prescription painkillers provided me with.

  I remember the first time I took them, I had a migraine and took two of my dad’s pain pills by mistake. That day, something changed. When I sat down waiting for the pain in my head to ease and the medication started to kick in and when I shook my head to check the pain, I realised how light I had become. It was like I was floating and for the next three hours, nothing mattered. So I found my happy place.

  If only I didn’t go there every day.

  So that’s how it started, that was five years ago.

  Let’s see how the next five go, shall we?

  Two

  The bell over the wood and glass door rings when I push my through it. I look around at the seven feet tall bookcases and inside my chest, my heart sighs.

  “Lil, is that you?” My best friend’s voice floats through the store.

  “Yeah, Lex, it’s me. Where are you?” I call back and start making my way through the maze.

  “By the YA Fantasy.”

  Lexi’s parents bought her a bookstore for her twenty first birthday. She didn’t ask for it, Lexi wouldn’t ask for anything. Personally I think it was because they were afraid that if she didn’t work in a bookstore, she’d end up living in one. Lexi is that girl who always has her nose in a book, if you haven’t read anything that she has, you probably won’t have a lot to talk about.

  I finally find her sat on the floor, legs crossed underneath her, tongue poking out between her teeth as she puts books back in their right order on the shelf.

  “I brought lunch,” I shake the paper bag in my left hand. “One BLT with mayo- which is gross by the way, and a fruit salad with a latte no sugar.”

  After two more silent minutes, she finally pushes all that blonde hair out of her face and looks up at me in surprise, as if she’d forgotten I was here. I’m not offended, it happens a lot.

  “You brought lunch? I’m starving.” She jumps up off the floor and I follow her to the back where her office – a room with a sofa, a bean bag and one laptop, is.

  We clear a space on the floor and spread the food out in front of us.

  “What are the plans for tonight?” She asks around a mouthful of her sub.

  “I don’t know.” I shrug. “I guess I’ll meet you at the Shelly’s?”

  Shelly’s is a local bar where our friend Cal works as head bartender, we go there often but tonight we’ll have the whole place to ourselves as we do every year on this day.

  It’s the anniversary of Gavin’s death.

  We all go there and instead of grieving him, we celebrate him.

  “Cal will be there anyway, Nate is picking me up when he finishes work and I guess Jason will be with him too.” She nods and smirks when I groan.

  Jason isn’t exactly a friend of mine.

  We pretty much hate each other.

  “Yay,” I say as dryly as possible and wave my coffee in a mock cheerleader style wave.

  “How’s work?” She changes the subject.

  I work as an administrator for my father’s company. It’s not what I wanted to do. It’s not even what I went to school for but it’s the easiest way for me to stay close to and keep an eye on my father.

  “Good. It’s busy so the day goes by quick enough. We have a new girl working in the mail room and I think you’ll like her.”

  “I will?” She doesn’t try to hide her surprise, Lexi isn’t someone we introduce many people to since she’s not exactly what you’d call a social butterfly.

  “Yeah,” I smirk at her. “I went down there this morning and caught her sitting behind the photocopier reading on her kindle.”

  “What was she reading?”

  “
I don’t know. I coughed to let her know she wasn’t alone and she dropped it. When I asked what she was reading, she started gushing about it so fast that I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. Reminded me of you.” I smile fondly.

  “Are you going to buy her a new one because you got hers dusty?” She teases me.

  The first time I met Lexi we were both eight and I tripped over her in the playground. She had cried because I got her copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory dirty. I went back the next day with a new copy of the book for her and one for myself. We’ve been best friends ever since.

  “No,” I laugh, remembering the moment. “But seriously, she seems sweet. I’ll ask if she wants to come here with me for lunch tomorrow, will you be here?”

  “Why are you suddenly trying to set me up with a girl?”

  “I’m not trying to set you up. Unless you think Nate would be into that. No, wait. I don’t want to know that. I just feel bad because I don’t really read any more and you’re so into it that I just thought it would be nice if you had someone to go all fangirl over books with you again.”

  “I do miss it,” She admits. “Okay, bring her over. I’ll meet her tomorrow.”

  I run my eyes over the haphazardly buttoned shirt, jeans, socks and slippers that’s she’s wearing. “Are you going to look in a mirror before you meet her or is homeless chic in now?”

  “I’ll look in a mirror.” She rolls her eyes at me.

  “Thank you.” I throw my wadded up sandwich wrapper in the bin, giving a little dance when I don’t miss. “So how are things with you and Nate, all good?”

  “Yeah, you know, we’re okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  “Well, everyone has their problems, you know. It’s just that sometimes I can’t help but think how different we are.” Lexi stretches her legs out in front of her and leans her back against the sofa. I copy her move.