“Mind your business, Ringo.”
“Please. I’m better than him.”
“Whatever.” I rolled my eyes. “Keep your bitchy comments to yourself or I’ll break your sticks off in your arse.”
Angel snorted, not threatened in the slightest.
“Is it a problem though?” May questioned. “About possibly running into Frankie while we’re here? If you’re worried, maybe this is too soon. You got out a rehab three months ago, you’re sober six. You shouldn’t be in a triggering situation. Maybe we shouldn’t have come home.”
I hated, fucking hated, how my addiction had messed with May’s head. He and Hayes never touched drugs. Angel liked to smoke weed. They drank alcohol, but it wasn’t a problem for them like it had been for me. They drank for fun, I drank to black out. My use was to mask the hurt I felt, then it almost became like something I needed in order to survive. I wasn’t sure when my use became an addiction . . . it happened too fast for me to grab it.
“I told you what my therapist said.” I nudged May’s leg with my foot. “The space I’m in can take people recovering years to reach. I’m sober for me, I want to be healthy and have a clear mind. Frankie . . . she won’t trigger me.”
“How d’you know though?” May pressed. “You started taking everything to cover up everything about her, what if seeing her wrecks everything?”
“I can’t run from her, May. I’ll be running forever if that’s the case.”
“I think it’ll be worse for her than him because she knows what she did to him,” Hayes commented. “He’s known her all of his life, dated her for a few years, then as soon as we get our big break, she dumps him when his life was already going through a massive change. I’ve always had a soft spot for her, but what she did to him was cruel. If anyone should be weirded out, it’s her, not Risk.”
“That’s not fair, boy. She found out her mum was sick the week we got offered our record deal,” May fired back, coming to Frankie’s defence like he always did. “She did what she thought was best for both her and main man. She isn’t a cruel person and you fucking know it, Hayes.”
I lifted my hands to my face and groaned.
“Stop,” I said, dropping them to my lap. “Look, it’s been nine years. Nearly a whole decade since I’ve seen her or spoken to her. We’re long past being weird in the other’s company if we happen to cross paths. She has her life and I have mine. It’s cool. I can handle being back here.”
No one said anything, which pissed me off a little. I wanted someone to agree with me, but no one did. I leaned my head back against the headrest and told myself that the conversation was stupid. It’d been years since Frankie and I were anything to each other. If I was being honest with myself, it messed my head up to think of her because of how much she meant to me at one point. Being back in Southwold did turn out to be somewhat of a trigger because as we drove into town, she was all I could think about.
I even went down memory-fucking-lane while thinking of her.
Jesus. I cracked my neck. That shit needs to stop.
“I forgot Southwold was so small.” May suddenly asked as he looked out of the window of the van, “How can everything be the exact same? Nothing has changed.”
“Because it’s Southwold,” I answered. “The only thing that changes is the faces.”
May and Hayes were staring around the place we grew up with intrigued eyes. I didn’t have that same enthusiasm. Angel, who was on my right, was on his phone probably texting the woman who has been leading him around by the dick for the past month. I closed my eyes until the van came to a complete stop and May suddenly burst into laughter before he jumped out of the vehicle. Hayes followed him and so did Angel. I looked at the driver who had picked us up from the airport as he lifted the privacy screen.
“Thanks, man.”
He nodded then got out of the van and helped us unload our belongings from the back. I gave him a fifty-pound tip, which he didn’t bat an eyelid at as he took it, nodded once more then got back into his tinted-window van and drove off. I turned and stared at the two-storey house that the other three were looking at.
“This,” Angel said. “This dump is where you grew up?”
“I bought it when my parents were selling it so they could move to France.” May laughed. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Fucking gorgeous, bro.”
I snorted, Hayes laughed and May beamed like he didn’t have a care in the world.