ALAN - An Alan Rickman fanfic

Chapter 26 - Page Turner

Hey! You've heard me say it a thousand times, but thank you so much for your patience with each story update. You're the best and I'm so glad you're back <3 I hope you enjoy this one! 

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July 2010

Alan called five times that evening after I left the parking lot. Five times before I disabled his calls to a black screen that was tossed onto a chair in my apartment. I begrudged turning my phone back on, expecting to see further calls. I'd only done so because I needed to call my boss, Greg. I gave him a false reason for leaving the theatre - 'a change of direction' I called it. Really at the time, I had no direction. A direction required decision making, and I was in no state to be making decisions. My head was a Rubix of twist and turns that continuously shifted, each twist disjointed from the next.

Anger was an understatement the night I left the parking lot. I was a mass of blazing rage, wanting nothing more to do with Alan or Lizzy, but as the days passed into weeks and I'd heard nothing more, no calls, my mind started to wonder, to question, to backtrack, to see the signs. I ran on instinct that night, I didn't want to hear a solitary thing Alan had to say to me. When I arrived home I was broken to pieces, sodden from the rain, my chest shaking with tears. Wrapped tightly round it were the severed strings between us, suffocating and inescapable.

I felt my life was at a crossroads. I'd been used. There when Alan needed me, at his beck and call and put on the shelf when not. His toy. I had to wonder, had I not witnessed what I did in the parking lot between Alan and Lizzy, how much longer would this have gone on for? I couldn't imagine falling any harder than I fell that night. I felt pulled to pieces, ground into the dirt; discarded.

The past two weeks have given clarity to things that I was blind to at the time, blind to Lizzy's warnings of dating actors right from the very beginning, her insistence that Alan was dating Lily, digging for information, even trying to set me up with Lucas - 'someone my own age,' as well as numerous guys in bars. Lizzy's kindness was there to serve as a distraction whilst whatever sick little game she and Alan had was going behind the curtain. The theatre had trained her well - an actress so convincing that I believed she was a real friend. She'd even told Amelia I was staying with Alan, that she was worried for my safety. It was all part of her game plan. She wanted to cause a ruckus between my family that was already falling apart at the seams.

I had confided in her whilst pushing aside my real friends, who (Robyn in particular) had given me all the red flags since day one. We met up a few days ago, two weeks since it happened. For the first few days I couldn't face anyone but Gina. Robyn could have easily said, 'I told you so,' after her previous lectures, but instead, she dropped her bag full of books to the floor of my apartment and put her arms around me. Gina looked on proudly, giving me the impression she had talked her round.

"It's good to have you back Ava, in more ways than one..." Her eyes scan my outfit - ripped jeans and a baggy grey t-shirt, knotted at the side. Playfully, I spread out my arms in a 'ta-da' moment.

We sit down with wine and bites to eat scattered about the coffee table.

"You were the rebound chick," Robyn remarks. "And he had the nerve to actually deny it too." She lets out a small laugh and reaches for her wine. "He was trying to have his cake and eat it. Typical guy - gets found out and tries to back peddle."

I told them all about the sweater in his dressing room, the razor in his bathroom, the feminine toiletries, how he said they belonged to an ex and the razor he picked up in pink at the airport "because it was the only one they had left." Robyn snorts Gina twists her face. For a while talk amongst themselves.