Chapter 25 - Gen 1 - Lilly

~ Arms ~


I tapped on Mango's bedroom door lightly as I began to open it quietly.  I did not even wait for a reply thinking by now he would probably be asleep.   As soon as I started to push the door open I noticed his light is still on and am surprised to see him still awake and lay on the bed reading a book.

Mango looked up at me from over the top of his book for a few moments and smiled, then his eyes went back to his book.  "I just have one more page to read then I'll be with you"  he said as I started to make myself comfortable lying down on the bed beside him.  I feel like a scared child running and jumping into his bed because I am too scared to spend the rest of the night alone in my own room.  I hate the nights when he's called into do emergency surgery and he is not here I usually end up pacing about downstairs until he comes home.

He soon put his book down on the bedside table  "What's up, bad dreams again?"

"Yes"  I replied and he just sat there looking at me for a few minutes.

"This is happening every night now isn't it!!"  he said and I just nodded.  Every night I disturb his sleep by crawling into his bed most of the time waking him up  "You know it would help if you talked to me about what is in these nightmares of yours."  I just shake my head at him, we have had this conversation many times before, he knows I don't want to talk about it - I can't - it would mean me having to admit something that I'm too scared of.

He doesn't argue with me or try to get it out of me, he's long since given up on trying to get me to open up about my nightmares, he changes the subject completely and starts talking about something totally random.

We talked for hours until we both fell asleep.

I sat bolt upright in a mad panic, struggling to catch my breath.  I am back in that bush again struggling to get myself free of the branches and undergrowth that are holding me down.  Mango is lying on the floor motionless and I can see him but I can't get to him - I know if I don't hurry it is going to be too late - so I start fighting with the bush to get myself free.

In reality I'm fighting with the bed sheets trying to kick them off me as they are tangled around my feet -  not fully awake or aware that I'm in the middle of yet another nightmare.  A repetitive nightmares that has started to plague my sleep every time I close my eyes. 

My thrashing about woke Mango up.  "Lilly are you ok?"  hearing his voice makes me realize where I am and that he is here, safe and unharmed, unlike in the nightmare I've just been having again.

"Bad dreams again?"  he said as he rubbed his eyes and squinted at the clock on the wall, but without his contact lenses in I doubt that he can even see it.

"I'm sorry!!!"  I feel awful for keep waking him up, I do this every night, if I'm not having nightmares I'm sleep talking which amuses him but either way he's a light sleeper and I'm keeping him awake and I know it isn't fair even though he never complains.

"Was it the same nightmare again?"  I nodded at him and he just sighs.  I suspect he thinks I'm having bad dreams about Cosmic but I'm not, the nightmares are always about him - Lime taking Mango away from me in the same way as she took Cosmic and the baby away from me, the same way that she tried to take Alpine away from Caramel.

"I'm Sorry, I hate keep waking you!!"

"It's ok."  he said smiling at me "I think it's time you let me get you some counseling, with your nightmares and sleep talking there is something going on in that head of yours that needs sorting out medically!!."

"I don't need counseling!!"  I protested

"Well I think you do, until you deal with whatever it is that is stressing you out, this is never going to stop, if you won't talk to me about it then maybe you can talk to a counselor."  he ran his finger across my cheek wiping away the tears that I hadn't realized I'd been crying  "Lilly you can't keep going on like this - it's not healthy!!"  If only I could tell him, but I'm too scared to take that final step, and how silly that makes me feel.

"Come here."  he said holding his arm up for me to crawl under.  He holds me tightly and makes me feel safe and warm again and it's not long before I drift back off to sleep in his arms.  This has become a regular routine almost every night over the past six months since I've started to have these nightmares.

The nightmares only started after I finally realized something important.

I had only ever planned to stay here for one week, but when the week was over, as I suspected, Mango didn't want me to leave, he begged me to stay for another week. At the time giving into him was a pretty selfish act on my behalf, I should have gone home, it would have been the best thing for him, me living with him was just making him fall deeper and deeper, he wasn't even trying to fight it any more or hide it he definitely wasn't doing the right thing for himself having me around him constantly.  I was selfish and I didn't really want to go either, I couldn't face the thought of going back to that purple house with all the constant reminders in it, so I didn't go back, I stayed with Mango.

The weeks turned into a month, then two months and by the time the third month came around we no long talked about me going home,  I just stayed and we were quite happy with the strange life that we had built for ourselves.  I was slowly healing somewhere that I was happy to be with the only person who could have helped me through it and Mango was happy to settle with having only a part of me, he said having something was better than having nothing. But at first it worried me, we couldn't live like this forever, I thought he is going to have a mighty hard and painful fall back to reality when I finally do have to make the break - of course at the time I still couldn't see what was coming.

The time started flying by and before we knew it a whole eighteen months had flown by but the more time that went on something started to change in me and I no longer worried about making that break, I knew I would never be able to leave him - the more time that passed the less I thought about Cosmic until I rarely thought about him at all.   As my feelings for Cosmic were slowly fading I had other feeling that were strongly growing that I found I could no longer ignore, no matter how hard I tried to ignore them.

I had somewhere along the way found that I had fallen in love with Mango and it scared me too much to even tell him.

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I walked into the living room to find Mango and Alpine bickering over me and Caramel going out for the evening on our own.

" .... she's long gone, Mango you need to get a grip and let it go!!  If I can after she nearly faded me I'm sure you can!!  You can't watch over her 24/7 forever it's gonna drive you insane, if it hasn't already!!"  Alpine snapped at Mango, it is unusal to see them fighting since the hit and run Mango and Alpine have been the best of friends, Alpine now sees Mango like he's the super hero that put him back together and fixed him to keep him alive.

"I don't know ..........."  Mango mumbled

"They have phones, they are only going to the dive bar 3 doors away, it's been nearly 2 years if Lime was going to do anything she would have done it by now!!  They will be fine."

Mango still stood there pulling faces.

"Besides, I can't go I have to look after the kids and I need you to stay with me, you know what my brain is like these days, it only works half of the time, I'll forget to feed them or something, for Berry's sake I can't even remember this ones name at the moment!!"  he snapped as he pointed at the little girl he held in his arms.


"Okay Okay!!"  Mango said  "But if anything happens to them ........"

"NOTHING is going to happen to them!!"

So we left Alpine and an unhappy Mango baby sitting the three children and me and Caramel went out.

We had only just sat down when Caramel said something that I really wasn't expecting  "So what are these nightmares about that you keep having?" 

There is only one way that she could know about my nightmares  "Mango has put you up to this hasn't he!!??"

"Yes he did but it's only because he's worried about you and he thought you might talk to me seeing as you won't talk to him about it."

"I'm going to kill him!!"

"Lil please don't be hard on him, he's worried sick about you, plus its really upsetting him."

"Why is it upsetting him, he's said nothing to me about being upset!!"

"Well he wouldn't to you because he thinks you are still dreaming about Cosmic every night and it's cutting him up!!"

"Well he is being really stupid because I'm not dreaming about Cosmic at all, I'm dreaming about .........."  I stopped myself suddenly because I nearly blurted it out.

"Go on, you can't just stop there - you're dreaming about ........... who or what??"

"I'd rather not say, can't we just change the subject and talk about something a little more interesting!!" 

 "No!!  You need to talk to someone about it, having nightmares nearly every single night and more than once a night can't be nice - I nearly fell over when he told me you two sleep together every night in the same bed because of your nightmares - he told me you wake him up some nights three or four times a night thrashing about and screaming - it's not ..... normal"  I just sat there shaking my head at her  "Spill because you know if you don't I'll just wait till I've got you drunk then I'll get it out of you."  she started laughing.

I took a huge gulp of my drink, knowing she's not going to drop this till I tell her. 

"You know I'm good at keeping secrets, I won't even tell Mango if you don't want me to."   She smiles at me.  "You know my secrets ..."
"Yeah, how is your sordid affair going?"  I snigger
"Its great!  And nobody has cottoned on to what the three of us are up to."  she grins at me  "So come on ... spill!!"

 I took a deep breath  "Okay but you have got to swear you won't say anything not even to Alpine and especially not Mango!!"  I grin at her  "Or you might find my tongue start slipping ... what's his name again ... !"  I laugh at her.

"Seriously My lips are sealed!!" she smiled at me, normally I know I can trust her to keep my secrets, but I wandered about this one.

"The nightmares I'm having are not about Cosmic at all, I actually don't think about him very often these days, the nightmares are always about Mango, Lime fading him, I'm scared I'm going to lose him too, and I can't bear to go through all that pain again."

She just sat there grinning at me which I found strange.

"I knew it!!"  she said still grinning  "I saw the way you was looking at Mango earlier - the same way you used to look at Cosmic  ...... Lilly!! ...... you love Mango don't you!!"

"Is it that obvious?"  I'm shocked that she said it and relieved that I didn't have to.


"Oh Berry .......... you do!!" 

Suddenly we heard a loud smash that made both me and Caramel jump

"Sorry!!  Just a bottle"  the mixologist said as she carried on mixing a drink for a guy stood at the other end of the bar.  I couldn't take my eyes off the mixologist, she somehow seemed very familiar to me even thought I couldn't say I'd ever seen her before.

"Does she look familiar too you?"  I asked Caramel but she said she didn't recognize her and didn't seem bothered by the mixologist at all, unlike me who couldn't stop watching her.  Caramel quickly getting the conversation back to where we had left it.

"So come on how long have you felt like that about Mango?"

"Probably about 6 months."  she was just taking a sip of her drink which she nearly choked on.


"SIX MONTHS .......... Lilly!!! ........ why on earth have you done nothing about it, and that poor guy don't you think he's waited long enough for you .....  SIX MONTHS  ...... he needs putting out of his misery!!"

"You have to promise me you won't tell him!!"

"Why for Berry's sake would you not want him to know?"

I found it hard trying to explain all the thoughts swimming around in my head to her in an orderly fashion that she could understand.  Basically I am too scared to love again - to open myself up to all that heartache, I already can't bare the thought of losing him and if we stay as we are it's not going to hurt either of us so much.  I'm also really scared of how differently this love feels to what I felt for Cosmic it confuses me and I'm not even sure I'm ready to deal with it.  Then there are my childhood fears that I can't ignore, I'm colourless, I'm meant to be lonely, I'm meant to have nobody love me especially when my own parents can't, Cosmic loved me and look what happened to him, I can't let Mango love me completely too scared the same thing might happen to him.  Of course we spent hours talking, Caramel trying to talk some sense into me, but it didn't really make me feel that much better.

Caramel had just popped to the toilet when my phone started ringing and without even thinking I just answered it straight away, I thought maybe Mango is checking up on us.  All that greeted me is silence, I said hello but nobody spoke in reply, pulling my phone away from my ear I looked at the screen "Withheld number"  putting the phone back to my ear I said hello again, there is just silence then after a few seconds the phone clicked off.  I shut my phone up irritated by the silent phone call, hoping it wasn't what I thought it might be.

"Are you sure you don't know that mixologist?"  I asked Caramel again as she is still bugging me.

"No, I'm positive"

After one too many drinks and making fools of ourselves on the karaoke machine, by the time we left the dive bar we were both like a pair of giggling idiots, a little tipsy and wobbly on our legs.  We staggered slowly home laughing all the way and returning a lot later than we had meant to.

Alpine and Caramel left the kids as they were all sound asleep because we had got back so late, it seemed a shame to disturb them so Mango told them to leave the kids sleeping and they went home alone and said they would be back in the morning to collect them.  Mango went into check on the twins before going up to bed and I'm left alone swaying on unsteady legs in the living room, my head swimming from all the alcohol that I'd consumed that I'm not really used to.

My phone started ringing, "Withheld number"  flashed up on my phone screen again, I said hello but knew I'd just hear silence on the other end.

 Lime ... she is starting again isn't she ... see because I've admitted out loud to Caramel how I feel about Mango Lime is already on her way to get him or me.  My drunken mind is already racing away with itself

A few minutes later my phone went off again.  I just stood staring at the withheld number flashing up on the screen again and left the phone ringing I had no intention of answering it, after a few more rings I turned the phone off completely so that it wouldn't ring again.

I was stood there in the living room not really sure what to do, I have a really nasty feeling that Lime is going to start again, just thinking about what might be coming made the tears start rolling down my face.   Mango's Dad made me jump I hadn't noticed him walk into the room  "Lilly whatever is the matter?"

"Nothing I'm fine."  I said quickly trying to wipe the tears from my face even though it is too late he's already seen that I'm crying.

"You're crying, so you are not fine!!  What's wrong?"  he said

I nearly told him about the silent phone calls and what I thought then I noticed Mango had walked into the room and was stood there and had just watched me wipe another load of tears off my face.  My head is swimming and I couldn't face for him to know about the silent calls tonight he would only start flapping, I'll tell him tomorrow when I'm sober.

"Dad, what's going on?"  Mango said

"I don't know son I just found her here crying, she won't tell me what's wrong with her."

"Lilly?"

"I'm ok."  I said as I tried to side step away from them but I stumbled and my legs gave way, Mango just managing to catch me before I fell completely.

"Are you drunk??!!"  he started laughing as he held me up.  "You smell like a brewery." 

"I think I am." I hiccuped which made them both laugh

"I think its bedtime for you!!"  he said as he swept me up into his arms and carried me to my room, I fell asleep on him before we had even reached the top of the stairs.


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Song:  Arms ~ Christina Perri