Chapter Five: Last Straw!
Leo Hardy had enjoyed spending the weekends with Izzy Henderson. And when he stopped by the coffee shop that Saturday, he felt a warm feeling inside when she smiled at him and poured him his coffee. It had become a routine, every weekend he would visit her and they would sit for a while and chat about everything. The more he went to see her, the more he missed her all week. And the more he missed her, the more he was falling in love! And by Sunday morning, he'd asked his best friend over to finally give him an answer, was he going to be his best man after all? Charlie sat in the kitchen munching on some cake that Izzy had baked and slurped down his coffee. "So..." he began with a mouthful of cake, "...what's the deal???" Leo smiled bashfully and looked down at the kitchen counter.
"I...I've decided to be your best man BUT..." he raised a hand to silence Charlie as he jumped off his stool and was about to shout something, "...I'm going to have to find some sort of cover up for these babies or it's a no go!" he pointed at his scars and frowned. Charlie smiled broadly and nodded.
"We'll think of something, even if I have to have a themed wedding like comic book theme or something!" his eyes lit up and his smile grew even wider, "Yeah, I'll be Batman and you could be The Joker!" he chuckled as Leo threw a tea towel at him playfully.
Izzy was distracted that day, Leo searched her vacant face for clues but found nothing. Usually she was so chatty but today he could hardly get a word out of her, and it worried him. "Iz? Are you okay?" he mumbled and reached out to touch her hand. She looked at him and smiled, it was empty and false.
"I'm fine, why?" she pulled her hand away and his heart began to race, this was the feeling of his world crashing down...again!
"Isabel please tell me what's wrong?" Izzy sighed and placed both of her hands on her lap.
"I found a...an advert you did when you were a model and..." Leo blushed and squeezed the chords of his hoodie nervously.
"I...I'm not that guy any more Iz!" he struggled to make eye contact with her, all the times he modelled for brands or did photo shoots he was never embarrassed or uncomfortable. So why was Izzy seeing him in one of those ads so humiliating?
"Leo you were beautiful!" Izzy's eyes filled up with tears as Leo shot her an angry look.
"Oh right, but now I'm not so sayonara?" he spat and immediately regretted what he'd said when he saw the look of hurt on her face.
"No, how could you think that of me??? I just meant...it must have been a really hard thing for you to recover from. You've never told me...Leo how did you get those scars?"
"I wasn't ready!" Leo shrugged and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to prevent any tear from escaping. "I couldn't tell her...I'm not ready for her to know the old me!" Rhys rolled his eyes and scribbled away in his notebook.
"Leo, we agreed that you would take all questions about your face and tackle them head on! We agreed that if anyone asked you would face your demons and say Makayla's name, address what she did!"
"I know!" Leo replied through gritted teeth, "But...Izzy is different. She only knows this Leo! And when she said she'd seen a photo of me modelling I...I panicked and left! I'm not ready, I'm not ready!" Rhys closed his notebook over and crossed his legs. He stared Leo down, it was so powerful that he had to look away.
"Leo, I cannot help you if you aren't prepared to do some work! If Isabel means as much to you as you say, and as I believe she does, then you will have to tell her about Makayla and about the attack! I know you can do this, and she deserves to know the truth if you intend to have a lasting relationship with her!"
Leo knew that Rhys was right, and as he spent that week mulling over what his therapist had told him, he planned it all out in his head. And then he started to write it all down, what he was going to say to Izzy, how he was going to say it. He needed it all to be just right, and he needed to do it in a way that wasn't going to set him back. It was hard for him to mention Makayla and their relationship, it was fiery and violent and sadistic! Was he prepared to tell Izzy about that part of his life? In order for her to know what led Makayla to do what she did, he had to let Izzy into every corner of their life together. It was going to be hard, and he might lose her, that was what he was scared about the most!
It was Friday night, Leo had only just nodded off as his bedside clock glowed 03:45am. Rudely awoken by his mobile, he swore under his breath and sat up slowly, patting the bed to find it as it rang shrilly in his ears as he found it. It was Charlie. "Leo! Is Izzy with you?" his voice was as shrill as Leo's ringtone and he was struggling for breath.
"What? No, why?" Leo was dreading the answer, part of him didn't want to know and wanted to just go back to sleep and forget he'd heard anything. The other part of him wanted to find out why they were looking for Izzy at nearly four in the morning.
"She got drunk and went round to Chris and Scott's, shouted the odds and they called the police. Amanda went to collect her at the station and now she's disappeared! She said she would be better off dead, Amanda's at her wits end! We just thought we'd check with you..." Leo butted in as he threw his covers off and shot up out of bed.
"Gimme ten minutes, I'll come and look with you!"
Leo, Charlie and Amanda split up to look for Izzy around town. It was cold, damp and dark but Leo felt numb. He was frightened for Izzy, he was frightened she'd do something stupid and he knew all about that. He just realised that this was the first time he'd met Amanda! She and Izzy were similar in looks but not in personality. Amanda seemed far more self assured and confident, she didn't wear glasses and her eyes were more violet than blue. Her hair was dyed almost platinum blonde, Leo imagined that her natural hair was the same colour as Izzy's or darker judging by her roots. In all honesty he was thinking about these trivial things to put his mind off of thinking the worst about Izzy. It wasn't working, so he tried her mobile although he doubted she would answer. So when she did, he was relieved and surprised. "What?" she snapped.
"Isabel it's me, Leo! Where are you?"
"What do you care?" she was crying, sobbing even, and it broke his heart to hear it.
"I care, you have no idea! Tell me where you are, I'll come and get you!" there was a long pause, and then she finally answered.
"At the bridge!"
Leo's heart pounded in his chest and his mouth was like sandpaper. There she sat on the wall, her legs hanging over the edge just above the 80 foot drop below. Ten minutes he had stood, out of sight, just watching her and having absolutely no idea how to handle this situation! And after finding no solution, he finally decided to approach her. He did it slowly, and quietly, he didn't want to scare her. When he was close enough he spoke to her. "Hey, I'm here!" she turned slightly to eye him up and down.
"Here he is, the hooded mystery man!" she scoffed and took a swig of a bottle she was holding. Leo instinctively tugged on those chords again as she continued to swing her legs and her backside edged further forward.
"Isabel please come and talk to me!"
NO!" she shook her head emphatically, and she slid even closer to the edge.
"Then let's talk about this! Why did you go to Chris and Scott's place? Hmm?" Izzy sniffed and swigged from the bottle again. Chris was her ex who had an affair with her friend Scott. Leo remembered Charlie telling him all about it and how they hurt her.
"Shut up you know nothing!" she growled and threw the bottle over the bridge, Leo listened for the smash, it was a long way down.
"I know that they betrayed you, I know that they hurt you. And I know what that can do to someone. Now come on, let's go for a coffee and a chat eh?"
"What, so you can avoid everything I ask you? Pfft, no thanks scarface!" it smarted, her insult, but he knew she didn't mean it when he saw the flash of regret on her face as soon as the words left her mouth.
"I won't, I won't avoid anything ever again! You wanna know about me? I'll tell you! And you can tell me why you're here, you can tell me what you intend to do?" Izzy looked at him as if he was stupid.
"Jump! Duh, what do you think? I don't want to live anymore!" she wept and gripped the concrete wall of the bridge tightly. Leo shuffled closer to her as her body shook with every sob.
"Isabel, please! Come down from there! I'm here for you!" Izzy gave him another dirty look and shouted.
"I can't even SEE you for that fucking HOOD!!! SHOW YOURSELF YOU COWARD!!!" Leo swallowed a lump down in his throat and nodded erratically.
"Okay, okay!" he breathed and reached up to grab his hood. Slowly he pulled it off of his head to reveal his entire face. The dawning light was beginning to break from the clouds as Izzy studied Leo's scarred and burned face. She closed her eyes and pictured that pretty faced model in the magazine, then opened her eyes to look at the man that stood before her. She smiled, and Leo's shoulders fell with relief, but then suddenly she swung her legs back over the bridge and slid further towards the edge...
Leo's heart was racing even faster, so much so that he thought he was going to pass out. "NO! Izzy! Don't!" he moved closer to her with his arms outstretched. "I had a girlfriend, a great job as a model, I was cast in a film and my acting career was about to take off. And then I got caught cheating on her! We broke up but she stalked me, Makayla was...intense!" Izzy slid back into a safer position on the bridge and stared Leo down as she listened. "We had a very violent and sadistic relationship, it was rough to say the least. But I didn't love her, I was scared of her if the truth be told. So when she found out about me sleeping with other models on location at shoots, it was a relief really. I was a bastard Izzy! I wasn't a very nice guy, I treated women like dirt and I threw my cash around like confetti. I liked sex, I liked sex with beautiful women!" Izzy began to cry again, and it made Leo cry with her. "God forgive me Isabel I deserved what she did to me I know that! I had a restraining order out on her, but she came round that night drunk and shouting outside my house. So I let her in to avoid the neighbours calling the police. She was so drunk, I offered to make her some hot chocolate to sober her up and then drive her home. A neighbour did turn up to complain about the noise so when I went to appease him, she had taken it upon herself to bang around in the kitchen. When I asked her what she was doing, she said she wanted to make me dinner as a sorry for all the commotion and to celebrate us getting back together, there was a pan of water boiling on the stove, so I went to pour it down the sink. I was angry, she was acting like we were getting back together and..." he hung his head, "...I pushed her when she tried to get in my face, I told her to get out. She screamed at me and grabbed a kitchen knife from the rack and went for me. We fought, but she managed to cut my face pretty deep..." Leo touched his scars gingerly, "...and when I was on the ground she threw the boiling water over me. She must've knocked me out with the pan because the next thing I knew Charlie was holding a towel against my face telling me he'd called an ambulance." Izzy once again swung her legs over to the safe side of the bridge. "I deserved it, I drove her to it I know! I'm no better than Chris and Scott! But I'm not that person anymore Izzy! You have to believe me! I've been where you are, I downed a bottle of pills with vodka just before I met you and ended up back in the hospital. I have to see a shrink once a week because I'm considered a danger to myself! Izzy!" Leo approached her, and even though she seemed a little repulsed by his story, she let him touch her face. "This is not the way, there is so much to live for believe me!"
"She's asleep, finally!" Amanda sighed with relief as she closed Izzy's bedroom door. "Well Leo, hero of the hour eh?"
"No! I'm really not!" Leo shook his head sadly.
"Don't be so modest mate!" Charlie slapped his back and they walked downstairs together. "Amanda's parents are away, thank God!" he breathed a heavy sigh and looked at Leo. "Your hood! This is becoming a bit of a habit!" Leo tugged at the chords, even though the hood was down, it was a safety mechanism to tug at them.
"I'd like to wait, if Amanda will let me?" Charlie smiled and nodded.
"Sure she will. Why wouldn't she?" Leo wasn't ready to let Charlie know that he'd confessed his past to Izzy to stop her from doing something stupid. But he knew that Izzy wouldn't want to see him, not after his revelations. Amanda had made tea and biscuits for Izzy and was going to check on her, Leo offered to take them up instead, he wanted to say goodbye...and sorry. She was sitting up and staring out of the window when he knocked and entered her room.
"Tea?" Izzy looked at him briefly, then looked back out of the window. "I wanted to say sorry, and that I'm grateful for the short time we spent together. You'll never know what you did for me when I was in a dark place." Izzy looked back at him and straightened her covers nervously.
"Why did you do it?" Leo gave her a puzzled look.
"Do what?" there was so much to choose from.
"Why did you try to kill yourself???" Leo pointed to his face and shrugged.
"Why do you think?"
"Leo, you're not ugly because of your scars..." Leo smiled a little, it made him feel good to hear that. "...it's not your scars that make you ugly!" and then his smile faded as he looked into her eyes, cold and hard. "Even in that magazine, you were ugly! Your heart...it's twisted! You keep saying you're not that guy anymore..." Leo cut in,
"I'm not!" he pleaded as she talked over him.
"...but if you never got cut and burned by a scorned and heartbroken girlfriend, you would! You'd still be that guy, so it begs the question...are you still that Leo Hardy? Have you just had to adapt to this world of ugliness and freakishness, throw in your pretty boy membership and become a misfit like the rest of us or...what?" Leo was speechless, he had no reply to her. He didn't know what she wanted to hear, he didn't know what the answer was. "Leo, you're scarred, you're burned, but you're not ugly! Not on the outside! No you have an ugly heart! And that will never change! I can't be around someone like that, I can't let you drag me down! I want you to leave...NOW!!!" Leo tried to speak but found no words, he left her alone in her room and shut the door, as her cries echoed all around him.
To Be Continued...
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