Learning To Love - Jamie Campbell Bower

Uninvited Guest

I totally didn't spend some time deciding if I wanted shit to go down, or shit to go down.

Please read the end note x

.........................................................................................................................

Knock knock.

That should have been the first warning sign. Upon hearing it, I assumed it was Jamie.

But Jamie has a key - he doesn't need to knock, he never does it anyway.

But since returning from London, London with it's fateful night where Jamie told me he loved me, I'd been in somewhat of a blissful trance - a bubble of happiness, so far from the paranoid, anxious state I used to live in before Jamie came into my life.

That's why when I opened the door, I didn't expect the man standing before me.

Peter.

I imagine that if I told someone who never knew Peter about him, and about what he did, they'd probably visualise him as some monstrous guy - maybe ugly, scaring looking, intimidating perhaps.

In reality, Peter wasn't very much like that at all. He wasn't scary looking, he wasn't unique looking - besides his eyes, and really, that's all I was left to work with as it took a second to recognise him. On the train he'd looked like he always did - brown hair, medium height, glasses, relatively plain features. But now, his hair was lighter and he'd looked like he'd lost weight, and the glasses that usually framed his face were gone.

Like I said, his eyes were the giveaway, they never looked like they fit with the rest of his appearance. Hazel eyes, full of swirling golds and greens and browns. I would never, ever, forget them. I used to adore them, feel like I could stare into them for hours.

They were also one of the last things I saw when I glanced at Peter, and he hit the brakes. Peter's eyes scared the absolute hell out of me now, naturally.

His eyes were also very capable of portraying his emotions, the most violent anger would glow through them, malice, evil.

Love, once, but not anymore.

Right now however, they're curious, as he gauges my reaction to him being right in front of me. Not that I've really had time to react.

The guy that tried to kill me was right on my doorstep and there was nothing stopping him from coming inside my apartment and trying again.

Words choke my mouth. "P-Peter."

A smile. It doesn't have an malice in it at all, it's inviting, comforting.

"Hello, Heidi."

His voice is smooth and confident. I reassess my first impressions of him. He's well dressed, in some casual jeans and a button-down top with a jacket. He looks like he could be off to work in an office or something. He's clean shaven, with neat hair and no bags under his eyes. He looks entirely different from when I last got a proper look at him, in court.

He notices my staring. "I look different, don't I?" He grins, again.

I just nod mutely, still frozen in the doorway.

I attempt to compose my inner panic. "What are you doing here?"

He took a small step forward. "I want to talk with you," he raises his left hand slightly, and in it I notice two steaming coffees nestled in a cardboard tray, "coffee?"

I don't say anything. I can't comprehend that the drug-addicted guy that tried to kill me was standing in front of me, neat and coherent, with two coffees in his hands.