Let Me Be Your First (Music and Letters #1) Read online

  Let Me Be Your First

  Music & Letters Series: Book 1

  Lynsey M. Stewart

  Edited by

  Duckman Proofreading

  Contents

  Let Me Be Your First

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Let Me Be Your First

  Music & Letters Series: Book 1

  By Lynsey M. Stewart

  Copyright© 2017 by Lynsey M. Stewart

  All Rights Reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission of the author of this book. The only exception is brief quotations to be used in book reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, brands, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or locales is purely coincidental.

  The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorised, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Editing: Duckman Proofreading

  Proofreading: Duckman Proofreading

  Cover design: Taylor Sullivan at Premade Cover Café

  Interior book design: Duckman Proofreading

  Find Lynsey on:

  Facebook: Facebook/authorlynseymstewart

  Twitter: @authorlynseym

  Instagram: lynseym.stewart

  Pinterest: authorlynseymst

  Email: [email protected]

  Spotify: open.spotify.com

  Created with Vellum

  This book wouldn’t have happened without the love of my life.

  You’ve always been the one.

  We’ve written some great chapters together. I can’t wait to write more.

  I love you more than chocolate…

  Chapter One

  The morning after the night before. Six words that conjure up images that can’t help but put a smile on your face as you reminisce about the events of a wild Saturday night. Did you meet the man of your dreams and fall in love? Did you dance until you couldn’t walk? Did you have the most awesome one-night stand with an insatiable sexual acrobat who could keep going long into the night and start again when you woke up in the morning?

  Usually for me, it was none of the above, apart from dancing until my feet were sore and drinking until my head pounded, but I never did learn from my mistakes.

  I had an amazing group of friends to share these reckless Saturday nights with. It consisted of people I met at school and colleagues who I was proud to call loyal friends. A vibrant mix of people who just clicked, no questions asked. We didn’t need to pretend to be anyone but ourselves or compete with each other. We had passed that point. We were all very different with our own stories and insecurities, but we held each other together. Abi was the glue. The girl so different from me it was amazing we even gave each other the time of day. We had both worked for the same local authority for the past year based in a busy social work team in the city, but we met at university. We were qualified social workers and loved our jobs despite the challenging demands that we faced every day. We went out most weekends. It was compulsory to be there, almost an unwritten rule that the escapades of the weekend could free us from the memories of a difficult week at work.

  My friends could drink. My friends could live, laugh, and love with a fiery passion. They could also dance. Their main talent was flirting to wind men around their perfectly manicured little fingers. Unfortunately, I didn’t share that talent. I had the French polish but not the same determined focus to grab life by the balls.

  My phone rang. The morning light combined with the piercing headache caused me to squint in order to see who would dare ring me before midday on a Sunday.

  ‘Hey, you up yet?’ Abi sounded almost as bad as I felt.

  ‘No, I’m still asleep,’ I said, rolling my eyes.

  ‘Good one,’ she replied in a deadpan voice. ‘I’m just owning the walk of shame.’

  Sounds of life carrying on as normal buzzed in the background. The clatter of cars and the brakes of the bus pulling up to the kerb made hearing her clearly a bloody difficult job. I smiled as she provided me with live commentary of her journey home.

  ‘Say hi to my friend Elle.’ I could hear rustling and the clatter of change. ‘It’s the bus driver. He’s kind of cute. In a bald way. Sorry. No offence.’

  I shook my head and considered ending the call to spare the unfortunate riders of the number twenty-two bus any further embarrassment.

  ‘Fuck. Don’t people wash anymore? The smell on this bus is going to see me making friends with the burger I ate before dining on him last night.’

  Too late. Mission embarrass every rider on the early morning bus accomplished.

  ‘It’s too early. Please stop talking,’ I replied.

  Abi had spent the night with a guy she had met for all of two minutes before deciding he was going to be the lucky man who got to take her home for the night. He didn’t need any persuading.

  Before seeing me safely in a taxi, she promised to ring me in the morning, letting me know that she was safe, still in one piece, sexually satisfied, and on her way home.

  ‘So he wasn’t an axe murderer then? Way to go. You’ve found a keeper,’ I said sarcastically, noticing a graze to my shin. I had absolutely no idea how that got there.

  We had an unwritten code that any form of contact kept the percentage of staying alive pretty high.

  Flirting was not my forte, but sarcasm was certainly my strength and outshining talent. My mum always said that sarcastic humour was a survival technique for the insecure. How right she was. I had developed, moulded, and fine-tuned that skill long before I used it as a very impressive form of male repellent.

  Sunday morning came too soon. I needed at least another twenty hours in my weekend. My room was dark, which matched my shitty mood. Blowing out a frustrated breath, I turned onto my side and pressed my head onto the cold side of the pillow in an attempt to stop my ears pounding from the usually soothing sound of blood rushing through my veins.

&
nbsp; ‘I’m never drinking again. I blame you. You’re such a bad influence.’

  I wasn’t lying. Abi was always the first on the dance floor, the first to suggest a round of tequila shots after sampling every crudely named cocktail on the menu, and the last to leave the club, usually without her heels and with a questionable amount of alcohol swarming in her blood.

  ‘I had a great night. He wasn’t shy, let’s put it that way.’ I imagined her wiggling her eyebrows dramatically, which made me smile against the phone. ‘Not a top-notch cockateer but there was definitely potential. Although, his morning breath could wipe out an entire ant colony.’

  I laughed before screwing my face in disgust at the mental image she had drawn so distinctly. ‘Cockateer? I have some mental images,’ I said, rolling my hand around my head, ‘but I still need help.’

  ‘Fucking hell. It means a swordsman. A master of the cock.’

  ‘Gotcha.’

  I speculated as to whether or not this could be the man to match the standards of Abi’s previous boyfriend and if she would actually agree to see him again. I already knew the answer and didn’t have to ask. Abi was starting to master one-night dalliances since her relationship ended, picking up where she’d left off before she met the love of her life. She didn’t do relationships anymore. ‘Relationships are for the perpetually bored,’ she would say in parrot fashion whenever she was called out about her recent preference for one-night stands.

  She had fallen in love before. She had fallen hard. She had broken into a thousand pieces when the man who had pumped her heart full of joy promptly stuck in a pin and popped it like a brightly coloured balloon when he left Nottingham to work in London. He blamed a promotion. He sad it was an offer too good to turn down.

  She always brushed it off with a simple cliché, wafting her hands from side to side in an attempt to appear indifferent, stating firmly that it wasn’t their time, that if they were meant to be together, they would find each other again. That was the sober version. The drunk version was far more brutally honest and emotional.

  She neglected to remember that I was there when she tried to piece her heart back together. I was the only one who knew she had used sticky tape instead of superglue and that the pieces that were firm and secure at first were now aimlessly flapping around in the breeze threatening to fall off at any time.

  One-night stands were starting to become her coping mechanism. She liked to show strength to the outside world, but the real Abi, her broken self, hid behind fake strength and bold sass.

  ‘Jeez, the things he could do with his tongue…’

  We agreed to meet up later so that she could spill the juicy details, but only once we were both fully recovered from the hangover to weigh down our shoulders until at least mid afternoon.

  My body betrayed me by mocking my attempts to recover. The final nail in the coffin was the powerful head rush I suffered when I rose too quickly from the comfort of the cold side of the pillow. I really had put my body through its paces the previous night. Even the ever-faithful tactic of banging my fists on the side of my head was not helping to shake off the self-inflicted drink coma.

  I laughed at my predicament. I was a single girl. The one who always toed the line and followed the rules. I wore a bra to bed to help stop middle-age boob predicaments such as sagging and stretch marks, and I never fell asleep with my make-up on. But I was also a champion party girl who loved the escape of alcohol, music and dancing.

  ‘Elle Davis, you are a messy contradiction,’ I said, talking to myself and groaning in the realisation that the next stop would be the powerful urge to jot down my thoughts in a tattered journal where the contents would be broadcast and dissected at weekly self-help groups in dusty church halls.

  I pulled down my eyes to remedy the quite frankly concerning blurred vision, but it didn’t help. It was a delaying tactic as I tried to build up the courage to stare at my reflection.

  Evidence of the night before littered the tabletop. Money, folded tram stubs, and my purse were sitting exactly where I had left them in my drunken haze. Heavy dark circles now framed my usually vibrant blue eyes. My naturally curly blonde hair was swept up to one side, fashioned into a frizzy bird’s nest. Not my best look.

  Living with my parents had many advantages: home cooked food, hot water, and sometimes, if I convinced my mum that pyjamas were not the correct form of dress for a social worker, a laundry service. However, a long list of disadvantages accompanied the list of advantages. Most mornings, I had to sprint across the landing with my body wrapped in a towel. Bumping into my parents in a state of undress was becoming depressingly familiar. Lack of personal space topped the things I liked to bitch about list. Once, Mum even recommended I see a doctor after noticing a mole on my back that she thought had the potential to develop into cancerous melanoma.

  ‘Did you have a good night last night?’ Mum stood in the doorway to my room, evidencing my point perfectly. Lack. Of. Personal. Space.

  Despite my daily moans about the pitfalls of living at home, in reality, Mum was my best friend and confidant. She knew pretty much everything about me. What I didn’t openly tell her about my life, she usually found out from my friends, who affectionately called her the oracle. She liked to be one of the girls and had found her way into the club by offering great advice alongside joking about my inability to get my shit together.

  I was twenty-three years old years old, very single, and yes, still living at home with my parents.

  I first applied to university to train as a social worker when I was just eighteen years old, only to be told I needed more life experience before they would consider my application. I cried for a whole day, more like two, but I was accepted a year later. I found it ironic that I was working in the very same profession that I so desperately wanted to join as a naïve eighteen-year-old even though I didn’t have any more life experience at twenty-three than at eighteen. I was in exactly the same place. Nothing had changed. Lather, rinse, and repeat…

  Although life as a social worker wasn’t going to see me make the Sunday Times rich list or allow my love of Chanel handbags to become a beautiful reality, I could have found myself a place to live. The truth was simple. I was lonely, and the thought of living on my own was too devastating for me to openly face. I was an ostrich. Burying my head in the sand worked for me and kept me somewhat sane.

  I did come close to moving around a year ago. My parents always insisted that they were in no rush to see me move out, but they had me in the car quicker than you could say ‘hire the moving van’ when a house that belonged to their friends came up for sale.

  My parents had booked a viewing without telling me, hoping to quietly but strategically start the homeowner ball rolling. I was more than happy to be shown around and spend a dreary Sunday afternoon daydreaming about the amazing dinner parties I would hold for my friends and where I would put the customary first-home yucca plant. I’d started to imagine standing barefoot in the kitchen whipping up Victoria sponges. I could learn new skills and attend cooking classes. I could master the art of making sushi, deconstructed tiramisu, and other…stuff.

  It wasn’t until Mum started discussing decorating ideas, wallpaper samples, and furniture plans that a full-blown panic attack ensued. I had to stand in the garden doubled over and taking deep breaths, willing myself not to cry at the depressing state of my life, all while the next-door neighbours tried not to obviously peer out of the upstairs window crossing their fingers that the loon in the garden wouldn’t put in an offer to be their new neighbour.

  I hasten to add, I did not put in an offer. Instead, I returned to burying any thoughts of growing up and establishing an adult life to the back of my mind.

  The room I was sitting in was a shrine to all things me. A museum of a life not fully led. The oily patches of sticky tack and the faded squares on the walls served as a reminder of the posters and bad décor that had been a feature of twenty-three years played out in this room.

  I
had accumulated so much crap over the years that the room was fit to burst. The dusty cupboard tops, dark spaces under the lilac valance of the bed, broken jewellery boxes, art supplies, notebooks filled with doodles of teenage angst that I just couldn’t bring myself to throw away, and my favourite childhood books stacked on the wonky shelves my DIY despising father had knocked up. When I ran out of space in the space saving places, I simply started stacking things alongside the cobwebs in the corners of the room.

  Under the bed, there were boxes filled with keepsakes, yellowing newspaper cuttings, photos of times long forgotten, treasured plastic trinkets expressing love and gratitude that I adored but just didn’t know what to do with, letters and cards wishing me luck in my new job that were curled up at the edges. I could never see myself throwing them away. Keepsakes were important. They kept memories alive. A beautiful eight-year-old named Molly taught me that.

  Molly was one of the first kids I worked with who burrowed themselves under my skin and into my heart. I would sing ‘Millie-Molly-Mandy’ to her and she would tap my arm, silently asking me to sing it again. She didn’t speak for a long time when she first came into foster care. The psychologist said it was her way of coping with the trauma.

  I will never forget the haunted look on her face, a look that spoke a thousand words in silence. A wide-eyed look of words that were too difficult to speak or impossible for her to convey. She didn’t understand what had happened to her. She only knew it felt wrong.