Haunted (Taylor Swift) B3

8 - Dear John

The weekend was busy and Hallie and Louis couldn't get enough of each other, made so much worse by the fact Hallie's return to England was imminent. They had spent the whole of Saturday buying ingredients from a local market and then making pizzas from scratch, completely naked. The evening was full of learning more about each other's sexual desires and needs and by the time Sunday rolled in, neither of them had got much sleep. Sunday was a lot more chilled; Hallie had needed to spend the morning finishing packing, and then had a good catch up with some of her friends from home whom she hadn't spoken to in weeks, due to following Abigail's plan of going phoneless to make the most out of her trip away.

Louis had left her to it, saying he would come back at some point for lunch, but lunchtime came and went and Louis was nowhere to be seen. Hallie looked outside as she noticed it get dark and felt it was all too quiet. She glanced at the time, realising that Louis had been gone for nearly 10 hours without a single message or call to say where he was. She started to feel she couldn't trust anything now, and it was coming over her like it was all a big mistake – had she just got so caught up with something new and exciting to distract her from what was waiting for her at home?

She started reading through her flight details as she heard someone coming down the hallway outside her door. She glanced up as her door opened; she had left it unlocked thinking Louis would have come back hours ago. She found herself holding her breath as he stood in the doorway, noticing his eyes... something had made them go cold.

"Where have you been?" Hallie asked, barely able to speak she felt so pissed off.

Louis couldn't speak; he had been wondering around all day contemplating what to do. He really liked Hallie, but now that he'd had her the whole long-distance thing seemed a bit too serious and he wasn't ready for that. "I think you know what I'm going to say", he said, staring at her emotionless, his face giving away nothing.

"Come on Louis don't leave me like this. I thought I had you figured out..."

Louis shrugged. "I can't do this Hallie. I can't be with you when you are leaving tomorrow, it'll be too hard to be so far away from you. I mean England is hours away; in reality when are we going to see each other?"

Hallie had guessed it; something had gone terribly wrong. He was all she had wanted but as he stood there in front of her she felt like she couldn't breathe, he seemed so distant. "No, you can't do that to me. Not now, not after the last few days we've had. What the fuck Louis!" she shouted.

She stood there and watched him walk away, from everything they'd had to nothing. She had meant every word she had said to him, and he had tried to take away her pain and just make her smile. In the end she was a fool to try to stop the realisation that she had spent the whole time with Louis, wishing it was Liam instead that was wiping away her tears and sheltering her fears... She just couldn't help it.

"LOUIS!" she screamed down the hallway, tears trickling from her eyes.

Louis kept walking, knowing how hard this was going to be.

Hallie held her breath knowing if he left now she wouldn't ever see him again, but something kept her holding onto nothing. She followed him out into the darkness and he turned around, hearing her cry behind him.

"Hallie, go back inside...", he said sternly.

Hallie wiped her tears away from her cheeks angrily, feeling haunted, the memory of Harry leaving her still so raw. "Why? To make this easier for you. No way!" she spat back.

"I'm sorry. This isn't what I wanted to do; I genuinely really, really like you..."

"Then what are you doing?"

"I just can't do this", he said, pointing between them, "the arguing or bickering when we won't be anywhere near each other. It's just not possible that things will work out. Even if things were okay, in the end one of us would have to move to either England or America... it's a big ask."

"But why won't you even try to make it work? You don't know what the future holds", Hallie whimpered, feeling like she was losing the side of her that had started to become alive again since her mum had died.

Louis shook his head, his hands in his pockets. "Don't make this harder than it is already. You should get some sleep; your flight is early."

"Fuck you!", she screamed as she turned around and stormed back to the front door of her apartment building. Long were the nights when her days had revolved around him. Counting the footsteps, praying the floor didn't fall through, again.

"Hallie, wait...", Louis said, catching up to her as she got to the front door.

Her face was streaming with tears but she didn't care, her heart was breaking again, feeling like she was losing her mind but guaranteed to anyone else she would swear she was fine. "You paint me a blue sky and go back and turn it to rain. And I lived in your chess game, but you change the rules every day..."

"That's not a fair statement Hallie and you know it."

Hallie shook her head, gripping the door tightly. "Well, you've obviously made your decision, so I guess this is goodbye."

Louis breathed heavily, knowing the fucked-up truth was that not everything happens for a reason and sometimes people make the wrong decisions and in the back of his mind he wondered if this was one of them. "I'm sorry..."

"No, you don't get to say that. Goodbye Louis!" Hallie walked inside and slammed the door in his face, pushing her back against it as she slid down to the floor. She buried her face into her knees and cried, hoping the hours before her flight hurried up, feeling so ready to go home, even if it meant having to see Liam and dealing with the grief from a quiet family home without her mum.

*

The flight home was boring. She hadn't got much sleep the night before and had arrived at the airport early, wishing her time away hadn't ended so horribly, dampening the whole experience. As she sat in her seat on the aeroplane a larger man squeezed in next to her smelling of grease and stale beer making Hallie feel sick. She decided now was as best as anytime to write down a few things in her notebook to try and come to terms with the lovesick feeling she had in her chest.

'Dear John,

I see it all now that you're gone. Don't you think I was too young to be messed with? The girl in the dress cried the whole way home. I should've known.

Well, maybe it's me and my blind optimism to blame. Or maybe it's you and your sick need, to give love then take it away. And you'll add my name to your long list of traitors who don't understand. And I look back in regret how I ignored when they said run as fast as you can.

You are an expert at sorry and keeping lines blurry. Never impressed by me acing your tests, all the girls that you've run dry, have tired lifeless eyes, cause you've burned them out. But I took your matches before the fire could catch me. So don't look now, I'm shining like fireworks over your sad empty town.

Don't you think I was too young?

You should've known.'

She looked out the window, her eyes blurry with water as she closed her notebook, deciding whatever was going to happen when she got home, she had to close this chapter on her life. A small chunk of her life had been erupted with adventure and laughter, what she had needed since her mum had died, but as soon as her feet touched English soil, she wasn't going to let herself think about Louis or let him spoil her memories of a month away at camp. She gulped as she heard the announcement overhead to say there were 40 minutes until landing, wondering what messages she was going to receive as soon as some people knew she was home.

It was like now she was in English air all her memories came flooding back that she had buried so deep she had barely thought about them. Oh, how she wanted a simple life for a little bit, but that was obviously just too much to ask for.