Like Real People Do - Jill Roord

The Lie They'd Want To Believe

Hunter's POV

Today I woke up with a plan. Today I woke up with a purpose.

I thought knowing that would have made hauling myself off the sofa easier, I thought it would have made my trip to the kitchen less painful and the hole in my chest disappear. But it didn't. All I felt was the exhaustion and pressure weighing over my head, the pressure to keep the secret. To keep all of the secrets.

A very different person had to walk into London Colney than who I was right now, it had to be the old Hunter. The Hunter before everything happened, the Hunter everyone would want to be around; the lie they'd want to believe.

But I needed to find a way to make the lie believable because not everyone was so easily convinced. Jill already knew something was wrong, I couldn't let her find out what.

I walked into the bathroom, sighing as I took a long look at myself in the mirror. The face staring back at me was a stranger, the soul in my eyes had disappeared and the expression on my face conveyed nothing but this numbing depression. But I didn't have the time to dwell on that, I didn't feel that sense of urgency that usually came along with training, but I tried to create one. I tried to remember how busy the house always used to be; Leah rushing around me with the smell of Nana's cooking giving me the incentive to hurry.

But it didn't work because I couldn't live in that fantasy anymore. I knew she wasn't coming home. I saw that I was alone.

I scraped my hair into a ponytail, pulling on my training kit. The clothes fit me looser than when I'd been given them at the end of last season. It was a sickly feeling, I hated how the fabric hung off my gaunter figure.

When I walked back into the kitchen, I reached into the top drawer and pulled out a bottle of vodka from the stash of unopened ones. The bottle lid fell to the floor, I didn't have to energy to pick it up, I drunk from the bottle and that burn was a familiar friend by now, a friend that was with me more often that not. To be honest, it was a friend I couldn't live without. 

I was more myself when I drunk, more like the old me who I missed so dearly. I was nothing if I was sober, my mind was filled by the nightmares of reality and my entire body ached for the life I'd once had and the people who'd once been in it.

People tell you to find a coping mechanism, it was the first piece of advice every single phycologist had ever said to me, but they made sure to tell you it needed to be healthy.
A coping mechanism. Healthy? There was nothing healthy in running away from your thoughts, nor was there anything healthy about feeling the way I did. I didn't care if it was bad for me, I didn't care if it was only a temporary fix, even just a second away from the pain was enough, even just a moment of silence was the biggest relief. 

Soon I climbed into the taxi, I was smart enough to know drunk driving wasn't a good plan. Especially when I hadn't touched my car in months, I don't think my hands had been on the wheel since my final drive home from the hospital, the morning of Nana's last game. 

Already I felt more myself, more alive and less heavy. The drinks brought the spark back to my soul, that slight flicker of a flame which I'd always been able to turn into a roaring fire. I promised myself that I'd smile and pretend that light reached my soul, I'd laugh and it would be as if it were true and I'd burst through those doors with the energy Hunter Putellas was known for. 

When we pulled up in the London Colney carpark, the first person who I caught sight of was Beth. The blonde was climbing out of Danielle's car, scratching the side of her face and clearly unaware of my eyes on her. Without that rush to my head, I'd have just stared, looking at the world like I was gazing through a window, but as the alcohol rushed through my veins and reached my head like fireworks exploding in the sky, I laughed.