Wish You Were Here - Part 2

Chapter 19

OLIVIA'S POV

DECEMBER

When I'm asleep I miss everything about him. My subconscious tortures me with the memories of his touch on my skin, the way his hand felt intertwined in mine, the sound of his laugh, the taste of his tongue.

When I wake up the misery rips though my veins and my heart feels like it might buckle under the pressure, giving up and abandoning my pathetic body that is in actual physical pain without him.

When I'm awake self preservation kicks in and in order to just put one foot in front of the other, I block out everything, every memory, every feeling, all the pain, all the love.

For the first few days I was listening to Harry's album on repeat. Listening over and over, each note adding another jagged piece of stone onto my already concrete heart. 

The part of myself that pledged my undying loyalty towards him fought back for the first couple of weeks, arguing with my mind that this wasn't him and he would never do this. I thought maybe he might come home from press tour and explain it all but as the days rolled on, the dead version of myself stood up and smacked the old me to the ground.

I had this battle with myself daily, every time I woke up and remembered how he used to bite his lip when he watched me attempt to cook, the way he would groan when I got out of bed every morning, when I remembered him getting up at Emma's funeral or packing that thermos of coffee in his bag for our morning getaway in Greece.

I would spend the first hour of my every day trying to understand how that man I thought I knew could kiss another woman and hide it from me but my thoughts always ended with the fact he had done it and if he had decided to keep that from me then how many others were there?

I can tell people are speaking to me differently, watching everything that comes out of their mouths incase they tip me over some sort of invisible edge but the truth is I was thrown off it weeks ago.

Another person I love is gone.

Harry came crashing through Bec's front door one day last week. I hadn't even realised he was home, having lost all track of the days and weeks. They all felt like one big expanse of darkness and it hurt too much to think about how long it had been since I had spoken to him, or kissed him or he held me in his arms. Time, like everything else, didn't matter to me, so I blocked it out as well.

"YOU CAN'T COME IN HERE, HARRY!" I heard Bec scream from the living room. I was in bed, the only place I ever was when I wasn't required to be at work, pretending to be a functioning part of society.

I sat up, my heart racing a million miles an hour and stopped breathing when my bedroom door flew open and his green eyes met mine.

He looked as bad as me, his eyes bloodshot in the kind of way that only occurs after days or weeks of crying. His hair was messy and oily and his sweatshirt, the one I had worn the day he left for press tour, had stains all down the front of it, clear he had been wearing it, maybe sleeping in it, for days.

His usual bright eyes were sunken and dark, his skin was grey and malnourished and it was obvious he had lost a lot of weight. I wondered for a moment if he was drinking again or worse, but quickly shook those thoughts from my mind.

"I don't care," I tried to pathetically convince myself

If I hadn't become an expert at shutting down all emotion I think I would have felt sorry for him, making me all the more grateful that I couldn't feel the completely unnecessary sympathy towards him.

"Liv," he croaked, his voice was hoarse and raspier than normal and the sound shot through me like a bolt of lightning.

I wished that he had come to tell me the reason why he had kissed her, some crazy excuse that made perfect sense and restored my faith in him, but he didn't.