Story of a Heart

Chapter 21: Awkward relations

Lisa's point of view
Faye came into the room just as I opened my reading book. Half expecting her to collapse on her bed and start crying like she'd been doing regularly for the last week, I closed my book, and looked up at her. She wasn't crying, which was a different start, but she had a look I knew only meant one thing, and that was that she was thinking too hard about something.
"Lisa I've been thinking, and am I not wrong to be sad about it being over? I mean I broke up with him, surely I can't be upset about it." She told me.
"You're perfectly in the right to be upset, at the end of the day he broke up with you too." I told her.
"I know but... it's just... it's just difficult"
"I know it is, all break-ups are hard no matter how prepared you are for it."
"I know, I've been though it before, just somehow this is worse." She sighed. "It's awkward though. We're not the same as we used to be, and every-time we share a room it feels awkward."
I sighed. We'd all noticed how different Faye and Lee were now. Their relationship hadn't reverted back to being friends like they had been before they started dating as we'd all hoped, instead they'd turned frosty towards each other and rarely spoke to the other unless they really had to. I felt slightly responsible because I had, after all, talked to Faye about her feelings and encouraged her to break-up with Lee if she wanted to. I regularly reminded myself that was all I had told her, and at the end of the day it had actually been her choice. I supposed that I was feeling guilty by association (another term I'd learnt of my psychology friend), rather than actually through doing something. I also felt guilty about the fact that me, H and Claire had made so many jokes about the break up that I'd laughed far harder than necessary.
I looked at her, and took her hand, more roughly than I'd meant to so it wasn't as smooth and reassuring as I'd wanted to be. "It's fine, you'll be alright eventually, but first you have to confess that it was never meant to be." I told her.
She squeezed my hand. "But I miss it." She replied, tears welling up in her eyes.
"I know you do, we all do." I told her. Hadn't this conversation just been here a couple of moments ago? It didn't surprise me, it happened a lot. She was distracted in her head a lot of the time at the minute, so conversations could go round in circles for days if the other person allowed it to.
I sighed and looked at Faye, averting my gaze hastily as she looked over at me. Instead of daring a look back in her direction, I picked up my book and turned to the marked page. Faye got out some sort of an electronic device or other and I could hear the music on whatever game she was playing.
When I looked up later she'd left the room, the game console abandoned on her bed still playing the game over screen music. I sighed and turned it off, before heading back to my bed to carry on reading.

Lee's point of view
I sat in my room lazily flicking through the pages of a sports magazine. I didn't really feel like reading, but I needed something to try and think about at least. It'd been a bad morning and I'd decided that, in order to avoid Faye and I fighting, I'd do better just resigning to my room. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot to do in my bedroom, and there were only so many Lego towers I could build with the small amount of bricks stashed in the bottom of my chest of draws. Eventually, fed up of magazines, I concluded I needed to walk. I didn't fancy going alone.
Crossing the loo between my room and H's I planned what I wanted to ask. I knocked on the door and it opened to reveal H's relatively plain room.
"Can I help you?" He asked, book in hand. He was wearing a dressing gown and looked like he should be a professor in Oxford rather than a pop star. The only thing ruining the look was his hair, stuck up in all directions like normal.
"I was wondering if you wanted to go to the green for a kick about?" I asked him.
He looked at me long and hard before replying. "Sure, I have to warn you though I'm not very good." He gestured for me to come into his room.
Smiling, I headed in. "Well maybe you can practice." I said as I followed him through his room to the door. I knew H was messy, everyone did - he could never find anything of his even on tour when he only had a suitcase of stuff, but as I picked my way around discarded clothes, blankets, books and boxes of photos I realised he was messy to another level entirely. I tried my best not to imagine what my mother would say if she ever saw his room; something I'd had to try quite a lot as, over time, we'd all settled down to living with one and other.
"Sorry my room's a mess, I wasn't expecting room guests today." He joked.
"Are you ever?" I teased, grinning at him as he shot me a look. I closed his bedroom door on my way out.