Haven • H.S.

23. Promise*

Haven- 23

 "...it was always you. now i know why my heart wasn't satisfied... satisfied..."

 Harry.

My life was complicated in a completely uncomplicated way. I had everything I'd ever wanted. I had the girl-- thank God for that. I had the Ivy league college education-- well, I was in the process, but at least I was accepted in the first place. I even had the friends.

But, I didn't really have that last one. I didn't know what the word friend even entailed anymore. I used to.

I wasn't going to make up some pity story about how I was pretty sure I'd lost my last existent friend left because I'd ripped the woman we were both interested in right out from underneath his reach. Niall just wasn't around anymore. He cut ties. For the time being, anyway. There was nothing wrong with that, was there? We were still close, that wouldn't change.

He knew about the time when I was eight and I tripped over the leather ottoman in my childhood living room and clipped my forehead on the glass side table. He knew about the times I would write my tribulations down as a teenager because I thought I was in love with my classmate, Laura Spencer. He knew that I had secretly held something inside me over having divorced parents at such a young age. He knew. And he knew these things because I had told him; because I had offered them over cold pints at the bar down the street and he had listened. He'd listened, and maybe I took advantage of that. But he'd talk just as much as I, and I knew about his difficulty with coping from his father's decision to enter the Navy when he was a child. He'd told me about his mental bruises, whether small or large, and in turn, I shared mine. We'd talked for hours one night, sitting on the same couch I still used in my dorm, about how f.ucked up he thought the world and the people in it were.

He had known me at my lowest, and I just found it odd that he wouldn't stick around long enough to know me at my highest.

But I didn't have very much time to think about depressing topics like that. I had Boston and I had Ella.

I even had Kane.

_________________

"It's beautiful, don't you think?” Ella asked from beside me.

I looked over at her. The sunset was just a convenient bonus; she was the beautiful one.

Her crystalline blue eyes turned, gripping me. She looked like she knew exactly what I was thinking. She had that ability most days-- just not the ones where I nearly exploded from holding in my declaration of deep adoration to her. Those times, she suddenly couldn't read a fucking thing that was cognizable. “I was talking about the sunset,” she declared softly.

“I know.”

She laughed, shaking her head. “You're impossible.”

After lunch at the diner, which turned out to be far later than an actual lunch, the sun had begun to set. Coming up with a decent idea, I had rushed Ella back to my car where I told her I was taking her somewhere. Surprise destination, if you will. She was okay with it; she liked surprises.

She had gone through my sizable CD collection on the way, and pulled out my Billy Joel record, popping it in.

I had white-knuckled the steering wheel when she starting singing, and nearly lost it when she continued, and sang along to nearly every fucking song. I hadn't even cared that her voice was out of tune or that she couldn't even come 40th place on American Idol because I reckoned I'd be able to listen to it all day if it meant just being with her like that. Eleven songs later, she had went on to admit softly, “My dad was kind of obsessed with Billy. We listened to him when he'd drive me to school every morning.”