Butterfly [A Harry Styles Fanfiction] *COMPLETED WITH SEQUEl* {Book 1}

Chapter 35: Denial

Cami's POV:

I was beginning to love the feeling of having none at all. I felt only empty. I wasn't happy, I wasn't sad. I felt nothing.

It was nice not to care about anything for once. It was a relief to wake up in the morning without this constant weight on your chest. I just didn't feel anything anymore. Not the pain of my Mother's death, not her absence during my childhood, or the non existent amount of nurturing I recieved from my father. I was finally free from all of that because there was nothing left in me that had the energy to care.

What difference did it make now?

What's done was done and it was too late to change it. No more dwelling on the past and no more caring, period.

I seemed to like my new philosophy on life. It took the pain away and made me feel okay. Harry on the other hand wouldn't stop trying to pull me out of this new way of thinking. With Charli and Caleb by his side, the trio had annoyed me so much into agreeing to attend my mother's funeral.

The days since we'd gotten back from Catalina seemed to drag on. They felt twice as long and twice as agonizingly boring to get through. I opted not to go back to school or work for the next week and made arrangements accordingly. Meryl was painfully understanding about it, to the point where I almost cringed at her sappy words. It was nice of her to care- I just didn't need more pity than I was already getting at home.

Harry never left my side and stayed with me each second he could. It was almost smothering but I knew his intentions were only good. To my surprise he was the one letting me be- despite his aversion to my new attitude, and Charli was the one who was down my throat about 'letting myself feel this'.

There was constant bickering between my boyfriend and my bestfriend in the early hours of the morning, that they didn't think I was awake for. I was- I hadn't been sleeping much. Their heated conversations would start off with something like:

"We need to shake her out of this. She's like a zombie."

and then Harry would respond with words like:

"She just needs time. We can't force her to grieve her mum if she hasn't even accepted the fact that she's gone in the first place."

Those were the calm days, the days when they decided to both shut their mouths and accept that they had differing opinions on the matter of my well being.

But then there were days like today; my mother's funeral.

The sun peaking out from under the curtains burned against my tired eyes. I hadn't been outside in days and the sheer stroke of sunlight on my skin felt like it might burn me to ash. My new philosophy rejected the idea of straying too far from my bedroom and being outdoors was completely out of the question.

The only reason I was even conscious at seven in the morning was because of the whisper yells that were coming from the kitchen.

I tried to ignore them at first, like I had most days, but my patience was stretched thin and I could not take it any longer.

I begrudgingly rose from my bed and stomped my way into the kitchen.

"How's she gonna feel a year from now when she realizes she was too stubborn to take the last chance possible to say goodbye to her mother?" Charli's voice was loud, much too loud for me to pretend I slept through.

"Char, you're gonna wake her," Caleb intervened lightly.

I could practically hear the hesitance he felt about speaking up, although he did it anyway.

"That's exactly what she wants! She wants Cami to hear so she can force grief down her throat." Harry's voice was stern and fed up.

Although it was obvious he didn't agree with the way I had been going about handling things, he tried to give me the option to work through it myself. Charli threw the stages of grief in my face and convinced me that moving out of the first stage: denial, was the only way I could ever move forward.