Eucalyptus & Honey |H.S.|

Chapter 45 - Smile like it's No Big Deal

Shock was a weird feeling.

It was like feeling absolutely everything and absolutely nothing all at once. Like your brain looked at a complete train wreck of a situation and decided it needed a little break from just... working correctly. It turned fear and pain and rage into a terrifying calm. A calm that didn't belong.

It was like the feeling of forgetting a word. You know what you want to say, you just don't know how to say it. And suddenly, no matter how hard you try, it's as if that one word never existed in the first place. And you eventually have to accept the use of another word to fill it's place, all the while unable to ignore that missing piece where the word you were searching for would fit perfectly.

That's how I felt staring back at the photo of Alexander. Like my emotions were some word that I couldn't remember. Leaving me filled with an empty sort of calm.

The remainder of the ride back to Harry's house passed by in a blur, and I couldn't tell you if it had taken five minutes or five hours. I had somehow managed to keep up casual conversation with Gemma, but I also couldn't tell you a single thing that we talked about.

After we pulled into the driveway and grabbed the few bags we had acquired from shopping today, I immediately headed inside in search of Harry. Whatever I was feeling, I knew Harry was feeling something entirely different. While Alexander was my father, who I had previously assumed to be dead, he was still the man that was currently blackmailing Harry. And seeing him this close to us—this close to me—without our knowledge was reason enough to send Harry into a spiral of his own anxieties.

So, as I rushed into the house in search of Harry, I wasn't thinking about me or how this made me feel. My mind was entirely focused on Harry and how much stress I knew he must've been feeling at the moment.

Truthfully, I had still hardly began to process the fact that my father was alive and was the source of all of Harry's anxieties and insecurities and fears. The man who would take me to the pier every weekend, stuffing me with corn dogs and funnel cakes and ice cream, just because he couldn't say no to me. The man who showed up to every single one of my dance recitals and soccer games and first days of school, even though I knew he was too busy to really have time for any of that. Because he knew that my mother wouldn't do any of it. She wouldn't take me to the pier, she wouldn't show up to my dance recitals, she never even knew what day my birthday was—which was sort of hard to believe considering she was the one that gave birth to me.

No. That man that had loved me and raised me and cared for me more than anyone else ever had, was dead to me. He was not the man staring back at the camera. He was not the man that had been blackmailing Harry for years. He did not exist. Not to me.

And it was easier that way. Believing I didn't really know this man. Because if I truly sat down and took the time to wrap my head around it, I don't think I would be able to handle it. And I don't think I would be able to face Harry every day knowing that the man who kissed my cheek and made me breakfast every day before school was the same man that was the cause of all of his pain.

Maybe it was wrong. Maybe it was even a little pathetic. But I couldn't handle it. Not right now. Not yet.

I smelled the smoke before I saw him.

Harry's bedroom door was cracked open just enough for a small haze of smoke to lead out into the hallway. My journey from the front door to here was just as much of a blur as the ride home had been. I must've abandoned the shopping bags somewhere, because my hands were now empty, and I wasn't entirely sure if I had spoken to anyone on the way up here or not. But I was also far too focused on Harry to care.

I slowly pushed the door open the rest of the way, feeling oddly nervous and unsure about what state I was about to find Harry in. His voice had been tense, but unusually calm on the phone, and it was a tone I had never heard him use before. I wasn't sure what he was thinking or feeling right now, but I knew it couldn't be good.