Not A Temporary Love | Finley & Harlyn #1

Chapter 29

Finley

I avoid any and all people for the next four days. The only person I interact with is Amelia, because I can't avoid her at breakfast every morning. But it's like she knows not to push conversation too hard. She just smiles, makes me scrambled eggs, and tells me funny stories about Betty and her grandkids.

Max texts me before he leaves for Scotland, telling me I'd better talk to Harlyn before he gets back or he'll drag me out of the house in my pajamas and make me. I believe him. But I still leave Harlyn's We need to talk. Soon. message unanswered. I text Mom back, telling her there's no need to call, that I applied to ISU and she won't hear anything more about it. Her I think this is the best choise text sends me into a full downward spiral that I'm not sure even Eliza can pull me out of.

I do what I'm best at, avoiding, burying myself in schoolwork. I fully research and write the second of my four final papers, and I have the reading done for two more. There's a tense sort of calm in my brain, the kind that only comes when I'm alone and filling my brain with words and Netflix and plans and not letting my mind wander to anything else. Somewhere deep inside my head, I'm screaming to get out, to give the entire world the finger, walk to Harlyn's house, kiss him, and live happily ever after. But I just can't seem to muster up the energy to do it.

I don't even write my blog. There's a bullet list on a note in my phone that I kept while we were in Paris, things I wanted to remember to include. But every time I even start to play sentences out in my mind, they include Harlyn. Harlyn smiling. Harlyn kissing me. Harlyn speaking his broken French to a Parisian, asking which Metro train we needed to get on. Harlyn gazing at me as I gazed at whatever French landmark was in front of me. Harlyn...so confused and hurt and angry and...sad. I know Mom's waiting to read it, that she's waiting to send the link to Grandma. But there's no way I can write anything half as good as I have been.

And that's when I realize how far gone I am. Sitting at my desk Friday night, staring at the pictures I took in Paris, I remember something Max said a few months after I started therapy. I'd just told him, blushing, that I'd been writing fanfiction again. It was a fun pastime, something I'd taken up in high school when I started to really hone my writing skills. When a show or book ended and I didn't want to leave the world, I'd dive back in with my own stories, filling gaps and lengthening plotlines. During the worst bits of senior year and my first semester of college, I didn't write. I didn't write anything - fanfiction, my own stories, nothing. All mental energy was channeled into school papers and studying and numbing my brain with TV shows I'd watched a million times.

As things started to clear, as I dug myself out bit by bit and Eliza pulled me into the real world again, the itch to write came back. And I wrote. And I told Max, who I knew had been so worried about me. He hugged me so tight and exclaimed that that was a mark of my recovery - that I was writing Drarry fanfiction again. I rolled my eyes, told him it was not Drarry fanfiction (anymore) and told him to shove off. We both knew - and still know - that I wasn't ever going to "recover" fully. My anxiety wasn't something that was just going to go away magically. It's something I'll deal with for the rest of my life. But he also knew that it was a sign that I was doing better - a helluva lot better.

And as I sit, staring at the picture I snapped of the Arc de Triomphe, starkly lit in the night, no desire whatsoever - actually a dread pooling in my stomach - to put into words how I felt that night, I start crying. What would Eliza say if she saw me now? What would she tell me, in that soft sweet voice that had coaxed me into trusting her with some of my deepest darkest secrets? Finley, you are capable. You are strong. You are -

Strong. Harlyn called me strong. That day he came over to tell me he liked me. Told me I was strong because I face my demons every day and I'm still here. Does he still think I'm strong? Or did he realize now how weak I really am? His text crosses my mind.