missing | gilinsky

36

"You guys were out for a while," I say, my eyes still closed. 

I've only been awake for a couple of seconds, but that doesn't stop me from noticing Jack and Hannah trying to be quiet as hell while sneaking back into the hotel room.

"Yeah, well..." Hannah replies, shrugging her shoulders. Her eyes wander toward my sleeping brother and I watch her whole demeanor change. 

"Why were you sleeping on the floor when there's another bed that's not being occupied by sleeping beauty?" Jack asks, helping me up off the ground. I look away from Hannah, forcing myself not to feel guilty. I don't know what I'd even feel guilty about, but the feeling is somehow still there. 

"It just happened," I tell him. 

There's a sudden awkwardness that fills the room and I really have no idea what I'm supposed to do about it. There's two beds and four people and it's almost midnight and things are just weird. We've found my brother - well - my brother found us - and we're in this random hotel room and no one knows anything at the same time everyone knows everything.

The only sound that can be heard is the shuffling of feet and my brother's quiet snoring. Without caring if Jack sees me I slide out of the clothes I went to the pool in and pull on a pair of Hannah's shorts that she must've left on the floor when we first got here and a random t-shirt I find next to the lamp.

I'm not sure which bed to get into, if I should even get into one. I look around and catch Hannah and Jack both doing what I'm doing, which is standing in the middle of the room not doing anything. Nobody knows what to do.

"I'm tired," I announce, breaking another long string of silence. 

"You just slept for like an eternity," Hannah gets out, releasing a bit of the awkward air.

"I need my beauty sleep."

"If anyone here needs beauty sleep it's Gilinsky," she teases.

I let out a small giggle and look up at Jack to see him holding his chest in mock hurt. 

"I can't believe you said that!" He gasps.

"It's only the truth," she admits.

"You both a horrible people."

Hannah and I laugh but after that there's no other sound. "This cycle is getting old," I say, walking over to the empty bed. "Three people could probably fit in here," I suggest. 

"Yeaaah, no," Hannah says. "As much as I know you and Gilinsky would love to sleep in the same bed, Johnson would most likely not want to be waking up to that."

I feel my face heat up as I pick at the skin around my pinky finger. I just want to get back to sleep and get away from all of this. 

Hannah completely ignores my death stare and continues to talk, "if you don't mind, G, Nadie and I will be taking the bed, I'm sure you won't mind the couch." 

Jack nods and slides right into the seat that he's been standing in front of since he and Hannah first got back from wherever they were. "Night, ladies," he murmurs, trying to get comfortable. 

I purse my lips and slide into the bed, willing my eyes to close. "Night."

"Don't let the bed bugs bite," Hannah says, leaning over me to shut off the light. I clench my jaw, wishing there was some sort of nightlight I could turn on. Even with my eyes closed I can tell the room just got a thousand times darker. 

I know that Hannah knows I hate sleeping in the dark, but she doesn't say anything. I'm not sure if Jack knows but I'm almost certain he doesn't. I could kill Hannah right now. She's been trying to get me to sleep without a nightlight since middle school. 

This is going to be a long night.

Hannah

I feel like a really bad friend the second Nadia tenses up next to me. I know me saying that shit about her and Jack right before we got into bed embarrassed her, so now the fact that I'm forcing her to sleep without a nightlight makes things ten times worse.

It's not like I planned this on purpose though, so I shouldn't really feel bad about it. Either way I know it's going to take her forever to fall asleep tonight. If I wasn't so emotionally exhausted I probably would make the time to find some sort of light source to plug in so she'd feel safer, but I hope she can suck it up for one night. 

There's so many different things going on in my head right now I'd rather just get this day over with then be up for another hour. Yeah, it's selfish of me, but there's plenty of times that Nadia's been selfish when she had the chance to do something for me and she didn't.

Like the time in seventh grade when she could've stayed in Ms. Mulberry's class with me during lunch while I retook my test, but instead she had told me she was really hungry even though I knew she just wanted to hang out with Jeremy King. 

People are always going to have a selfish side whether they realize it or not - whether they like it or not. It's not necessarily a bad thing, sometimes it good to take time to do things for yourself. I just wish it felt better than this.

Thinking about all the selfish things I've ever done and all the selfish things Nadia's ever done got me thinking about Johnson. Was he being selfish all this time? Him running away - was that him being selfish? And if so, was it the good kind of selfish, the kind of selfish that's okay to be sometimes?

A part of me is angry with him for ever putting us through this, us being me and his family and his other friends, but another part of me is angry with us for being mad about it. We don't really know how he feels. We don't really know what was going through his head when he decided to leave. Nobody really knows but him, and that's what confused me. 

We never truly know how other people feel, we can only make assumptions and have opinions, but it won't ever be one hundred percent correct. 

That's why before I fall asleep tonight all I can think about is all the choices he's made in the past few months, and all the choices I've made, all the choices Gilinsky's made, all the choices Nadia has made. They were all for a reason. All for our own reasons. 

And I think that's a pretty powerful thing. Because, yeah, everything happens for a reason, and those things happen because of choices that we've made. But without those choices what would we be? What would've happened?

So many things could be different, but as weird as things are right now, I don't think I'd want to change a thing.

_____________________

here's another update! thanks for being so patient and sorry if this chapter was boring or sappy or whatever. I know the last few chapters have been pretty short and haven't really been all that exciting, just a bunch of blabbering from everyone, but I need to get everyone's feeling out of the way before actually getting on with the story line. 

chapter 37 will most likely be up next sunday if I have the time, hopefully I do. 

- gilinskyshigh