Chase You

08; burden

I let out a tiny snicker and grabbed my rucksack from the backseat. She hopped out the car and I followed her to her house.

Her dad was the first person I saw and his usual, bored looking face brightened up, making me smile a little. He put his glass of water down and straightened out his pyjama pants.

"Dad..." Marcia groaned, blushing a little. "Put a top on. Nobody wants to see your hairy beer belly."

He rolled his eyes and stretched a hand out. I accepted the gesture and wordlessly shook his hand in a firm grip.

Marcia smiled at me, her cheeks rosy and her dad made his way upstairs with his glass of water. I kicked my shoes off and trailed upstairs behind her.

"You've been here enough times to know where everything is." She laughed and lay in her bed, she was probably about to sleep before I showed up.

I rested my bag against the foot of the bed and took out my phone charger and plugged it in before laying down in the bed and tucking myself under the covers beside her.

My heart was literally at the pit of my stomach. I should've never accepted the invite to stay the night, it was terrible idea.

She had a point though. It was way too late for me to go all the way up to Sheffield, and I didn't want to wake mum up while she was sleeping.

It's just so difficult to act like friends with Marcia, especially when all I felt like doing was cuddling her and letting her falling asleep in my arms like we used to do.

I settled for laying on my back and staring up all the intricate patterns on the ceiling. Glancing to her, I only saw that her back was faced to me and she has herself wrapped quite tightly in the duvet covers.

A tiny sigh escaped my lips as memories came flooding back, all the way from the first time we met, to the last time we spoke with almost everything in between.

I wanted to tell her so bad about everything. My disorder, my mum, my new step sister and step mother and finally, how I still have feelings for her. Maybe strolling back into town wasn't a good idea, I'm turning back into someone that I tried so hard to keep away from.

"Marcy-" I whispered, but I was cut off when she abruptly did a full 180 and rested her head on my chest.

Confusingly, I just rested my hand as she cozied up to me. Fine, maybe we could pull this off. Cuddling as friends was okay, I guess?

"Your heart is beating really fast." She informed me as if I couldn't feel it hammering against my skin, practically trying to claw itself out. "What's up?"

"The reason I stormed out of my house was because my mum left, two years ago, as you already know, and my dad-"

"He didn't tell you why." She finished. I nodded and felt a lump form in my throat.

"I found a letter that dad wrote to her not long after she left saying that it's not really his story to tell. He knew where she was living, he knew all this time."

Why wouldn't he want me knowing where my own mum is? Isn't that kind of evil?

I ended up telling Marcia everything. Well not everything, I did keep some details to myself but I told her about my Cyclothymia, and how it could lead onto even more severe disorders and I told her all about dropping out of university, rejecting Cambridge, about Mia and Wyatt and finally, about how odd it was that Ben was still around and not out to kill me.