For Him - Shawn Mendes

fallen this hard BEFORE.

HANNAH

I remember the feeling of terror that crashed over me as I gazed down at my laptop on the kitchen bench. I remember the word document gaping back at me in a staring competition both it and I knew I'd never win.

It was 4:37 am, and the words I needed so desperately danced unwillingly on the edge of my tongue. What would later become my first ever novel was so nearly finished, so close to being complete yet so ruthlessly far away. A paragraph was all I needed, but the idioms refused to budge.

With gentle thuds my bare feet hit the floorboards as I traipsed down the hallway to the empty room that say at the end. As I pushed the door open, I watched as the moon tipped light through the window and spilled shadows at my feet. In the corner of the room a desk was pushed against a bookcase, a pile of boxes stacked neatly above.

I smiled as I opened the box on top, holding Shawn's old collection of Harry Potter books and DVD's in my arms. Upstairs, he laid asleep in bed beside Karen, who struggled to fall asleep alone after discovering where meat came from. I held his belongings closer and my lips stretched at the edges.

After moving the desk so it sat overlooking the shadows of the forest outside, I began filling the bookshelf with literature so old it brought a pang of nostalgia to my chest. With each story came a flood of metaphors, characters and morals I had once loved and read over and over again. As the sun crept up from behind the trees and the room was met with warmth, I brought my laptop into the newly laid out room and sat cross-legged in a sea of pages, with tides of fantasy, romance and adventure.

A sea that kick started the flow of words that I needed; and there I finished Parachutes - a book that took me three years to write, but a story that had been in my head for as long as I could remember.

And I remember tip-toeing back upstairs and slipping into bed beside Shawn, who had his arms wrapped around our daughter, her head resting on his chest. I remember this, which tears apart at my heart sometimes, because it doesn't seem important when there are entries that are completely torn off, and now there are days that I don't even recall.

SHAWN
6th of January, 2027

Music brings out the best in me. It brings out a part of me that lays so deep within that I'm often shocked by my own emotions as they crawl across the paper I write on. And that's scary sometimes, but it's also that very same feeling of fear that holds responsibility for the reasons I love it. I can write and write about vivid memories or make-belief tales, I can write chords and spit melodies and write and write and write until my head is completely depleted.

And I'll write even when I'm told to stop.

"Shawn, sit down."

I want to throw something at him, but I know it will achieve nothing. I wonder if this man that sits across from me, accompanied by men who I not long ago threw glass at, despise of me. I wonder, then, if I despise of them too.

Today we're on the third story of an office building where the public won't be disturbed if I lash out again. This hasn't been clarified, but I can see it in the way they look at me that they're afraid of what I might do.

Of what I might do when Andrew opens his mouth and tells me this:

"If you refuse to take up any of the acting roles, Shawn, they're going to terminate your contract."

His voice softens now, and it surprises me how his words turn liquid warm. "We have to find a way to save your career, and we think acting is the way to go."

Geoff, beside me, opens his mouth in disbelief. "What?!" He interjects, "The kid's only getting started!"

I eye him, raising my eyebrows. I try to hide how scared I am with a hand over my mouth. "There must be something else we can do?"

They're afraid of what I might do, so when tears rain from my eyes the way they expected glass to spill again from my fingers, they sit in silence.

A young woman with black hair tied into a messy bun breaks though the silence with a cough. "I ah," She bites down on her lip nervously, "I have an idea."

David Massey sits up in his chair, "Yes?"

"How about an autobiography?" She asks, her voice quivering, "I mean, make it like a story, one readable by all ages, just to get your name back out there?"

"Nicole," David says slowly, "you're an intern. No crazy ideas."

She apologizes, her fringe falling across her face as she quickly returns to her seat. And maybe it's because we're both scared, but I find an unnerving connection with the intern. Her idea doesn't seem that crazy at all.

"I like the idea," I say, brushing away subtle tears from below my eyes.

Andrew turns to me, "An autobiography? Really?"

"I've kept a diary ever since I was 15," I say quickly, the secret spilling like liquid gold from my lips. "I'm nearly 30 now,- that's fourteen years of entries."

My words have always been something for me. I've never shared them with anyone, and they hold some of my deepest thoughts. It's scary, but if they can save my career, will I be willing to release them to the world?

"The journey of a singer," Geoff smiles, "Not dead. Still rolling."

David furrows his eyebrows, picking his phone up from the table in front of us as he stands. "I like the idea," He begins, and the sad smile on my lips is almost as triumphant as the one on Nicole's. "I'll book you in with our head editor, and we'll see what we can do."

"Thank you," I whisper, running my hands through my hair, "I promise you, this will work."