Paper Airplane

41

THIS ISN'T THE LAST CHAPTER FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE UNDOUBTEDLY GOING TO THINK IT IS.  i mean, a lot of you thought chapter 40 was the last chapter, but it wasn't, and neither is this. so breathe (:  your guys' responses to the last chapter, by the way, were MAGNIFICANT seriously i couldn't even believe it. thank you SO much; it was TRULY the greatest christmas present i could have ever asked for!  i hope you're all having a wonderful winter break so far, annnnnnd enjoy this chapter! let me know what you think (: (:

Chapter Forty-One

 

 

                Time slowed down without Harry.  It was the oddest thing.

                I spent the next few days doing next to nothing apart from watching movies or sulking in my bedroom with my iPod as my only companion.  Brady has been busier than ever all of a sudden.  I blame this all on the fact that it’s nearing his album’s release date, and Lucy has, therefore, been tagging along with him wherever he has to go, and that has left me to myself.  My parents have been keeping themselves busy for the most part too, doing all the touristy things in the city that they haven’t done yet.

                I had no ambition to do anything, really, and my parents began to notice eventually.  My dad was sick of seeing me this way, and my mom was getting tired of trying to ease that tension.  I didn’t necessarily want to be a bother to either of them, but…  Honestly, I couldn’t bring myself to care enough to please my dad.  I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about anything.  And those few days felt like weeks because, like I said, without Harry time slowed down.

                So that led to the conversation I had with my mom yesterday.  I’d been watching Blue Valentine and was about halfway through it when she joined me on the couch.  “Honey, are you okay?” she asked suddenly.  She and Dad had just gotten home from lunch somewhere, and her voice shattered a silence that existed outside the sounds coming from Brady’s TV.  I jumped a little.  “Honestly, I’m sort of worried at this point.”

                I was about to tell her that I was fine, but I obviously wasn’t.  It felt like I’ve been sitting on this couch since summer began rather than just a few days, and I had no energy or drive to do anything else.  I didn’t care about anything else.  I refrained from going online completely, and I avoided any television show that discussed celebrities and their personal lives just in case.  Harry hasn’t texted or called, and I surely wasn’t going to, and I couldn’t bear to even really think about him or our last week (although at night, that became impossible).  I wasn’t fine.  I felt like I’d just gotten over a disease that left me just having escaped death.

                So instead, while dad was busying himself in their bedroom and Brady was gone, I decided to tell her the truth.  “No, I’m not.”  God, my voice.  I practically croaked.  “I want to go home.”

                “What is it?  What happened with him?” she asked softly.

                I nearly winced.  “Nothing happened.  I just want to go home.”

                “Lexie,” she sighed.  “We still have two more months – “

                “Mom, please.  Please can we go home early?  Please?”

                She was silent for a long time.  It was an awful, selfish request for me to have made, because I knew how much they were enjoying this time with Brady.  We haven’t so much time all at once with him since he first left home.  Honestly, I wouldn’t have even minded if they’d sent me home alone and spent the rest of the summer here with him, but I know that neither my mother nor my father would be down with that.  So when she finally responded, I felt pretty guilty to say the least.