It's You [H.S.]

11.2 | You're it

Adele, Don't You Remember

"When will I see you again? / You left with no goodbye, not a single word was said / No final kiss to seal anything / I had no idea of the state we were in".

4th February 2019

Things have been pretty hideous, for four hellish months now.

It's been twenty weeks, to the day, since he'd spoken to her.

Then, the last time he'd heard from her, had been two weeks after that. 8.10pm on the eighth of October, as it happened.

After reams of texts and missed calls and messages - all unanswered - that final, sobbing, broken, anguished, and confusion laden voicemail marked the final missive.

It had him promptly hurling his iPhone against the wall - distraught for sure, but mostly to avoid the impulse to call her straight back and try to console her, try to possibly explain.

That was just the first of three phones to have met a similar fate in the last four months.

He knows it would have been fairer to them both if he blocked her number; to take away the temptation for her to keep trying, and for him the anguish of receiving it all.

But, if her final broken, hollow words in that voicemail were true, the perseverance paid off.

Those words still haunt him.

"...I'm done".

Now, at least he could rest slightly easier, knowing that she could reach him if ever she needed him. He'd always drop anything for her. He has to believe that.

But, four months on, it all still hurts. Unbearably so.

He can practically still see teasing flashes of it all, dancing behind his eyelids when he tries to fall asleep.

Those damning and salacious headlines were attention grabbing enough.

'Love rat'.

'Cheating scum'.

'Playboy'.

He'd been thoroughly vilified.

That the stories broke the morning of their third anniversary - well, her date for it, anyway - only made him feel all the more wretched.

He hadn't anticipated that; in his distraction, he hadn't put two and two together.

After waking up early, he'd taken his time to say his own silent goodbyes as she slept, before cowardly slinking off.

Throwing on some clothes and grabbing his hastily packed bag - hiding in wait in their closet - he loitered by the bedroom door, bestowing silent apologies as tears streamed down his cheeks.

Totally numb, in hindsight, he can't quite recall even getting in the car, let alone the subsequent drive.

But he certainly remembers the guilt he felt leaving.

Leaving her to wake up alone, to all that.

>

Hiding out alone at the Azoff's holiday home in Palm Springs, he'd ended up making himself physically sick.

But a few days wracked with fevered chills, unable to either keep anything down or stop crying, didn't feel nearly like punishment enough.

When he turned the corner a couple of days later, it transpired that nothing had yet calmed down.

He'd never heard his mum so furious.

And she then jumped straight on a plane and demanded he head back to LA to face her.