I hadn’t spoken to Niall in almost two weeks.
In fact, I hadn’t really spoken to anyone in two weeks, I’d spoken briefly to my parents about the incident with Niall, but then brushed it off. My mother had seemed to have forgotten about the silence she held with me, because now every time she saw me, she was nothing but sympathetic smiles and sentences in an attempt to open me up to conversation.
The only person I had actually been talking to was in fact Harry. Id been sitting with him, walking to lessons with him, he’d walk me home after school, he’d even met my mother, and she didn’t totally hate him, in fact she actually quite liked him.
I had tried to sit with Louis and my normal friends, but after news of that Saturday spread, and rumours began to form, things hadn’t been the same. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel welcome, I just felt like I didn’t belong, I felt like I was being silently judged, even by Louis. So one day I sat by myself, and then the next day Harry came and sat with me, in the corner of the field, watching the rest of the school. And since then, Harry and I had just hung around with each other.
I felt lonely, for sure. Last week Niall didn’t turn up for school, I didn’t see him once, it was only this week that he reappeared in classes. He refused to make eye contact with me, much like me, I didn’t want to look at him, because I knew as soon as I did id get lost in his eyes, and I would fall all over again. I’ve spent two weeks without him, and it had been so much harder than I thought it would be.
I feel like I keep reaching out for him, and he’s just not there.
…
“But then I really don’t get meiosis, like mitosis is fine, but its fucking meiosis” Harry laughed as he took a drag of his cigarette, I should have been paying attention, I was supposed to be helping him, but I had become too distracted and cautious as I watched Niall standing at Louis’ table with Louis, Danielle and Liam as they spoke. I was beyond curious, I wanted to know what they were saying, but instead I was sat here, under a shady tree with Harry as I watched hypnotised by a conversation.
“So, um?” Harry mumbled as I looked back to him smiling as I apologised before he glanced over in the direction of where I had been staring. “What do you think he’s doing over there?” Harry laughed chucking his cigarette in the bush as I shrugged sighing, I didn’t know if I wanted to know what they were talking about.
“You’ve been down for 2 weeks now, its time to get over it” Harry laughed pinching my arm gently as I rose an eyebrow glancing over in his direction. 2 weeks wasn’t a long time, you wouldn’t get over a death in 2 weeks, so why would you get over a break up?
But was what happened with Niall and I a break up?
Everything was so confusing and in the air, there was no foundation or structure to anything that had been happening.
“And how do you suggest I get over it?” I mumbled picking at the grass beneath me, trying my hardest not to let my eyes become glued back to Niall and my friends.
“Hang out with me?” Harry smiled as I rose an eyebrow.
“Is that not what we’ve been doing for the last week and a half?” I asked laughing gently as he shook his head smiling with a goofy grin.
“No, proper hang out, Friday night there’s a bonfire down by the docks, I was going to go, you’re coming with me.” Harry said decisively as I shook my head. A bonfire down by the docks would mean most of my year being there, I knew my brother was going as he had been talking about it all week, and if he was going, then so was everyone else.
“Don’t shake your head, you’re coming.” He laughed as I sighed and Harry held his hands up in defence. “Its for your own good.” He said sarcastically pulling out his pack and lighting his third cigarette of the lunch break.
…
I sat in biology staring dully out of the window as Charlie nudged me on my arm pulling me out of my dreary thoughts.
Charlie was the type of friend that you stick with inside school, we’d hang out, smile in the corridors and spend lessons talking nonstop. He had been shy at first, shyer than ive ever been, but over the past month or so, he’d completely come out of his shell for me. when Niall and I were still, well, when we were not in an argument, he’d get really jealous of Charlie and I’s friendship, but now there was nothing stopping Charlie and I being friends.
I looked over to Charlie as he rose an eyebrow whilst shoving one of his earphones in my hand waiting for me to put it in my ear.
Charlie had been one of the few people, one of the only people I’d actually talked to in the past two weeks, about Niall. Sure id spoken to Harry, but not about how I was feeling, he was more trying to take my mind off of everything whereas Charlie was actually listening.
“You okay?” He whispered as he glanced over at the boy dressed entirely in black sitting a row in front of us on his own. I nodded supporting a fake smile as Charlie smiled back unsure. Seeing Niall sat on his own, sent a pain through my chest, which I knew it shouldn’t, I shouldn’t care, he hurt me, he deserved everything he got.
And yet I knew I was completely wrong.