Ephemeral //H.S

Chapter 53

-Lucy Urbinati-

The bedroom door creaks open, letting more of the darkness inside the already dark room. I look up and watch his shadow silently walk inside for the first time since last week, he doesn't look at me but sits on the edge of the bed right next to me.

"I can't sleep." His voice sounds raspy, exhausted, and it breaks my heart.

"Me neither." My own voice isn't much better as it is barely audible, like I haven't used it in ages.

The room goes silent again, the only thing I can hear is his quiet breathing and the pounding of my heart inside my ears. He's sitting right next to me, but it feels like he's miles away from me. It's been a week since he got me back here, a week out of physical hell, but a week in the made up hell that is my mind, stuck in there with no way out. A week since we've spoken to each other, since he's been sleeping on the living room sofa. I know that because everytime I wake up in the middle of the night crying, he's the first one to hear me, but everytime he wakes Devon up instead of coming in.

A week back with my family, with Niall and Louis but it's like he is not in my life anymore, because he doesn't come to see me. But it's not like I've made the effort to go see him either. But he's here now, he made the decision to come in here right now, at 2 in the morning, to sit next to me. And it's like my heart has finally started to beat on it's own again.

"You barely leave this room." He states, elbows resting on his knees and eyes casted downward. I keep my head straight ahead of me, looking at the darkness surrounding us.

"You wake up crying in the middle of the night, every night, you flinch when someone raises their voice, and you barely eat. And right now you're sitting in the dark." He then adds, as if he couldn't believe it.

"I know." I can hardly believe it myself.

"I think we need to talk." I add, still staring ahead of me, my hands resting on my lap as I sit cross legged on the edge of the bed, facing the wall, completely still.

He doesn't say anything for a moment, I hear some ruffling next to me and a familiar clicking sound, the sound of his rings clicking against each other when he runs his fingers through his hair. I missed this sound.

"Yeah." Is all he says.

"It's almost like we never talked before. We talked but, it feels like we purposefully kept so many things from each other. I know you felt that way too, I could always see the way you looked at me, you knew that there were so many things I couldn't say so you just waited. You patiently waited for me to want to say them, to accept them first before letting you in fully, and yet I still never did. But neither did you, because that's also how I used to look at you, always on the edge of my seat, on the edge of your lips, waiting for you to fully let me in. But we both never did. Am I wrong?" I speak calmly, trying to say everything that I mean, to let the weight lift off my chest.

"No you're not, that's exactly how it always was with us. There was always a double meaning to each of our words, like we couldn't trust each other enough to say everything. We were too comfortable with the silence to disturb it." He sighs, talking lowly just like me as if to not disturb our quiet bubble.

"So we need to talk." He says and I nod, even though he can't see me. "No bullshit, no lies, no double meaning. Just the truth, because I don't think I can handle anymore of it."

"Why can't you sleep?" I ask a simple question.

Silence, it only lasts a minute or two but feels like ages.

"Because everytime I close my eyes I see you leaving my bed in the middle of the night, I hear your breathing through the telephone, your silence when I tell you that I love you. I see you falling down that fucking cliff." He says and my heart clenches inside my chest, I close my eyes and keep my head down, swallowing harshly.