With Grayson's sudden absence from her life, Mia tries her hardest to carry on as normal; to continue as though she had never met the man who turned her world upside down in only a short amount of time.
With the help of her best friend Hailey, and...
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My bedroom ceiling is starting to become a familiar spectacle.
My mind seems elsewhere recently, so I seem to find comfort in just laying on my bed like I have nothing better to do. I'm fully dressed and my shoes are still on. I have no energy.
Downstairs, Hailey and Lucas are making lasagna. Upstairs, I lay with little interest in anything other than waiting for my phone to vibrate as it lays next to my ear. But I don't look at it. I just stare upward.
Hailey offered me to stay downstairs with them, but I declined. I can't face Lucas at the moment, though when I found out he would be going back home in two days time I actually breathed a sigh of relief.
Of course I love him—he's my brother. But God is he suffocating. Maybe once he's home he'll stop having such a control over my life. Maybe.
I stare some more. I stare and stare at the damned ceiling that dances with whirls and spirals. And the more I stare, the more I find myself in a daze.
Maybe I should just sleep. It is only 6pm but maybe I just need to sleep everything away.
Well. If it were that easy.
I held hope that Grayson would come back to me, or simply just reach out to me. But his absence is elongating to the point where my hope squeezes into a tiny ball of darkness. Two or three days more, it will have gone completely.
My heavy chest falls with a large exhale. Everything is so messed up. Everything is so frustrating. And nothing is ever easy. Not anymore. I've gathered as much that my life will never be easy and that there will always be obstacles. Some obstacles will strengthen me, and others will completely break me. But maybe they will strengthen me too in the end.
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When I wake up, it's dark. The orange glow of a streetlight spills over my skin, my arms stretched to either side of me. The house is silent, the air lingering with the light aroma of Italian food.
Is it late? I haven't a clue. I didn't even feel like I was falling asleep. Then I lift my phone and sigh at the time: 11.16pm.
Jeez.
Maybe I was tired.
With a slow motion, I scrunch my limp body and stand, guiding myself to the mirror. I look lifeless. I look as though someone sucked everything that was good from me. I look a shell of myself.
This torrent of darkness has to end. I'm fed up of feeling wounded and down and broken. I've tried so many times to build myself up and every time something comes along and breaks me again. I need to start building better barriers. Stronger barriers.
I push my hair away from my face and walk downstairs. All the lights are off and judging by the silence I guess Hailey and Lucas went to bed. In the kitchen a plate of lasagna is tucked away and blanketed with a layer of cling film, a note on top that reads For you Mia.
