The Lullaby Nights

♥ Epilogue

10 MONTHS LATER

HARLEY

Time heals. If someone asked me, I'd say it was true. It did it slowly, though.

First few weeks without Nina were a real anguish. It felt as if there was a wound in my heart and someone incessantly carried on twisting the knife just to make it bleed more. I couldn't bare the pain. I was devastated. I missed her more and more with every single day that passed.

When three months had elapsed, it was the first time I woke up feeling somewhat different. I hated it. I hated that the agony had diminished in strength. My body started moving on without me. Tears wouldn't fall so often anymore and the weight on my chest began to lessen. I was fuming.

There was something about grief that I wasn't ready to let go of. Mourning was an enervating and horrible phase, but at least it made me feel human. Once the pain started to subside, I thought of myself as a robot. I did the same things all over again, equally numb and indifferent to everything around me. I felt hollow, bereft of emotions, and entirely uninterested in the life that I was supposed to share with Nina, which now, I had to live on my own.

By the time five months had passed, the anger returned. I detested myself for having to look at mine and Nina's pictures more frequently because her face started to blur in my mind. I despised the fact that her voice was no longer as clear and fresh when I thought about her.

Breakfast by breakfast, night by night, and week by week, I began to laugh at Asher's jokes, raise my hand during classes, do more than just mourn.

I stayed in touch with Neil. Throughout those ten months, he'd met me at least a hundred of times. He took me out on a fishing trip, even though I didn't want to. He made me go to the cinema with him, even though I didn't want to. He bought me a birthday gift and baked a cake, even though I never asked for it, but neither had I ever protested. I just agreed to each single one of his ideas. Back then, when the heartbreak was still fresh, if he told me to jump from the top of a building to see if I could fly, I probably would've done it. I wouldn't have even questioned it.

But there was one thing I needed to know, so one day I asked him. I asked why he was doing it. Why he decided to take care of me if I wasn't his family, neither a friend, when Nina was still in the hospital. Now, things between us were utterly different. I deemed him my uncle.

He just looked up at the sky and said, 'The clouds are beautiful today, don't you think?'

I instantly understood.

Nina.

When it came to Asher and me, there had been a massive change in our lives. We moved in with Nina's parents. At first, the idea seemed oddly wrong and strange, but shortly after her death, they offered us to stay with them. I couldn't grasp why, but there were many 'whys' after she was gone, and the most distressing one, was why she had to be gone.

We discussed it over dinner. They said that all of us had been deeply affected by their daughter's death, and that all of us certainly needed more company. They made it clear that they didn't want us to feel like they were trying to fill the hole in their hearts with our presence. They just wanted to help, both mentally and financially.

Me and Asher mulled the idea over and over in our heads, which had taken at least a week, but we agreed at last. I occupied Nina's bedroom whilst Asher inhabited the spare one, which apart from a few guests that had stayed over in the past, had never been used.