Glitter And Dust [L.S]

𝑭𝒓𝒂𝒈𝒊𝒍𝒆

CHAPTER ONE / FRAGILE.

[ Gemma's POV.]
Holmes Chapel.

I buried my face even deeper in his pillow, trying to numb my sobbings and dry my tears.

It's incredible that even after two months of him being gone, his room still smelled like him.

It also seemed like a joke. Like if he was just playing me, that he would be back, that he was just joking with me.
As he always did.

Two months exactly.

Two months crying over him, missing him and praying that he'll cross the front door of the house with his usual smile to bump my fist and tell me something stupid about school.

I used to think he was annoying as we grew up, but he was still my brother. My little brother.

My confident, my best friend and my joy.

God he used to bring so much joy to this house.
Now it's filled with crying and sorrow.

My mother never dared to step into his room anymore, but me? I have slept in his bed every day since he disappeared.

So when I felt her knocking on the door and stepping inside, I was actually surprised.

"C'mon Gemms, we got to go." - She said, sitting next to me in bed.

"I'm not going."

"C'mon Gem, do it for your brother."

"It's no use. It's not going to bring him back."

"But it'll help us get through this."

"How? How is this going to help us? How is this going to help him, huh? It's been two months mom, I'm not ready to go to his fucking gravestone. Not when he's not there."

"Gemma please."

"For what mom? To cry over a non-existent body? I prefer to grieve him here, where at least there's something of him to hold on to. Not a freaking empty coffin."

I didn't hold back my tears or my shouting in front of her anymore. I was done repressing my own grieve and pretending I'm strong for her.

I was done with all the shit.

I was exhausted, and the idea of burying an empty coffin in Harry's memory was actually hers.

But I didn't want to be involved, he didn't deserve a stone, he deserved to be alive and to have a future.

To go to university, to study music as he always wanted, to fall in love and to spread his happiness to the world.

The world deserved to see him, to have him. And he deserved the whole world.

I still remember when he turned fourteen and my mother asked him what he wanted as a birthday present. He simply said 'I want both of you to accept me as I am. I'm gay.'

And he started crying and of course we both ran to hug him, because we didn't care, because it didn't matter if he liked boys, and I thought he was stupid to think that we wouldn't accept him.
Why wouldn't we?

We wanted nothing but Harry's happiness.

My mother used to spoil him all the time, and I couldn't even be jealous about it because Harry was just Harry.

He was the baby of the house and the pride of the family.

"So, you're not coming with me?" - My mother said with tears in her eyes.

"No. I'll stay here." - I said, hugging his pillow once more.

"Okay." - She nodded and caressed my hair, standing up and leaving his room.

I collapsed back in the bed again, wanting to fall asleep only to wake up finding this was all a nightmare and that Harry was still with us.

I heard my mother locking the door as she left the house and I sighed, trying to stop crying once and for all.

I just couldn't deal with the fact that he disappeared in front of our eyes, that he left us and that he hasn't come back.

I picked my phone and opened the last message he sent that day. It was to me.

Harry and his friend Niall were returning to school one day, and that was when he texted me he was on his way home, asking me to prepare him lunch.

I replied two minutes after that with "You are seventeen years old, you can prepare your own food, loser."

And he never got it.
He never read it.

But those were my last words to him, through a stupid text.

He never arrived home that day, or the following ones.
He and Niall went missing. The both of them.

So, when my mother insisted on making a gravestone at the cemetery for him, I refused. She also tried to convince Niall's mother to make them both a stone next to each other, but Maura didn't want to either.

Maura didn't think his son had died, neither did I.

Harry didn't die. Nobody found their bodies.
So he couldn't be dead.

He could have just ran away with Niall, maybe they were sick of us and they didn't want to return home.

Or maybe they were in danger.

But Harry wasn't dead. I just knew it.

So that's why I didn't want to visit a stone today. I didn't want to cry over it to remember my brother.

Not when there was still a chance that he was alive.