The Way Things Change

Chapter 17

When I woke up, Danielle was gone. I didn’t know what time it was, but I didn’t care. I was finally rested. I opened the curtains and the sun came blazing in. I guess I had slept in. I used to hate that, sleeping the day away was never an option. I was too restless.

My stomach was rumbling. I quickly changed into my sweatpants and put on a t-shirt. I was a bit cold, but because of my plaster it was difficult to wear long sleeves. My hair was really annoying me, so I put it up in a messy bun. Right now I didn’t care how I looked. I was starving. I quickly made my way down the stairs.

I looked into the fridge to find something I could eat. To my surprise, the fridge wasn’t only filled with junk food. I decided to make an omelette before I was gonna die of starvation. Kind of ironic.

I hadn’t met anyone yet. They were probably out and about, not wasting their day, like I had done today.

I had just put the last bite of the omelette in my mouth when Harry and Liam walked in. They were shirtless and sweaty. They had probably been in the gym, working out. They were talking and laughing and they didn’t notice me at all.

“Good morning” I chirped. I was in a really good mood today. Probably because I was rested. They jumped at the sound of my voice.  Harry put a smile on his face, I could see it wasn’t genuine. It stung a little, but again I didn’t know why. Why should it bother me? I shook the feeling off.

“Good afternoon. We didn’t see you there.” Harry spoke.

“Yeah I noticed. I’m sorry I scared you.” I laughed. I finally felt free. And I really wasn’t sorry for scaring them. It was fun to make them jump and I was in the mood for something fun today. Who would have thought that the only thing I had to do to become this happy was to talk. If I had known I would have talked sooner.

“You seem in an awfully good mood today” Liam said happily, taking a seat at the kitchen island, next to me.

“I guess I just needed to get everything of my chest” I shrugged. “I must say, if I had known I would feel this good after talking, I would have done it a lot sooner.”

“BUT I don’t want your pity party. If you do that I’m going to hurt you!” I continued in a playful, yet harsh tone.

“So you think you can hurt me? Really? I would love to see you try!” Liam laughed. Harry shifted awkwardly on his feet. “I think I’m gonna find the others” he said under his breath, leaving Liam and I alone.

“I could easily hurt you”

“I really doubt that!”

“Fine. You’ve got yourself a bet” I laughed again and put my hand out to him. We shook on it.

“Well… Come on then. I thought I was gonna get hurt.” Liam said impatiently, crossing his arms over his bare chest.

“I didn’t say when I was going to hurt you. So maybe I’ll do it soon, maybe you’ll have to wait for a while.” I smirked at him.

“HEY! No fair. I didn’t know that!” Liam pouted.

“Way fair. You just need to pay attention when you make a bet. And besides, I have barely eaten in 4 weeks, so I wouldn’t be able to do anything. I could barely walk down the stairs yesterday.”

“You were the one that decided not to eat. I practically forced you to eat! You can’t use that as an excuse.”

I liked this. This carefree bickering. Nothing was serious and I could say anything I wanted. Here I really felt safe. But it was going to end soon. I was almost better and they were going to leave for their tour. Which reminded me, I really need to start looking for a place to stay.

“Hey. You are up. FINALLY!” Eleanor walked into the kitchen. She was carrying a Starbucks to go cup. Shortly after, Perrie and Danielle followed her, also carrying Starbucks. I guessed they had gone together.

“Sorry for leaving you alone this morning, but I didn’t want to wake you. You looked so peaceful and I figured you needed the sleep.” Danielle said.

“It’s okay, really” I assured her. “I feel rested now. AND I’m in a really good mood. So thank you, all of you. For everything!” I looked at them one at the time. My… Friends. I guess. I smiled.

“Are you ready to do the fashion show ladies?” Eleanor asked. We followed her into my bedroom.

“I’m just gonna take a quick shower. You go ahead and take my clothes out. Find something you like.” I grabbed some clean underwear and went to the bathroom. Stupid plaster. It was always annoying me. I just hadn’t noticed before how difficult it was to shower with it. Yeah I hadn’t really tried that before. Luckily it was only one week till I got it off. I could manage for a week. I heard the girls laugh when I was finishing up. I didn’t bother to get dressed, I would only have to take it off again anyway. I need to make an appointment to get my legs waxed, I thought to myself. I started to feel some hair again. My ‘to-do’ list was getting longer.

I wrapped the towel around my body and put my damp hair into a high ponytail.

The girls had already put outfits out on the bed and they had prepared themselves with a real “Sex and the City” set up. They were facing the closet, where I was supposed to dress up, and they had made signs with ‘GET OUT!’ and ‘Please stay with me’ written on them. I laughed at that. It was so stupid it made it perfect. Absolutely ridiculous and it was just what I needed today.

We put on loud music and I was pushed inside the closet with the first outfit. I tried to get into character. I walked out with a real model attitude, dramatizing it, swinging my hips back and forth. The girls laughed so hard at that.

We had a blast. The girls were taking pictures, Polaroid, and taped them to the wall. The piles of ‘GET OUT!’ and ‘Please stay’ were growing. We were all laughing.  I kept strutting my stuff, not caring about my insecurities. I realised that all my clothes were kind of similar. I had always been more of  a ‘jeans and t-shirt’ type of girl. I had never wanted to stand out of the crowd, I always tried to blend in. And besides, I had nothing special to show, I wasn’t even pretty.

I found some ridiculous outfits, which I didn’t remember to have bought, EVER. I threw them at the girls and demanded them to put it on. It was hilarious!

When we were done going through my clothes, about one third of it was lying in the ‘GET OUT!’ pile. I had to get rid of that. That was okay, it was really old and clothes didn’t have sentimental value to me anyway. And most of all I was really exited to unpack my exercising clothes. I think I might go for a little jog, just to see if I still could. The girls made up excuses, which they didn’t have to, and went to see their boyfriends. It was understandable, they were leaving in three days, so of course they wanted to spend some time together.

I quickly changed and put on my heart rate monitor and my running shoes.

I had no idea of where to run. This was a completely new area, and I had no phone so I couldn’t get any directions. But I didn’t care, I just had to run. I started off slowly, checking if my rib was okay with it and if I could breathe normally without it hurting. Quickly the jog turned into a real run, as my body remembered every movement. I let my mind wander. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going, my legs led the way. When I looked at my watch I saw that I had been running for an hour. So much for my little jog. And somehow I found myself standing in front of the house again. But I didn’t have a key and I didn’t want to ring the doorbell. I could always jump the fence and go in through the garden. Yeah, I was going to try that.

I had always been good at jumping fences. I had always done it for fun with the boys in the orphanage. Not to try and escape or anything, it was really just for the fun of it. But now, with the plaster on my arm, it was rather difficult. After some struggle I got over and landed softly in the grass. It was getting darker, so I was able to look through the giant window walls, into the kitchen and the living room.

But there seemed to be no one home, yet all the lights were on. That was weird. Where could they be?