After the End: Book 3

6. Being too Much

Harry's POV

I hated London and after a week there, exactly two weeks from the day that she'd told me she wanted to come back, Cory was ready to drown me in the River Thames. I couldn't even really blame her. She had several valid complaints.

We were staying at her old family farmhouse just outside the city. Cory had ventured into town twice for food and drugs and she'd told me that she planned on meeting with her manager, but mostly we sat out in the adjacent field smoking cigarettes and visiting with friends she allowed out to visit. I'd learned while we were in France, that Cory didn't actually have family anymore which was why the old farmhouse was empty when she was away, but she sure knew a lot of people. Everywhere we went, she had relationships entrenched in drugs, sex and partying. London was no exception.

She was acting normally with me aside from the quiet annoyance and sideways looks, but she had a tension to her that I couldn't place and she told me she was just trying to rest before deciding what to do next.

"We're taking a break. People take breaks at home," she'd told me.

It just felt like bullshit. I was putting myself in a weird headspace. I'd never taken pills the way I had been doing and I was starting to develop paranoia about everything, but being in London was freaking me out and Cory's evasive attitude was freaking me out. London was where I'd been when practically every bad thing ever had happened. Cory's living room was the same place we'd broken up after the baby died. Lux's car was still parked where I'd left it in the driveway. Lux and Jay had both died in the city. I'd abandoned everyone I knew there. It was all a lot.

To combat the nerves, I used more and I mingled more and I tried to mesh into the revolving door of people that Cory had over. I didn't sleep well either because I was on so many uppers and Cory was starting to act more motherly in trying to force me to rest. It bothered her that I wouldn't leave the house and it bothered her even more that I was attempting to sleep walk my way through the entire visit. It bothered me that she wouldn't tell me when we were leaving.

I didn't turn my phone on at all for almost the entire first week after we arrived in London. If I was trying to numb my way through the trip, then battling constant notifications was going to be too hard. Cory informed me that she'd checked and nobody had noticed our return to the UK, so I wasn't worried about headlines, but I still didn't want the temptation of communication weighing me down. I'd considered calling Louis for a brief moment back in Los Angeles and I was scared of getting high and then actually doing it. He didn't need to be bothered by me. He definitely didn't want it. He just thought he did.

I didn't know that the last day was the last day until it actually happened. It seemed like another quiet morning. I hadn't slept at all that night, but Cory had fallen asleep on the sofa. She'd had her friend Ash around the previous night and they'd stayed up late with bedroom activities before he left at like 3 am. He was kind enough to pretend he didn't know I was out in the living room listening to them have ridiculously loud sex and fondly remembering the time I'd almost killed him with my bare 18 year old fists. She'd come out after his departure and tried to convince me to go to bed, and I'd tried to make her talk about why she doesn't kick Ash to the curb already. They'd been together since the beginning of time somehow never officially, but in a weirdly committed way. Even when she and I were together she cheated on me constantly with him towards the end after she was already pregnant. He was a total douchebag. She fantasized about his death at AA and NA meetings. She genuinely didn't have an answer. I asked about the bald guy who left bruises on her finally and she had just given me an Ativan in hopes of shutting me up and knocking me out.

She fell asleep on the sofa next to me watching Titanic off the old VHS box TV combo and I railed coke. When she woke up in the morning, I pretended I was just waking up too. She could see the circles under my eyes, but she didn't say anything.