red herring [h.s.]

41.

Harry.

This time, I did what Stella asked me.

Her eyes had been pleading when she begged me to leave her alone. It was against every bone in my body to do so, but she was right. If I respected her, I had to give her some space.

It had been six days since we got to the house in the Catskills. It was Saturday now, and the first day where the weather seemed to perk up a little bit. My real birthday had come and gone, but it didn't feel like a birthday at all like this. I had turned twenty seven last weekend, surrounded by my girlfriend and friends in Stella's apartment, who had given me one of the best nights of my life.

I felt like all four of us had been going crazy inside these four walls for the past six days. Well, mostly Stella and I. I felt like Dominic and Mike were so used to doing absolutely nothing in their regular lives that this wasn't much of a change for them.

As for me, I was going insane. I was a ball of energy and I had no outlets. I had been jogging through the woods in the rain a few times, simultaneously scoping out the area while also trying to tire myself out. We needed a clear map from the space around the house in case we ever needed to make a run for it. We needed to find paths which led down the mountain or towards a more village-y area if we ever had to run. I also tried to see who our closest neighbour was, but there weren't really any houses in sight.

I was in the kitchen now, popping a painkiller and being very grateful that Stella had asked us to pick them up. She took them on a daily for her massive headaches, while I took them for the aches I had all throughout my body. Sleeping on the floor was no walk in the park.

It had slightly warmed my heart to see that Stella tried her best to make the bed on the ground a bit more comfortable for me. She only kept one small pillow to herself and let me have all the others. Most nights she was clung to Miss Shark and ditched the pillow either way, but it did give me a small flicker of hope that she wanted me to at least sleep a little.

Which I didn't.

For one because I wasn't tired whatsoever, and second of all because it was so uncomfortable. I had seen her warily looking at me when I woke up, stretching my back out with a wince, and there was this doubt in her face as if she contemplated letting me in the bed again. Honestly most mornings when I woke up, she wasn't even there. She slipped out of the room to sleep on the couch most nights, and I just assumed that even being in the same room as me was too close for her at this moment.

Most of the days she was just cooped up in the room. I didn't know what she did in there, but when I walked by the door I could often hear her sniffing or sobbing before I heard the sound of computer keys. She was writing, most likely. I heard the bed creaking a few times, which signalled me she was laying down. Maybe taking a nap, maybe just staring up at the ceiling and trying to make something of the shitshow which was her life right now.

She still refused to talk.

Her constant rejection of me was hard, like we were just living next to one another. The contrast was so huge with how it was right before everything exploded. That was intimate, loving, naked and vulnerable. Now she had hastily built up a few wonky walls and was trying to keep them up with all her might.

She hadn't spoken to me in six days. She hadn't spoken to anyone. I didn't expect her to get along well with Dominic and Mike. They kept snickering behind her back, kept bringing up the things I said about her in the beginning. About her being cute, not hot, about her being boring and about me not being very excited to spend time with her in those first few weeks. They found it amusing, stirring the pot like that.

I wasn't even sure if Stella heard them. After all, she read the file. She knew what I had written about her. No amount of apologies in the world could ever make up for that.