Buttercup [H.S]

Chapter Eleven

My house was a mess.

And you know what they say; messy home, messy mind.

In an attempt to lessen the constant thoughts of both my past and the struggles of my present, I'd endeavoured to spend Monday morning cleaning my house. My thinking being, that perhaps if I decluttered and scrubbed my surroundings, then my mind may follow suit and I'd feel like for once I'd be able to fully relax.

Harry and I hadn't spoken in over a week. Not since the night of the pub where I'd made it very clear that my life no longer concerned him; and he'd taken it very literally. He pretended like I didn't even exist.

No annoying requests for coffee, no sidling up to my stall to poke fun or make some stupid remark, and no carefully curated playlists of songs aimed at me.

Radio silence.

And the longer it drew on, the more it got under my skin. But I knew he wouldn't make the first move, because its been me all along telling him to leave me alone. Pushing him away. Making myself hate him in the way I assumed he did me.

Part of me had slowly come to realise that perhaps Harry had been trying to move towards civility with me. Making small efforts that felt like the kind gestures of our past friendship. Taking me home in his van, warning me away from seedy guys. I didn't know whether what he'd been doing was conscious or whether he'd found it so easy to slip into old habits even after all the time that had passed.

Either way, following Harry's recent ghosting of me, it'd become apparent that Harry wasn't the one being a total bastard here. It'd been me.

And the only way that I thought could remedy it was with an apology, and we both knew now that wasn't something I was going to do.

So I was stumped.

I didn't want Harry to hate me, but I was too proud to apologise. Too fearful of his reaction or worse, rejection.

So I'd been cold and cruel to him; pushing him away further. But now that I'd gotten what I apparently wanted, for him to leave me alone, I missed the few moments we had together.

Missed catching his eye across the partition of our stalls. Missed pretending to begrudgingly make him a plain black coffee of a morning. Missed the stupid songs he played either from our past or containing some reference to an argument we'd had.

I think I'd take Harry hating me over his silence.

Knowing that I had no clue on how to remedy any of this, I busied myself with cleaning my small, two bedroom terraced house.

I was incredibly fortunate to have such a property in Islington; not many single women under 30 were able to afford such a property, especially one that sold croissants and blueberry muffins for a living. It'd only been through inheritance after my Auntie Iris passed away that I'd found myself with a home at all.

So since leaving university and my student flat I'd lived here, slowly attempting to make the place my own. At first I'd been incredibly keen to put my own stamp on the place, painting the walls multitudes of colours at a whim, pulling up all of the scratchy downstairs carpets to reveal a gorgeous Victorian tile in the hallway and the wide original floorboard in the living room.

But as time stretched on and my loneliness ensued, my passion for my home had diminished. What had supposed to serve as a haven instead often felt like a prison. A constant reminder of the silent spaces that filled each room.

Only Lucy had ever popped around a few times, me usually insisting on visiting with her at her mothers instead.

And so, lacking any company and therefor need to keep up appearances, my house had become a bit of a pig sty recently.