Pain and Love

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Tessa:

Well we have been home for a few days now. Nothing has changed, our relationship is still a complete mess. I've tried to talk to Hardin so many times and every time it just ends in an argument. Worst thing is he has completely lost himself, he is drinking and doing other shit which he constantly lies about. I didn't realise a couple stupid nights and a telling off from me and Her mother would set him completely off track. I have stayed up till god knows what time the last few nights waiting for him to get in. He crashes on the sofa and then follows the usual argument. Before we left for London we were good, we were in a sort of stable relationship and now I don't see a way of getting past this.

Trish has checked in with me since we got back and even she is just as stumped as to what I can do. My only thought is getting Ken to speak to him but I know he will blame everything on Ken and say it's his fault in the first place. So that's definitely a bad idea. There is also Vance who he is most likely to listen to, however he'd be pissed if he found out I told Vance about our trip to London and how it went. It would be a very loud, direct and angry conversation. So for now it's keep on going and try to figure out how to get out of this tangled and knotted mess of our relationship.

Uni day,

So I wake up in the morning on my own in bed, go to the bathroom, do my usual routine and head into the living room to see Hardin asleep on the sofa. Bottle of whisky on the table, he'd still dressed in his clothes room the night before and he was drenched in sweat. Which I immediately knew was from a nightmare. Which I would feel bad but its karma for being drunk and not helping fix our relationship. I go away into the kitchen, have breakfast, go back to the bedroom and get changed for the day. Once I'm ready to leave the house Hardin is still asleep on the sofa. I shout, "Hardin wake up time for uni". He grumbles and flickers his eyes open to see an annoyed me standing across the table from where he is lying. "What is it?" He moans at me.

"Well unless you've forgotten we still have degrees to earn unless you've given up on that as well as our relationship" I say glaring at him. "No need for that Theresa, I'll be at uni when I want to be" he snaps back at me. "Okay Hardin, grow up you sound like a teen going high school" I hiss at him. "Give it a rest your not my mum" he groans and turns away and faces into the sofa.

I grabbed my stuff and left, headed straight out of the house and into the car. Driving to uni I get lost in my thoughts but snap back into reality when I arrive onto campus.

I had a productive day at uni but I haven't actually seen Hardin on campus at all so I have no idea if he went to class or if he even left the house. But guess I'll find out when I get home. But before I head home I wanted to go to work just to pop in and see the Vance's since I've not seen them since we went to London. I also dread the thought of going home to see if Hardin is still there and passed out again.

Once I get to the building I go straight up to our floor and to my office as I didn't see anyone in the main lobby on our floor. I also didn't see Hardin in his office so I'm really not sure where he is, which is a worry as to where and what he is doing. In my office I see my new transcripts ready for me when I come back to work in a couple days. Even though I'd rather be back to work now and not have to go home and deal with Hardin. As I'm having a quiet flick through the titles on the scripts, Kim walks into my office. "Tessa" she gleamed with excitement at seeing me. "Hi Kim" I smiled at her as we shared a hug. "How are you and how was your trip to London?" she asks me as we both sit on my desk. "I'm okay, the trip was eventful to say the least." I reply with a fake smile on my face. "Oh no what happened, I guess something to do with Hardin" she replied "well you are right, we had a good time until he bumped into his old mates and everything went downhill from them. Kim he's back to drinking and it's bad. I don't know what to do" I say to her as my smile fades and I look down.

"Oh Tessa, that really isn't good, he's not had an issue with alcohol in a long time. I did worry about your trip to London and if his friends would appear. Christian has told me about his life in London before he moved over here so I knew he didn't have a good group of friends over there. But I thought he might have told you that or he would have stayed away from them" she tells me. "Well unfortunately they came back and it didn't take him long to fall back into old habits" I say with sadness in my voice. "He was here before but he seemed fine, looked tired but I wouldn't have guessed alcohol. How about Christian talks to him he usually gets through to him" she offers an idea. "I thought of Ken and Christian before but if either of them talked to him it would backfire and he would just fall out with them and put him in more of a mood. I'm just letting us take a bit of time to get back into our usual flow with work and uni. I know that won't help with the alcohol but I want to give it a few days for us to calm down a little and then start taking some steps forward hopefully." I'm just trying to think positively.

"Well Tessa we can't stay here, how about we head back to my house and have a girls night, take your mind off Hardin" she suggests. "I would like that" I say as we get off my desk and head out of my office and head to the Vances' house.

Hours later,

I had been at the Vance's house for most of the evening. Me and Kim have had a few glasses of wine whilst talking about Hardin. It was nice to talk to Kim, get everything off my chest and it's helpful talking to Kim as she always tells me the truth. After a few hours Vance appeared home so I decided to head home too. I had left the car at the office anyway so I decided to get a taxi home.

When I arrived at the house Hardin was sitting in the kitchen with his headphones in. I wander in and stand on the other side of the island to him. "Hi Hardin" I say looking at him but he doesn't pay attention to me. "Hardin, hello..." still no answer. "Hardin stop ignoring me please" I say to him and swipe my hand in front of him.

He then looks up to me, I can see in his eyes that he's had a couple drinks as he takes his headphones off. "What do you want Tessa?" he asks me with a bit of a snip to his voice. "I just wanted to see how you are" I replied to him. "I'm okay Tessa" he replies shortly. "What've you been up to do?" I ask him wanting to keep the conversation going as long as possible. "I was at uni like we were meant to be and then headed to the office for a bit" he answers me with the most words he's spoken to me in a few days. "Yeh Kim said you appeared there" I answered him. "You were talking to Kim?" he asks. "Yeh I went to the office and then we went to the Vance's house, had a few wines and catched up" I answered his question. But when I look at him I see his face change.

"Ah so I can't drink but you think it's okay to have a few drinks with Kim and probably talk a load of shit about me" he says aggressively. "Hardin, Kim invited me around cause she could see I wasn't okay, unlike you who hasn't cared about how I've felt for the past few days and just got drunk every night." I argued back with him. "Okay Theresa whatever" he says and gets up from the seat he was sitting in and starts walking away from me. I follow him and we argue as we continue to walk through the house. We go back and forth over the alcohol, the trip to London and our relationship.

As he's walking into the bedroom, I grab him by the arm and he stops and turns around to face me. "Please Hardin just stop and speak to me, the drink isn't helping you at all, you're hurting yourself but get back into this way. Hardin you aren't yourself when you drink and it scares me. I didn't fall in love with this guy". I try to break through to him. "Tessa you don't get it, please just leave it and leave me alone" he says and tries to turn his back to me but I stop him, "Hardin stop shutting me out" I shout at him. He just stares at me, looking at me up and down then he looks his lips on me.

Then out of nowhere Hardin darts towards me and attacks his lips on mine. I'm taken back by him as his lips feel mine for the first time in a week. Once I got over the shock my lips reacted to him and I kissed him back. My hands go to his back and move up and up till I get to his hair just like I always do. He wraps his arms around my waist and we start taking little steps back towards our bed. We creep backwards until we hit the end of the bed and we look at each other before I fall backwards onto it. Hardin then leans over me and we reconnect our lips. As we continue to kiss our breathing gets deeper, we start to take our clothes off and our bodies connect.

Hours later,

After sex, we both had showers (separately) and then had tea together. Nothing has been solved but it's nice to be doing something normal together and not to be ignoring each other. We talked a little, short sentences but it's making the apartment less quiet and feel less empty. I just hope we can keep this going and then we will slowly go back to normal, just have to hope the alcohol stays away.