Sweet Tooth [HS]

SIXTY SIX

Later.

When Max woke up again, she was alone. She blinked her eyes open, adjusting to the searing sunlight that draped the room like a blanket, feeling warm, but not hot. Because Harry was not lying on top of her, and when she reached her arm out his side of the mattress was cool.

She sat up, sighing, rubbing her tired eyes. "Harry?" She called, but there was no reply. Her voice just echoed back around her and back into her and she frowned.

"Harry?" She called again as she padded down the stairs, keeping her eyes trained down because she was still till scared she was going to fall through them, or that the glass was going to break.

Again, there was no reply.

And then she checked every room in the house and each one came up empty, the house was silent.

So she called him, and he did not pick up.

Hm.

(11:43) Maxie: where did you go? if you're getting breakfast i can't ever touch American bacon again xxxx

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(13:33) Maxie: hey where are you i assume ur not getting breakfast its a bit late for that now

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(14:16) Maxie: harry?

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(15:43) Maxie: seriously i'm getting worried

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(16:10) Maxie: harry???? pick up????

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(17:00) Maxie: harry please pick up i don't know where u r i'm seriously getting worried

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(18:01) Maxie: harry i love you where are you

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(19:24) Maxie: why have you left me again?

***

The day slipped away, sunlight turning into a sunset, into a pitch black darkness that leaked into each corner of the empty house. And Max did not move, not once. Just sat and she stared out at the blackening sky, feeling her own insides blackening with it.

Maybe she knew it as soon as she woke up - could feel a space, an emptiness that meant more than him not being beside her. Or maybe she hadn't. Maybe she had truly thought he would never abandon her again.

But here she was, again, waiting.

And it was all too familiar. This sensation had long since been buried into her body, had always sat at the bottom of it - all the years of him leaving, of her waiting, of her loneliness - she had never shaken the feeling, she realised now, as she sat and as she stared. It was a feeling that breathed with her, an ache that had never disappeared - that she could sink into all too well.

Except, now, it was worse.

It was worse now.

Because Harry had told her he loved her, and she had believed him. Had trusted him. Had fought for him.

Had believed that when he said he would never leave her, he meant it. That he truly did carry her heart inside of his; that she was the home he had sung about in his song.

They had almost done it.

Almost.

And Max realised now that that was the saddest word that there could be. Because they had almost made it, they had almost happened. And she knew now that that was a word used when you expect something to happen, when you believe it down to the very fibres that hold you together, but then it just doesn't. And you are just stuck there, wishing that it had...