The New Boy- Completed

Thirty Two

"You don't look as okay as you're making out you are Fay. You know that right? People have been picking up on tiny things you've let slip in conversation and telling me them. Begging for me to find a way in to break it from you. I know you're hurting so bad and right now it feels so intense that you just want to forget everything, but you're not dealing with it. You're just ignoring it and hoping it goes away and this kind of pain doesn't work like that Fay. You have to take it in and listen to it and move through it. You can't just stand there painting and forgetting it's there." 

"Why can't I? I don't get why I can't. It's fine. I'm fine. I'm happy just here." 

"You're not though Fay." He stood up slowly moving to me. He took a step forward, I took one back. This carried on until I was backed up against the door with nowhere else to go. "You're not happy here. You never have been." 

"I- I am. I'm happy in here. Alone." He shook his head. "I am." Raised his eyebrows as the power in voice gave him everything. "I am." 

"You're not." He slowly lifted my head. "See. You're teary eyes just talking about it. Talk to me Fay. Talk me through what you were thinking after I left. What were you telling yourself down there that night. Because I think I know, from how you were running your fingers over the brick work as you cried. I think I know what was spinning around your brain but I can't tell you it's not true if you don't tell me." 

"I w-wasn't thinking anything." I swallowed. "I was just sat." 

"Mhm." He stared into my eyes, raising his eyebrows slowly, trying to force me to break. I didn't want to. "Want to know something else I found out? That Bash had orchestrated the whole Uni finding out thing." 

"What?" 

"It wasn't Evan." 

"It wasn't?" Okay now I was crying. 

He didn't do it? He didn't tell anyone. I hurt him over nothing? I've spent all this time angry at him, for nothing. 

"No. Just Bash. Manipulating like he does best." I slowly slid down the door, sitting on the floor with my back to it and Sterling joined me, sitting down opposite, his legs on either side of me as he faced me. I kept my head in my hands, crying silently. "So you thought you were useless right? Unimportant?" I nodded into my hands. I didn't have the strength right now to stop him, to fight him off. I was rejudging the last 5 months of my life. "Fay-" He sighed, pulling my head up with all the force he needed to against my fight. I just wanted to keep my head there. 

"You are the most important girl in the world to me. I know you haven't felt like it lately. I've been trying behind the scenes, to let you calm down and try to work all this out for you so I could make it better. It's all I've done. And then I kept hearing these snippets like the one Ed told me that just snapped me and made me come down here tonight. When he told me you actually told him you weren't important. He said it just rolled off your tongue like you were saying your name, that it looked natural for you to say it. And I couldn't let you keep talking to yourself like that." 

"I'm not though Sterling. Not a single thing has changed since I pulled back out of it all. Everything carries on as normal. With or without me. How can someone so important just vanish and no one bats an eyelid." 

"Have you even seen these balls since you left? No one talks. There's next to no dancing, our group have just stopped coming so there's half the room empty, your family just stand there. Even the first dance of the night is a wreck. They just give up half way through. I have never seen parties be as boring as the ones since you stopped coming. I don't think someone who's not important can just vanish into thin air and not make an effect like that. I haven't left the country since valentines day, trying to sort this for you. Your brother's have spent all this time pressuring Bash's family to give everything move him as far away as possible, our friends have ghosted him. Every single one of them. I've been seeing fucking Evan and we've both been talking about how we can fix you and sort you out without putting too much pressure on you so you don't get even worse. He's a wreck. Barely holding himself together at the thought he let Bash have all the information he needed to do this to you and he didn't even see it coming. I had to sit with him for a week straight to stop him going and killing Bash and even now he's 50/50 about flying across the world to fucking do it." 

"Don't you dare sit there and tell me that your unimportant when you just pulling away from 3 months has had nearly 50 people in a tail spin trying to hold things together and fix things for you because you can't physically keep pretending everything is okay when it's so clearly not. To the point where I had your friends calling me and crying down the phone at 3 am, I've held your sister as she begged me to help, your dad has sat me down and we put plans into action for what could possibly happen next. I've got about 7 plans and one of them is your fucking funeral incase you took it too far. Do you think it's been easy for me to sit there and plan my best friends funeral when I don't even know if that's what's going through her head, but obviously someone does or I wouldn't be sat there telling your family that you fucking hate lilies." He held my face tight. "I'm not going to loose you because you're too stubborn to tell me you're not okay. So really easy. Nod if you're going to keep pretending you're fine or shake if you're done. And if you are I can hold you until everything is okay again. Fay. Are you okay?" 

I slowly shook my head as tears streamed down my face and he sighed, pulling me onto his lap, holding me tight. 

"I'm here. I've got you. You're going to be okay now."