Love Save the Empty

Twenty Two

There are two different kinds of pain.

Pain can be a scrape on your knee when you fell off your bike, or a small burn from your flat iron, or even just a little pang in the chest when your crush says no when you asked them to the dance.

That pain can go away. That pain is bearable.

The other type of pain doesn’t go away. This type of pain is sadness. The type of sadness that brings you to the point where you can’t hold yourself up anymore, and you fall on your knees to the floor. When the cop tells you that the only people you have ever truly loved won’t be able to love you back anymore, simply because they’re dead.

This type of pain is loneliness. This pain you can feel anywhere. You can feel it in your bed at night, at the park, in the library, at school, even when you have a million people around you. Everyone worshiping the ground you walk on, and yet, no one really understands you. No one alive, anyway.

This type of pain is helplessness. The type of pain where you don’t know what to do, or there is nothing left to do. The type of pain when someone you love is slowly breaking in front of your eyes, and there’s nothing you can do but watch.

This pain. This pain is unbearable.

And Harry and Bella felt that pain all through the night.

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The sun peaked through the window at just the right angle so it was shining right on Bella’s face. She forced her swollen eyes open, anything but ready to face the day ahead of her.

She couldn’t escape it. Even in her deepest sleep, all she could see was her green-eyed, curly haired lover in uncontrollable tears, clinging onto her as if his life depended on it, burying his face deep into her body. Everything in her dreams was the same as reality.

Except dreams aren’t real.

Bella slowly rose from the hard floor, careful not to irritate any of the kinks in her neck and back from sleeping on such uncomfortable grounds. She took a deep breath and stretched her muscles, desperately wanting to cuddle back up into Harry and sleep some more. But she couldn’t. Reality was getting better, and her dreams were not.

She looked down at her shivering sleeping boy as she covered his long body with the quilt from his bed. She got back down onto her knees, adjusting the blanket to keep him as warm as possible. Harry’s chattering teeth soon came to a halt, and her body relaxed as she heard the deep sigh of content fall from his parted pink lips.

It was a full time job worrying about this boy.

Bella pushed the curls away from his face and kissed his swollen lips before throwing on one of his sweatshirts and going to the kitchen for breakfast.

Bella laughed at herself as she finally got the kettle working. In America, all you needed was a small teabag, some water, and a measly ninety seconds in the microwave for a nice cup of tea. But here, that measly ninety seconds turned into about twenty minutes of searching for the tea, searching for the kettle, figuring out how to turn the stove on, and how to actually use a kettle. If Harry didn’t like tea, then she would be downright pissed.

The shuffling from upstairs drew Bella from her thoughts. Figuring Harry was awake, she grabbed two mugs from the cupboard and set them on the table, ready for his arrival. But the shuffling upstairs soon grew louder and more frantic; and she could have sworn she heard his helpless voice.

It was then when she realized he was calling out her name.

Bella rushed out of the kitchen just in time to watch Harry frantically scamper down the stairs in a pair of joggers and a jacket with his phone to his ear.