Diligence [H.S.]

ELEVEN

Chapter Song: Little Freak by Harry Styles

...

HARRY STYLES

I turn my phone over for what easily may be the hundredth time within the past five minutes. Nothing. Still no response from Andrea. I could have sworn I heard it buzz.

A heavy sigh flows past my lips in defeat and I slide the useless device further away from me. Maybe it will put an end to the painful and repetitive cycle of hoping she's decided to speak to me.

It's been two days since I saw her. Feels like it's been a month.

I suppose waiting for a text or call back makes time move slower, but I expected nothing less than silence. In terms of reaching out, I know that I can bombard her with messages all day long if I want to, but that means nothing if she isn't open to speaking to me. The same goes for getting sober. We can jump through hoops all day long giving her different options that will help her get clean, but if she doesn't want to, she won't.

That doesn't mean we should stop trying. I know all of us will continue reaching a hand out to offer help. Even if she just slaps it out of her way. Now, someone needs to make an emotional breakthrough with Andrea sooner rather than later. If she's not open to talking to any of us, then we need to branch out. So I did. Whether Andrea will be open to it is the remaining question.

Despite her slamming a door in my face, the initial reunion and interaction between us hasn't left me feeling hopeless.

If she would just talk to me I could try to...I can't force her to open up. I keep reminding myself of that fact. In our relationship, she never struggled to be honest with me, aside from both of our cowardly behavior when first admitting our feelings for one another. In the beginning, back when it was just friendship, she was the open one. That's not the case anymore, and I have no fucking clue how to navigate it, but I need to figure out how. I will figure it out.

With the risk of sounding toxic, if she truly didn't want to speak to me or ever see me again, she wouldn't have.

She would have said nothing to me when she saw me. She wouldn't have engaged, and she would have gone downstairs. She may have even continued smoking and completely ignored my existence. But she didn't. 

I didn't sleep at all after seeing her. Nothing could ease my mind enough to get her out of my head. It differed from how she's lingered in my every thought for the past eight months. I became accustomed to the heaviness that would fill my chest each time I allowed myself to dwell on the memory of her. But this time...this time, I couldn't get my heart rate to slow down enough to even consider sleep.

When I did manage to get some sleep, it was only a few short hours.

By the time I woke up, just before four in the morning much to my disliking, something pulled me out of that stupid fucking bed upstairs and brought me here. Into my home studio with my notebook in hand.

Now I'm staring at piano keys as if I've never played a note in my life. I don't know where to start, despite already having a beginning displayed in front of me.

I have two lines that I put on paper before I said them out loud when I shouldn't.

The beginning I currently have are lyrics that manifested into being a simple, written version of the tangled mess that is in my mind. Now the question is, where do I want to take it from here?

Little freak, you Jezebel.

The two halves of my emotional self came together argumentatively to write this first line down.