Because Of Her Jacket

Chapter Fifteen

Lonely & Chinese Food
♡ Fiona ♡

Lonely. She just feels lonely.

And I left her there...

Alone. Feeling completely lonely. I mean it's so surprising to me- that someone like Tammy Hollingsworth feels alone

Is that what it's like to be popular? Feeling lonely even though you're surrounded by so many people?

I don't know about popularity. The closest I've ever gotten to "popular" was fifth grade and eighth grade, when I was the oldest in elementary and middle school; when everyone, including teachers and students and even people you'd never known, treated you differently than they did the years prior to.

But lonely? Well, I know something about lonely.

Not as much now that I have Yasmine, Ethan, Dyl, and Lizzy.

But after dad's death? For a few years, I was never the same.

Truthfully? I don't think I'll ever be the same. Sometimes I still look at certain things like this small golden watch I keep in the drawer of my nightstand and the only thing that flashes before me is dad's smiling face, the way his hair would move in the wind when he played in the backyard with Lizzy and me. How he'd pick Lizzy and I up on his back, me after Lizzy and Lizzy after me and pick me let us throw the same old, peeling basketball into this big black rimmed basketball net mom has long gotten rid of.

For a while after I was lonely. Yasmine was my friend but she was close to my dad, too. The two of would dance at family gatherings together and make stupid songs about pancakes on the mornings after Yasmine and I had a sleepover.

Yas had her own way of coping. And me? I was excluded from her and Lizzy and Mom's grief. Or... I excluded myself.

I couldn't help it I just didn't want to believe just yet that the man who raised me, picked me up and swayed me in his arms and made me pancakes in the middle of the night after younger me was scared of "monsters" died.

Sometimes I still can't believe it.

I miss him like one misses the sun or the stars.

According to religion he could be near, but god... he feels so far apart.

Maybe that's what I should have said when she said she felt lonely; that I knew about lonely and that maybe, we could be lonely together.

And even days and days and day after Valentine's day, when the weekend is slowly beginning and I'm sitting on my bed, I keep on thinking.

But what would've happened if I comforted her? Would she see right through me? Would she feel my feelings? Would I become another pone in her twisted game of chest?

Would I?

I don't want to get my heart broken; heartbreak by death is one pain; a completely different pain, but heartbreak over a girl? That would be nearly as worse as my dad. And somehow, still better than missing him.

Lonely.

Who would've thought someone like Tamara Hollingsworth would feel lonely?

And then in the Saturday morning darkness of my bedroom, I found myself looking through anything with "Tamara Hollingsworth" on it. Old article about her middle school cheer competitions, newspaper headlines about her father's business, videos on videos on her mom's social medias of the two doing random things; family game nights, Valentine's day mornings with heart shaped pancakes, pictures of pictures on pictures of her.