The Fight of Ambivalence ~ Harry Styles

20 - Balances

There's a thing called the natural law of balances. It means that nothing can ever just be bad and nothing will ever just be good. When too many bad things happen in a row you should expect something good and vice versa. Sheila's never believed in it, but she can admit that it might have some basis in reality.

Everything has been going so well for her lately. School is great, Harry's lovely and so much fun. She has her friends too and yes, life isn't perfect, but at the end of the day she's incredibly grateful for what she has. She feels like things have been balanced between work time and relaxing, being with Harry, but still seeing her friends a bunch too. She thought it would be a lot to juggle, but it's not.

Until it is.

When she gets home on Wednesday she's so happy to have a light workload and be home and catch up on some chores she's been putting off. She's been in such a good mood lately that even chores aren't bringing her down.

She might even use the word perfect to describe her life, but then she gets home and finds Ava looking upset with her.

"Hey, is everything okay?" She asks, immediately setting her stuff down and moving toward her friend.

"Do you remember when we used to go out together like every Friday night and we'd take forever to get ready and then like never talk to anyone but each other?" Ava asks in lieu of answering her question.

"Yeah I do," Sheila replies, sitting on her bed opposite Ava.

"Now I feel like you're never here and you don't tell me anything. I don't even know where you were last night," she says sadly.

Sheila immediately feels a pang of guilt in her chest, but instead of expressing that she gets defensive. "We're both busy. You have August and I have my friends and school and stuff," she replies.

It's true, but probably not a productive thing to say. They are both busy, but all this time she thought she was giving everyone enough attention just to come home to her friend feeling neglected.

Perspective is a bitch sometimes.

"Yeah I guess," Ava says with a sigh.

Sheila feels like Ava's holding back from saying what she really wants to. All the sudden it feels like Sheila's not been the only one keeping things inside. One minute she was in a bubble and now there's a tension she knows won't go away easily.

Sheila's wondering if they slowly got more strained and she didn't even realize or did it really all just change in one day?

"Ava are we okay?" She asks.

"I don't know," Ava replies, crossing her arms over her chest. "I feel like you're keeping secrets or something and you're always busy. I feel like I'm losing you. It's always been us, but now it's not and if it's already like this when we still live together then what will it be like when we move on from here?"

That hits Sheila like a ton of bricks.

"Things are going to change. There will be a time when we won't see each other as often, but the people you want to stay in your life will. We'll have to work on it, but I promise I'm not going anywhere. I'm sorry I've been distant, there's just some things I have to do on my own right now," she replies.

"You never used to have to," Ava says stubbornly.

Sheila shrugs, they did use to tell each other everything, but it doesn't make it wrong for her to stop doing that. "Things change Aves," she says.

Ava shakes her head and replies, "I never wanted us to change."

"I get that and for what it's worth I do try to let you in. It's just hard for me sometimes," Sheila explains.