Lights, Camera, Action [N.H]

39

okay i lied when i said i'd finish the book before christmas. on the bright side, the public holiday (i live in australia lol) has allowed me to have a decent session to sit down and write. as i type this, i intend to finish the book tonight. home stretch guys :) thankyou for everything <3 (also sorry if theres errors, i wanna get it to you ASAP so i havent actually edited these chapters)

Fluffy white clouds blanketed a scorchingly bright morning. The flight was numbing, my ears hurt and my eyes were swollen. I cried the entire drive to the airport, Niall's security who I'd come to be familiar with had given me looks of guilt mixed with what seemed like sympathy, but their job description didn't allow much past opening my doors. It was the slightest ease of a burden, it didn't help shoulder the weight of everything I'd done. Everything I'd just ruined.

I hoped, desperately, with every fibre of my very being, that two things happened before the end of this very day;

I got the job.Niall forgave me — and never looked at me like that again.

I didn't even have to earn his love, if he had decided to throw it to the wayside. I couldn't bring myself to talk to him, it felt like pulling on fresh, bleeding skin. It wasn't ready to bring to light yet. I had to focus on very few things right now, too much and my head would explode.

A cozy first-class flight made me feel so much worse, although it was comfortable to cry in the confines of my own space without onlookers staring at me. How frightening I would have looked to them — a young girl with running makeup I'd already reapplied twice since I woke up, a pile of tissues, and soft sobs escaping my trembling lips every time I gulped down the memory of Niall's face.

It hurt every part of me, the feeling of him pulling his arm way and the glazed, disguised disappointment and disgust behind a facade of hurt. But I had to move forward, at least for today, with my head held as high as I possibly could. Steadfast and towards the decision I'd made; I had to make the best of it.

This interview had to be perfect. I had to answer every question perfectly, present myself appropriately, but without a stick up my ass. I had to oversell myself and install confidence without lying and making baseless claims about my experience. It was wholly horrifying, but I didn't have a choice.

I'd notified Ashlee that I would be coming home early from tour, to which she responded almost immediately. I didn't even have the stomach to speak to her, either. It reminded me of the failure, and it was another huge figure in my life I didn't have the emotional capacity to lose from my own poor foresight. Our friendship had been on thin ice for weeks, I'd barely said much of ten words to her in the past month, all of which were bitchy statements coming from a place entirely constructed of hurt and pain. Entirely self-inflicted, but it fucked up our closeness just the same.

I didn't bring all my belongings, just the important stuff I could pack in a small suitcase I usually carried with me when Niall and I brought luggage on board.

I dragged myself to the front of my apartment building, the modest place I once felt such warmth felt like a waking nightmare to be back. It would have been wonderful, returning with Niall. He would have lit up my apartment and brought my dead plants back to life with his tender smile, but instead, I ripped the lock open and stood emotionless, a black cartoon cloud following me into the dampened room.

It was dark. Gloomy. Lacking any particular range of feeling, not at all how I left it. I wheeled my suitcase inside, shutting the door behind me and standing silently, blankly allowing myself to breathe in and out.

I feared I would collapse at the sheer weight of all my thoughts engulfing me at once.

How was I going to pull off this interview?