all mine | ft. michael clifford

twenty-nine;

For those of you who wanted me to space out updates in order to drag this out, don't worry. Sequel in progress. We're not done yet.

Dedicated to all of you. 

***

'That little kiss you stole, it held my heart and soul and like a deer in the headlights, I meet my fate. Don't try to fight the storm, you'll tumble overboard. Tides will bring me back to you and the waves will pull us under.'

***

I took the towel off my now-dry hair, assessing the new colour that I'd put through my locks. I didn't want the blue and black anymore; they'd reminded me too much of Olivia and Melissa and I couldn't stand to look at it without feeling sad. And so, instead of letting myself feel sad forever I had gone out, bought a box dye, some hair bleach and had set to work in my stupid, white bathroom.

The colour I'd chosen?

Medium ash brown. My natural hair colour.

I was tired of running from myself and I'd been doing that with my hair for the longest time. Maybe if I just let my body be itself, let myself be itself then I wouldn't feel so empty. It was time I started to get back into the swing of life. It had been a month since I'd last seen them. And I had the rest of my life to go without seeing them as well. I couldn't dwell on it – on them – forever if I wanted to be happy.

And so, I'd bleached the blue and black off my head and dyed my hair brown. I cried as I blow dried and towelled it and realised that every part of my LA self was now gone. Mali was gone.

I was Charlotte Slater again and there was nothing remotely interesting or quirky about me. I had no talents, no bright hair and no friends.

God, I had to stop pitying myself. It was just hard to accept the fact that Michael was as good as gone and he'd left me with a crappy handshake; one I didn't even accept.

And because I was just that pathetic, I logged onto my laptop and clicked into Twitter, pulling up Michael5SOS's profile and scrolling through his tweets. They made me want to vomit. Why? Because all of them were happy, with exclamation points, and smiley faces. All of them were excited tour posts and thankfulness expressed towards the fans that came to the shows. Not one of them hinted that he might be as heartbroken as I was. Not one of them showed an ounce of sadness.

Did I want him to be sad? No. Did I want him to be hurt? Of course not. But looking through his tweets made it seem like I'd never even existed. Mali hadn't existed. I had no proof, no evidence at all to support the fact that Mali was a part of the 5SOS boys' lives. She was gone and Michael had continued on like she was never there.

My heart physically hurt and I googled ways to reduce risks of a heart attack because I wasn't sure how much more stress mine was going to be able to take before it decided that it didn't wanna beat anymore. I couldn't blame it; that life wasn't something I was ready to walk away from. Yet, I had to.

"Charlotte, your band is on television!" My mother called from downstairs.

So I guess telling her about my little 'adventure', as she liked to call it, probably wasn't a good idea if I planned on forgetting them, right? I'd missed my parents a lot and when I'd gotten home they had wanted to know all about where I'd been and what I'd been doing. I'd lived a lie for months so telling them the real truth felt good and that meant telling my mum about 5 Seconds of Summer. The minor detail I left out? That I was in love with one of them. She didn't need to know that. I felt pathetic thinking about it and so saying it out loud would feel even worse.