It's not just complicated, it's a disaster

Disaster (Chapter Thirty Four)

Chapter Thirty Four

Alex’s P.O.V

I sat crawled up in the ball on the cold hard floor boarded ground of my uncle’s beach cabin. I let my toes touch the glass and sighed.

“This is boring.”

I turned around to see Harriet sitting on the arm of the chair.

“You’re boring,” I muttered.

I heard Harriet clap slightly. “Excellent comeback.”

“I know you have to do something, and it’s taunting to be near a beach,” I said.

“It is very taunting, it’s not fair that it’s raining,” Harriet exclaimed.

“Just watch TV or something,” I suggested.

I heard Harriet sigh and she came at sat next to me.

“It’s been five days and you haven’t uttered a word about what happened,” she said.

“Why should I?” I asked her.

“Because, Alex, you got away for a reason, because of how you feel... and I want to help, but I don’t know how you feel,” Harriet stressed.

I sighed and put my head on my knees. I swallowed and blinked a couple of times before a single tear rolled down my cheek. I sniffed and Harriet sighed too.

“You still love him,” Harriet muttered.

“I...I still feel the same about him, yes,” I whispered.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t just tell him straight away, keeping it a secret like this just made everything worse,” Harriet told me.

“I know... but when I realised what had happened, and I thought about telling him... I knew how he’d feel, how much it’d hurt him. I knew how much he loved me... this would destroy him, I was all he had... I was everything... I wanted to break away from him in the least hurtful way,” I told her.

“Alex, he loved you... it was always going to be painful,” Harriet said. “But... why did you have to tell him now?”

“I... the guilt... all of it... and he kissed me... I couldn’t hide it anymore. I just wanted to be with him.”

I broke down, unable to hold back the rest of my tears and Harriet sighed and wrapped her arms around me.

Harriet’s P.O.V

Alex had disappeared off into the bedroom and shut the door. I was now curled up on the couch, channel surfing, there was literally nothing on. I couldn’t be more bored right now...oh, phone.

I picked my phone as it rang and answered it, glancing at the caller ID for only one second.

“Hey,” I said quickly.

“Hey, babe. How you doing?” Kane asked me.

I smiled slightly. “I’m fine, I guess. Just bored... it’s raining and I’m going to come home with no tan.”

“What about Alex?” he asked.

I frowned a bit. “She’s... not good. She’s in her room crying... again.”

Kane didn’t say anything, but I heard a ruffling noise and some muttering.

“Is someone else there?” I asked him.

I heard Kane sigh. “Yeah, you’re on speaker and Zeke’s in the room.”

“Great,” I whispered.

“I just wanted to know how Alex is,” Zeke said.

“She’s not good, Zeke. She starts crying at the thought of all of it, the thought of you. I know you’re angry, but she’s falling apart,” I told him.

“Oh, come on, Harriet. You’re not going to defend Alex against what she did, are you?” Kane asked.

“Both Alex and I know that what happened, happened. You can’t change it, and she didn’t mean to. I’m not saying what she did was right or anything, it was wrong, very wrong, but things like this happen. Zeke, you know that,” I reminded.

I heard someone sigh and then a loud kind of clanging noise and then Zeke was loud in my ear.

“Go out, buy the biggest thing of sour gummy worms you can find, hot chocolate stuff, and a nice big tub of ice-cream... preferably cookies and cream. Find a sightly funny but serious DVD, make the most chocolaty hot chocolate you can imagine and the gummy worms, give them to Alex... save the ice-cream for later... okay?” he instructed me.

“This is all for Alex?” I asked him.

“It’ll work to make her feel better for a little while, she told me,” he whispered.

“You still care,” I said blankly.

“Harriet... just tell her I said happy birthday,” Zeke muttered.

I sighed. “Okay.”

“And, babe,” Kane said, grabbing the phone off Zeke, “have fun.”

“I’ll try,” I said quietly.

“Okay, bye,” Kane muttered.

“Bye.”

I put the phone and then got up and went to Alex’s room. She was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling. I stood at the door and she looked over at me.

“I’m going to the shops, do you want anything?” I asked her.

She shook her head and went to walk out but stopped.

“Alex... Zeke said happy birthday,” I told her.

She sat up pretty quickly and ran her fingers through her hair.

“You spoke to him?” she asked quickly.

“Kane called and Zeke was there.... he just told me to tell you that,” I shrugged.

“Right, well if you speak to him again tell him thanks,” she said.

“Why can’t you?”

She didn’t answer me and I sighed. I shut the door before him and didn’t say anything else. What a way to spend your eighteenth birthday. On a day which it decides rain, and when you can’t stop yourself from crying. There’s nothing I can do this time though. It’s all on Zeke, because right now Alex will take him back in a heartbeat, but I know that there is no way Zeke could do the same. In the end I guess it comes down to how much Zeke really loves Alex.