Downfall [Punk Niall Horan]

53

TYLIE'S POV

I sat on the bathroom floor, my body strung out over the cold tiles beneath me and my head laying limply on the toilet seat as I stared blankly at a wall across from me. Nausea rolled through me like tidal waves, slamming into my stomach and shaking it violently. Still, I had not shed a tear once.

All the pain, all the heartbreak, over these past months were for absolutely nothing. I endured all this in hope for a future together, with him. He was just skin, bones, and arteries criss crossing over veins with a pair of bright blue eyes and a horrible attitude. So how did he manage to screw me up so badly?

The funny thing was that I knew it was coming, it was only a matter of when and how. I knew it was coming like a freight train yet I stayed put because somehow he managed to convince me that he actually cared even though there was always that nagging voice in the back of my head that told me he didn't love me after all. I should have listened to that voice.

Maybe I wanted to feel this mind numbing pain, maybe I wanted to be so utterly wrecked inside without any hope for redemption of my tarnished hope. Or maybe I just hoped that this would never happen after all. That maybe things would be different, that maybe he would be different than I originally assumed he was.

We both knew that he would break my heart and that it was only a matter of time until the inevitable doom happened of loving a Gang member that was focused on taking my father down and using me to accomplish that. He had even told me that I was a piece in his game, so why did I never believe him for the one time he told me the truth?

The only thing I didn't know was that this would hurt so much, and engulf me in this unbearable pain where I didn't even want to get up off of the bathroom floor. What a terrible thing for me to do in life, to love someone who didn't love me back.

That's when you know you love someone.

When you don't hate them for not loving you back, and when you don't want to destroy them even after they have demolished every fiber of your being.

I always told myself that I could be the exact same person if he ever were to leave me in a broken mess. I told myself that I would be strong and smile like him leaving me didn't faze me at all. I would tell everyone that I was doing great, and I would ask them how they were. But to be perfectly and brutally honest, I don't know why I ever believed those ridiculous lies I fed to myself anyways.

I knew from the moment that he first smiled at me that he would be my downfall. The dark depths of his eyes ran too deep for me to handle, and I knew I would never see things the awful way that he did. He said he wouldn't be able to live without me, but I knew that only really meant that he could live without me but just wanted to keep me around for some form of entertainment when he was lonely.

Even after all of this I still couldn't bring myself to say that I hated him.

I should have left the cold shell of a man he was, and never ventured into his soul because it was such a dark, miserable place. I put so much of my time and effort into this relationship that wasn't even a relationship in the first place. All he ever wanted was to destroy me, and he accomplished that.

Harry walked into the bathroom then, looking into my sunken eyes with his frightened ones. Little did he know that I knew he had been standing just outside the bathroom door for the past hour, listening to my sickness escape me. His face softened immediately as he rushed towards me in a wobbly blur. Harry must have thought that I was sick at the thought of him leaving, but I was only physically sick. Something was wrong, and I did not feel healthy anymore.

Harry sank to his knees in front of me, pushing my sweaty hair away from my face as I squeezed my eyes shut at the gentle gesture. What shocked me even more was that I felt empty in the spot where I normally wished it was someone else doing it to me. I had officially cut off all ties from him.