Through the Lens

Half Way

Hailey's POV

"Hails, toss me that test tube." Matt said as he motioned to the box of them sitting next to me and I picked one up and threw it over to him. "Thanks."

I looked around at the trees that surrounded us as my legs dangled off the back of the jeep, trying to take it all in before we switched assignments the next day. I was officially half way through my contract, and while in some ways it felt like a lifetime, in other's it felt like days.

"I can't believe it's been three months." I sighed as I watched him collect a water sample from the small pond we were sitting next to.

"I know." Matt said as he stood up and put the lid on, marking it with the label. "Kinda flew by, didn't it?"

"Yeah, I can't decide if I'm gonna miss this place or not." I laughed.

"You mean the mosquitoes the size of baseballs and the scorpions in your shoes every morning? I think I'm good." He smiled as he sat down next to me and playfully nudged me with his elbow.

"You know what I meant, ass." I chuckled.

"Yeah...I know." He sighed. "We've done some good work here though. I feel like we've made a lot of progress."

"I do too, we did good." I smiled as I held my hand out and bumped my knuckles with his. "Bring on the ocean."

The two of us sat there for a while, talking about all the things that we'd done and laughing over some of the memories we'd made. Matt had quickly become one of my best friends, and I knew that the experience wouldn't have been the same without him. He'd helped me dive into everything with a positive mindset and distract myself from all of the things that were eating at me when I'd arrived. I still thought about Harry daily, but the pain that accompanied it wasn't quite as earth-shattering as it once was. I'd somehow found a way to ignore it, to pretend I was off in some other universe where none of it existed, until I was reminded of him and my pretend world would come crumbling down.

He had e-mailed me a bunch of times after I first arrived, and I couldn't bring myself to open them. I'd put them aside into a separate folder that I thought I would read when I was ready, but the days seemed to go on and I never quite found myself at that place. I think there were a few reasons I chose not to read them, the fact that I knew they would bring up old feelings I didn't wanna deal with probably being the main one. I knew he would be apologizing for what happened, trying to explain himself, and I just didn't know if I really wanted to be reminded of what happened. I think deep down I knew that he felt horrible and that he really did want to be there, but then I would remember what it felt like to sit there waiting for him and I'd lose all sympathy for him. I felt like if he really wanted to be there, he would have been, and the truth of it was that there was just something he felt was more important than seeing me.

I knew that the reason I was so hurt by it was because I was ready to tell him everything. I was finally going to be honest and face the thing that was scariest for me, and I felt rejected. I knew I'd build my walls back up, that the thing I was the most afraid of is exactly what happened, but I didn't know how to just stop trying to protect myself. Nothing had ever been simple when it came to Harry and I, and those complications all left room for me to get hurt. I noticed that his e-mails started to become less frequent as time went on, which to me signalled that he was slowly giving up on the idea that I would respond. The idea that he was giving up on the idea of us killed me, but I still couldn't bring myself to open them let alone write him back.

I knew he'd kept his promise to me about checking in on my family at Christmas, and everyone had told me they'd had a really nice holiday with him and his family. I was thankful that he still did it after what happened and the fact that I wasn't talking to him, and it reminded me just how amazing I knew him to be. When I'd facetimed to say Merry Christmas I spoke to everyone except him, including his own family, and he had mysteriously stepped out for a while. I was sure he did it for my benefit, knowing that it would just be an awkward interaction that I didn't want to have, but part of me felt bad that he'd done that for me and then felt like he couldn't be there when I called.