Having Your Jelly Baby

22: Distance

A/N: Thank you so much for the incredible response to the last chapter of HYJB - the number of comments was CRAZY and I really do appreciate it so, so much. A lot of you were upset by what happened last chapter, and a few of you seemed a bit angry (which I honestly didn't mind all, it's amazing that something I've written can evoke that kind of response). Some people said that this story is called 'Having Your Jelly Baby', and asked how I can have a story called that when there's no longer a baby. Although this is meant to be lighthearted at times and make you laugh - the stupid humor even manages to make me laugh sometimes - its genres are ChickLit and Non-TF, not Humor. It's a story about Nova, and the way she grows as a person. It's got mature themes, and this isn't one of those fanfiction-esque stories where a girl falls pregnant with a member of One Direction's baby, they fall in love, have the baby and live happily ever after forever and ever and bloody ever. Life just isn't like that. One thing that I am proud about with this story is how realistic it feels to me (regardless of how unrealistic the basic storyline is lols), and I want to stick by that and take this story through the realistic route. A very, very real part of life is that it isn't fair, and it is terrible to people that are undeserving of its cruelty. The harshness can come in the form of a miscarriage and has done so in this story, and that's just the way life sometimes is. It's heartbreaking and tragic, but it will get better eventually. Anyway, RAMBLE OVERRR :P I hope you enjoy the story if you've decided to continue reading it, and it'll probably have another two chapters including this one and maybe an epilogue, although I'm not 100% sure atm :)

22: Distance

Time had stopped. I was sure it had.

Because seconds now seemed to take hours to pass, and days felt like decades. I had been one of those teenagers at school who had loved being there despite the often overwhelming workload and occasional bitchiness, praying for time to slow down to a halt, so that I could have savored the time we had left, which never was quite long enough. Now that that wish had finally come true, years too late, I was stuck feeling hollow and with no clue of how to dissipate my time.

It had been a month exactly: just over four weeks of a never-ending emptiness which somehow still managed to ache, as if a part of me was missing and my body was yearning for whatever had been ripped away from it by force.

‘Nova?’

There was a sharp knock on my bedroom door that made me jump, startled by the sudden crack in the silence that was beginning to suffocate me.

‘Yeah, Mum?’ I called out hesitantly, watching as the handle on the door was turned and she peered around slowly.

I had moved back into my parents’ house the day after I delivered Marley and I was released from the hospital, choosing to return straight home instead of remaining with Drew at his flat. Now that Marley was gone, I was once again left unsure of where we stood with each other, this time because there was no jelly baby to hold us together anymore.

‘Do you want some dinner, sweetheart?’ she asked softly. ‘It’s late and you haven’t really eaten anything - I can bring something up for you if you like.’

I shook my head. ‘I’m all right, I’m not hungry,’ I answered, raking my hands through the ends of my hair absentmindedly, unable to look at her in the face because I knew there would be a concerned expression on it, which would cause her brow to furrow and a frown to pull down the corners of her mouth.

‘Please eat something, Nova,’ Mum said quietly. ‘You’re wasting away.’

‘I’m fine Mum, I swear. I’ll eat when I’m hungry,’ I said tiredly, rubbing my forehead with my fingers and feeling like a headache was coming on. I hadn’t lived with my parents in almost five years, and I had forgotten what it was like to have my mum constantly nagging at me to eat, to get out of bed, to do something with my day, even though I knew she did it because she cared.