there goes my heart - j.s

chapter eleven

When I was seven and a half, my father left. And for what seemed like hours after, I held my mothers crumpled form as she cried on the floor. She cried until her throat ached and she didn't have any more tears to cry. My seven-year-old self didn't really know what had happened until mum explained it later. But I hugged her anyway; until she felt better and until she could stand up and compose herself.
Then we went to the kitchen and made macaroni and cheese. We ate it out of our best china that Dad said we could never use and then we sat on our best couches that Dad restricted to guests. Mum sighed as she explained everything to me; how my Father had been seeing some other woman behind my Mum's back, how he lied constantly, how she eventually found out and then how she confronted him. And I could remember all the yelling almost every day. I remember hearing my Mother cry afterwards in her room all alone and hearing the door slam as my Father stormed out. Then one day, he slammed the door, left, and never came back.

When we finished our dinner, Mum put on a movie for me and left the room. She was on the phone for the rest of the night, talking to her Sister and her Mother and her friends. I finished the film and put myself to bed. As I lay under my lilac duvet covers, I felt my chest ache just a little bit. Just the slightest feeling of emptiness - like I couldn't quite fill my lungs with enough air. Seven-year-old me decided right then and there, that I hated my Dad. I hated how selfish he was, how he shouted at my Mum when she wasn't the one who cheated, how he left us so easily and didn't have to care about me anymore.
I hated him.

That ache in my chest, that emptiness, that slight heaviness, it never really left.
And when Joe told me he was leaving - even though I knew he would come back, and that he had to go, and that he loves me and won't stop loving me even in Australia - that aching intensified.
It grew inside my chest.
I couldn't ignore it anymore.

—

a/n: yo yo so i added this chapter because beFORE, it skipped from last chapter directly to next chapter, and i thought it needed something in between ya know?? also i felt like i should give some more backstory cause young ol' me who first wrote this shit, didn't think to give much of a fuckin backstory to adeline.
so hopefully this chapter is alright??

— "taylor"