Stranded [harry styles] ✓

32

There's an incessant tapping of knuckles on my bedroom door. 

I don't even want to know what time I've slept in until today but my eyes are heavy and it still feels early. I'm also pretty sure it's Sunday, although it's easy to lose track of the week when your only plans are hiding under your duvet. I ignore the interruption and roll over. 

The door creaks opens anyway. 

"Not yet, Addie." I mumble into my pillow. I love her dearly but she has little to no concept of privacy or personal space. "Five more minutes." 

"It's not Addie." My eyelids fly open. The hesitant tone does not belong to my excitable best friend - it's my mother. 

We've hardly spoken since my sessions with Dr Thestle. I'm mad that she shared personal details about Harry and I with a woman neither of us know anything about...even if Thestle did make me realise that I've been in denial about Harry being the cause of my misery. 

"Hi." I croak and watch as my mother strides across my bedroom and pulls my curtains open. I'm surprised to see her without a tray of food. 

"Jules flies back tomorrow." She informs me and in the light from the window, I realise how tired she looks. The guilt constricts my chest. She'll struggle without her sister here, I know she will. "Marley's opens in half an hour. I was thinking the three of us could go for breakfast...like old times." 

I'm stuck in that limbo of not wanting my mother to think she's off the hook but also wanting to please everyone given the stress I've put them under. Plus, I'm not going to see Jules again for months. 

I press my fingertips into my temples and exhale. "Ok, sounds good."

It sounds like my mother exhales too; probably out of relief that I've actually agreed to do something with her that doesn't involve ignoring one another or yelling until we're blue in the face. The childish part of me still wants her to be reminded that this situation is not ok but I don't want to give her another reason to send me back to Dr Thestle. The last thing I need is that thin-lipped twig telling me I have 'issues letting go of my anger'. 

"Great." Her voice is about as tired as her expression. "Can you be ready in half an hour?"

Half an hour? Does she think I'm superhuman or something? 

I know there's no point in arguing. 

"Sure." 

The door clicks behind her and she's gone; blanketing me in the comfortable silence of my bedroom that I've become accustomed to. I don't really want to leave it; don't want to face the outside world that's too busy, too built up and too loud. 

There's no sand out there. No ocean. No Harry. 

And in the grand scheme of things - yes, it was only three weeks. It could have been months or even years before we were discovered. But I've already been home for three weeks and somehow this feels less real than the sand, the ocean and...Harry. 

I push the covers away from me and pad over to the chest of drawers on the other side of the bed. Harry's hoodie is still folded on the wooden chair beside it, untouched since it came out of the washing machine three weeks ago. I've been tempted to wear it so many times, especially when I've felt at my lowest, but I just can't bring myself to do it. It feels like I'd be letting him off too easily as well. 

And yet I can't get rid of it or even hide it from sight. 

Aside from the nightmares and the memories and the ghost of his lips against my own - this is all I really have as solid evidence that Harry and I did share a bond for that month. And if it stays here in this room... then Harry hasn't completely left me.