Heart Strings <3 ~Complete

Heart Strings Chapter Nineteen

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19

I self destruct every relationship so that I don't get hurt...but in truth I just hurt myself worse in the long run

Anonymous

Thursday morning I woke up with a bit of a cold. It wasn’t enough to stay off school but I feigned being sick anyway. Unfortunately it was mum’s day off so she would be around the house most of the time. It was easy to avoid her though. She always either sat in the living room or in hers with a can of Scrumpy or a lit cigarette in her hand.

When I’d had a shower and went to the kitchen, mum was sitting at the breakfast bar with a robe on. She was drinking a cup of coffee. ‘Morning,’ I muttered, not expecting an answer.

‘Nathan. You’re not going to school,’ she said. It was a statement.

‘No...?’

‘Your school called wondering why you weren’t in. I told them you weren’t going to school today.’ I was silent as I poured some Frosties into a bowl, added milk and sat down opposite her.

 ‘How did you know?’

‘You didn’t get up on time, and you had a late night yesterday.’ After coming home at about nine soaked, I’d had a shower and then played on the guitar until one o’clock in the morning. I had started off singing Time again and again, trying to remember the whole thing, but it had morphed into something else... A song I hadn’t written yet. It was a song about a girl... A girl I’d ruined everything with-

I rubbed my eyes, feeling the wave of tiredness catching up with me. ‘Yeah.’ We were silent. When she finished her coffee she left it on the breakfast bar and went to the balcony to smoke. The latter allowed me to forgive her for leaving her mug for me to clear up. 

As I ate, spoon after spoon of Frosties, I found myself thinking; I was thinking about life, about Sephy, about Gina, about Jewel, about the guys, about how I hated my life at home and dreaded life at school, the only high being seeing the guys and, suddenly, Sephy, though that wasn’t so true anymore.

I couldn’t believe I ever really thought I had a chance. It wasn’t that Sephy was the prettiest girl I’d ever liked, and she wasn’t the one who had the most options, but she respected herself... She went for good people. Not shit faced man-whores like me for example. Then again, it seemed Nick had lost his ‘good person’ title with the beating up people shit, reminding me to buy the paper and have a look for myself.

Just as I swallowed another mouthful, the phone rang. I leaned over and picked up the handset, half choking as I did so. ‘Hello?’ I coughed.

‘Oh! Nathan, hey, it’s your pops!’

‘Dad! Hi!’ I winced as a frostie went down the wrong pipe.

‘Just wondering... Are you free this Christmas? You could come over. Jewel’s been begging me to invite you, not that I haven’t wanted you over too. If that’s okay with your mum, of course.’ He seemed to have added the last sentence after a moment of thought.

‘Yeah! I’d love to, I’ll just ask mum now and then call you back, okay?’   

‘Okay then!’ Dad replied. I pressed the red button just as mum made her way back inside. I put the phone back on the surface and watched her as she coughed her way to the kitchen sink and poured herself a drink of water. When the coughing fit had subsided she practically slammed the cup down and wiped her mouth dry before eyeing me suspiciously.