Halfway to Love | A Joanne Fanfiction

Nine

"Are you seriously telling me that you went through all of that trouble and you didn't even give him his camera back?" her roommate exclaimed as Dianne recounted the tale of her day.

She nodded sheepishly at her feet in response.

"And that you queued for half an hour only to get halfway there and chicken out?"

"I didn't chicken out Oti, it was just that there wasn't-"

"That's bullshit Di and you know it." She said, interrupting her with a no-nonsense tone that Dianne knew not to question. "You were halfway there, what stopped you?" she tried more gently, having noticed the tears forming in her friend's eyes at her harshness.

"I don't know, I don't know." She replied, hanging her head in shame as her body began to shake.

"Hey, hey hey what's up?" her friend asked, standing up and bringing her friend into a tight hug, realising that it wasn't simply her words that had caused her to tear up.

"I don't know." She managed, after a little while of calming herself down. She smiled tearfully at her friend. "I don't know why I couldn't stay in that line, I don't know why I had to dress as a hot dog to feel safe and I definitely don't know why I feel like I need to hang on to this a little longer but I've got it now and there's nothing that I can do about it." She finished, bursting into fresh tears after her outburst.

Her roommate sat back for a moment in shock, before offering a calming hand on her shoulder. "It's alright Di, you got halfway." She said, trying to comfort her.

"To reach a point one must always reach a halfway point and from there the next halfway point. There is always another halfway point." She muttered darkly at a level of quiet that was incomprehensible to her friend.

"What was that Di?" she asked gently.

"Nothing Oti, I'm going to bed."

And with that the redhead slumped and shuffled her way out of the room and into her bedroom, closing the door with just a little more force that what was necessary.

That night, her roommate listened out for the stifled giggles or muffled laughter that she had become accustomed to in the previous weeks but that night there was nothing. Silence had encompassed the entire apartment, all was quiet and still and though she had been craving this after becoming increasingly sleep deprived, somehow she found herself longing for the faint excited chatter of a British boy followed by suppressed snorting laughter of her friend. But there was nothing, nothing at all. By half eleven, she could no longer resist the temptation of checking on her friend, so tiptoed into her room and peered through the crack in the door.

The sight of her caused her to smile sadly in sympathy. Resembling more a toddler than the twenty eight year old woman she was, she had curled herself up in an almost ball in the centre of the bed, cradling a pillow like her life depended on it. Faint tear tracks were still present on her cheeks but the heavy rise and fall of her chest and the gentle snoring escaping her body told her that it would be wise not to disturb her, especially with rehearsals so early the next morning. Oti sighed to herself, closing her friend's door with a soft click before getting ready for bed herself.

The next morning, Joe didn't get out of bed until past eleven. Normally, he wasn't one for a lie in to this extent on a weekday but events such as yesterday's always took it out of him, both mentally and physically. He stretched, widely before getting up and on with his day. It wasn't even an hour later before he could be found scrolling mindlessly on Instagram. Currently, a beautiful woman with the brightest red hair he had ever seen was being suggested to him as an account for him to follow. Curious, he opened her profile.