Red String [h.s] (Completed)

Chapter 37

"I went to Amsterdam without you
And all I could do was think about you
And oh I should have known
I went to Tokyo to let it go
Drink after drink, but I still felt alone
I should've known"

Amy's three months traveling flew by. She started in New York, visited Toronto, then Paris, London, Barcelona, Rome and Berlin. After that she flew to Asia and visited Tokyo and Beijing, before finishing in Sidney.

It took awhile for Amy to get into a rhythm with this new way of doing her photography. She typically spent about a week in each city so that gave her some time to explore a few different locations in each one. She began with typical tourist spots and then as she got better, she started asking locals for recommendations. In London, she saw Harry's face in every person she looked at. She felt relief the moment her plane left Heathrow and she moved on to the next city.

The publishing company had started her an Instagram page along with her blog. They did an incredible job promoting her page with various big magazines featuring her work on their pages. As her followers grew to over 100,000 in the first month (now close to a million), she had to start posting after she left the city out of worry that someone would track her down whilst there. This had happened once and her typical candid photos were impossible for the day.

Each city Amy went to the publisher's would connect her with different contacts they had. She would sometimes have lunch or go on a walking tour with the person but she spent every night on her own. She was asked out on dates by confident men that had noticed her but she always politely declined, telling herself that she was happy being alone. If she were truly being honest with herself, she would admit that her heart still belonged to someone else and she hadn't gotten over it yet. She's not sure she ever will.

It was challenging to get over someone when they continued to contact you, because every Sunday she would check her email and there would be a new message from Harry. He would write about her blog posts and about following along on her travels. He would rave about her photos and how impressed he was with each one. He would ask about the city she had visited and tell her if he had been there or not. He would write about how the new album was coming along. He signed every email with 'Love, Harry.'

Amy didn't write him back once.

She thought about it after the first email but was too afraid of what she might say. Everything was still so raw then. Too scared to say something she didn't mean and would regret later. Too prideful to show him how devastated he left her by leaving. And as the weeks went by and she didn't respond, but the emails kept coming, she realized that he might not be looking for a response. Maybe he was just looking for someone to listen.

So, each week she would sit down with a cup of tea and she would read his words. She would commit them to her memory and she would think about what she would reply to him. What things would she share with him if she were to actually write back?

She would tell him about how excited she felt each time she touched down in a new country and they stamped her passport. She would tell him about learning a little of each language of the places she visited. She would tell him that whenever she found herself ordering off a room service menu, she always ordered a burger. She would tell him about always making sure to check out the art galleries in the places she went to, not knowing when she'd get a chance to be back there. She'd tell him about getting up early to swim lengths in hotel pools, needing to stay in shape in case she ever needed to win another race.

But mostly, she would have told him about how much she missed him. That she thought time would make things easier but that the feeling of being incomplete never went away. That she was doing all the things that should make her happy and yet her mood never changed. Felt like she was constantly treading water with the threat of going under at any moment. The terrible thing was that she wasn't afraid of the going under, she just didn't want to tread water anymore. And every day the depths looked a bit more inviting.