Falling | h.s

forty-one

JANIE'S POV

It's been fifteen days since I left him. Fifteen days since I walked out on the best thing that has ever happened to me. Fifteen days since I boarded that plane and did everything I could to not look back. 

I cried the entire flight home. I took tissues from kind strangers and drank away my sorrows in the air. I tried to ignore the feeling of my heart cracking in my chest, but with every passing moment, I fought the urge to completely fall apart. 

I love him. 

I love him so much that it hurts. I love him so much that he's all I think about, all I dream about. I love him so much that I had to leave. 

I didn't want to leave. God, it was the last thing I had ever wanted to do. If it were up to me, I would spend the rest of my days in his arms, listening to him play guitar and twirl me around the kitchen to our favorite Fleetwood Mac record. I would spend every night on his back deck, drinking wine and complimenting the dinner he prepared for us.  I could spend the rest of my life reading him my favorite poems and running my hand through his hair. I could spend every night watching those romcoms he loves so dearly and listen to him murmur the lines he's memorized. I would wake up tangled in his arms and spend the entire day doing everything I could to make him happy.

But it was easier this way. Less pain, less heartbreak. A clean escape. There would be no talk of a hypothetical future. No wondering if things could have worked out. We had our time together, and now I had to float down from cloud 9 and back into reality.

He said he loved me, and I believed him. But at the end of the day, I was there to do a job. I didn't have a purpose in his life anymore. The last thing I wanted to do was hold him back, and I knew if I stayed, that's all I would have done. He deserves better than me, better than a normal girl who depends on him for everything. 

He was too bright for me. Always has been, always will be. He's Harry Styles: international rock star. He was born to do great things. But for me? I was destined for less. I was destined for Tennessee and minimum wage jobs and for wishful thinking. I was in his way and saying that I loved him back would only make things worse. 

But god, it fucking hurts. Every bone in my body aches for him. My heart pumps for him. My hands crave his hands, the feeling of his hair after a day at the beach. My fingers miss tracing his tattoos and tanlines. I live for his smile, the glint in his eyes, the way his voice sounds in the morning. He's everything and everywhere. It's only been fifteen days but it already feels like an eternity without him.

When I got home, I immediately fell into my father's arms, sobs still wracking my body. Through tears, I choked out slow words of pain. He understood, as he always did. My brothers, Davis and Walker, had watched from the doorway as he rocked my shaking body, shushing me like a fussy baby. On day two, I didn't get out of bed. It wasn't until day three that I managed to have an appetite. I didn't go outside until day seven when Davis and Walker insisted that we should go on a walk. I spent nights three through eight drunk, only joined by my brothers on days five and six.

Davis took off work for a few days and I came home just in time to see Walker before he went off for his sophomore year at the University of Tennessee. They spent their free time doing everything they could to cheer me up, trying to make me laugh, and keep me busy. Dad tried making me the food that Mom used to make before she left. They spoke and I would listen, but even by day ten, I hadn't fully explained what happened. 

On day nine, Dad broke the news that Charlie's father had pulled his connection with the elementary school, leaving me jobless two weeks before I was supposed to start my job. With that news, everything seemed even more pointless, and I found it hard to get out of bed.