Unscripted Love • A Tom Hardy fanfic

Chapter 53

Fiona laid in the guest bedroom, watching her phone. She was waiting for him to call and apologize, or at least call to check in. The silence was deafening.
She was sure he would call at least tomorrow. She turned on the TV and scrolled through the stations.

She browsed through and found an old British movie of Tom's. She debated. He never watched them obviously, and she couldn't find them anywhere online. It was a few years before she met him and she figured why not. She missed him. Even if he was an awkward homeless man, she smiled every time she saw him.

She looked at her phone again. She started  a text and erased it many times. She recognized the dog in the movie as his Max and she thought about talking about that, rather than their issues.  But she held herself back.

She finished the movie feeling really depressed. The movie started out kind of funny, Tom was funny. But then he slowly stopped being Tom and more Stuart, to Fiona. And by the end she cried, feeling emotionally invested in the story. Fiona was like that. Read a book or watch a movie and Fiona could feel everything the characters felt and most of the time it consumed her for a good day or so. She was empathetic by nature.

It was almost midnight, she figured Tom would maybe be asleep. But she missed him.

FIONA  11:50PM: Hey, are you up.

She threw her phone next to her and looked up at the ceiling. She felt her own depression creeping up on her.

She tucked her phone in her pajama pants and went downstairs to the kitchen. She was gonna distract herself with a snack, or 20. She browsed the fridge for a cold can of soda and grabbed a box of yodels from the pantry. She popped open the can and sat at the table.

Fiona set her phone on the table and watched it as she stuffed down the yodels. Her foot tapped to a song she had in her head, trying to think of other things than being depressed and having a fight with Tom.

"I thought I saw a light on," Mike had come down the stairs in basketball shorts and a blue t-shirt. She moved the wrappers slowly to the side, embarrassed that she ate 3 already. 

"Sorry," Fiona said and took a sip of her Coke, "How's Mariah?"

"I just checked and her temperature is down to 100.9, so hopefully getting better," Mike sounded relieved. He grabbed a bottle of water and stood behind the counter.

"Oh good, good," Fiona nodded. She hoped he would leave her to her comfort eating.

"I'm not really this helpless, I just am out of practice," he laughed.

Mike wasn't unattractive, he was little older, 40, an adult in Fiona's eyes, where she still felt like a teenager.  She concluded that she didn't wake him, but he was instead working out. She realized he was pretty fit and not how she viewed dad's as a kid. All her friends' dads were overweight or balding, she didn't understand how adults even made kids with those guys. But with Mike, she could see it.  His beard was kept trimmed, at least this week as she never really saw him before his wife Leanne went away.

"You probably think I'm a deadbeat," Mike said during the silence.

"No not at all," she comforted. Fiona rolled her eyes thinking about her deadbeat dad, "you're here, you're trying, you care to try. That's not what deadbeats do."

"Well thanks, I appreciate your help." He walked over to sit at the table, "so what are we eating yodels for?"

He reached in the box and grabbed one out.

"Sorry, I definitely will buy more," Fiona crinkled the wrappers in her hand.

"No no, don't worry about it. So what's going on," he popped one into his mouth.