To The Bitter End

V

It took her about another hour to finish that article. She went downstairs right after she had sent it off for proofreading and editing, getting herself a bottle of beer from the kitchen and heading into the living room. Sam was sitting in front of the TV, watching some sort of Youtube video.

"Hello." Holly said to him and sat down next to him on the old couch. The living room was freezing cold and Sam was hogging the only blanket they had in the room. But it would be okay. Surely, he was going to share it with her after they had been talking. If he was going to talk to her.

"What are you watching?" she asked. He didn't reply. Holly felt horrible. She had no idea what he was thinking or what she was supposed to do to make things better. All she could do was try different things and hope she'd get it right. She took a big gulp of her beer. Sam had a bottle of whiskey on the table and it seemed like he was drinking it rather quickly. Not good.

"Are you going to talk to me or not?" Holly wanted to know. No reply. So she was going to get the silent treatment after all. She shivered a little. Her heart felt like there was a heavy stone on it.

Had she done anything wrong? Maybe she should have just pretended to be really enthusiastic about whatever Sam was trying to show her earlier. But she had been busy. She just wanted to try and finish that stupid article already. Surely, Sam had to understand that, didn't he?

"You're not talking to me, then. Alright. Do you want to watch something together?" she asked. Of course there was no answer. He just rewound the video to a part when she hadn't been here yet. Great. That was where she stood right now. She was a nuisance. She felt a little bad about it, because was that how Sam had been feeling earlier? But it was different, wasn't it?

This silent treatment stuff wasn't fair. It was stupid and it was childish and it just left her completely out of the loop of what was going on. She hated it when Sam did that. It felt soul-destroying. It always made her want to crawl into some sort of hole and never come out.

She sighed and reached out to touch his arm. He pulled his arm away. For fuck's sake. Holly rolled her eyes and got back up again. She grabbed her book that she had left downstairs from the table. She had enough of this. She couldn't be in the same room as him if he was going to act like that.

"Alright, fine. If you want to act childish, you can do that. I'm heading upstairs. I was going to tell you that I was sorry, but if you're going to treat me like that, I can't be bothered. You can come up when you're normal again." she snapped at him and turned around, heading back upstairs.

It was just in time before she felt the tears in her eyes. She hadn't wanted to cry, she really wanted to be all strong and act as if all of this didn't bother her, but by the time she had made it to the top of the stairs the first tears were falling from her eyes. It didn't matter anyway. She was going to head to bed with her book and finish crying and then she would maybe read for a bit.

Maybe Sam was going to come upstairs. If he did, Holly hoped that he was going to see her crying. He always got soft when she was crying about something. She hated that it took that much for him to actually care - and she was wondering if she was maybe being manipulative or something. But it didn't matter right now. She could still hear the TV downstairs. Holly got onto the bed and curled up in a foetal position. She was trying to be quiet, as she sobbed to herself.

Why the hell was she even crying? It was him who was acting stupid and like a damn child. Why did it always get to her so easily? Why did she end up falling apart from all of this? She didn't get it. She sat up and drank more of her beer, big and long gulps, before more tears were streaming down her cheeks. The book was lying by her side, already forgotten about. She had no mind to focus on reading right now, anyway. She wanted to get drunk, without thinking about having to go back to work tomorrow. She hadn't taken a sick day in a while, she could afford one.

But she also knew that she wasn't going to manage to get that drunk in such a short time. And she'd rather be working than having to nurse her hangover with Sam around. Still, she was going to finish that beer. It would have been a waste not to, especially with how expensive alcohol had gotten. Not that her and Sam had to worry about money too much. They were well off.

Still, Holly felt like she just wanted to die. She wanted to fall asleep and never wake up and never have to deal with any of it ever again. Not Sam, not the party, not her job, her stupid and annoying manager, people in general, the entire fucked up world. She didn't even want to deal with Matt. She just wanted to die.