Under Your Skin | Jude Bellingham

017

One Month Later...

Things between Jude and I hadn't been right since the party. Aside from questioning his decision to get back with Grace (something I had in fact apologised for), I wasn't entirely sure what I was supposed to have done wrong. Our relationship was frosty — we could barely hold a conversation for more than five minutes. At one point, Jude and I had started to hang out together most days, always messaging each other when we were apart, and now the most we could manage was a pleasant smile and a 'how was your day?' But for some reason, I still found my feelings for him growing stronger and stronger each day to the point where it made me ache and cry into my pillow at night to think that Grace was the girl he thought about and the one he might just fall in love and build a future with. The two of them had been spending a lot of time together recently, but the pair of them hadn't made things official yet, although I feared it was only a matter of time before I truly lost Jude to some other girl.

Once upon a time, I felt like I could've told Jude anything, but now we were like strangers. Although I had Chloe and Gio, and back home I had Hayley, Trent and Jobe, too. I didn't want to keep plaguing them with my troubles, so I kept my mouth shut.

The morning after the last Bundesliga game of the year, Jude and I were due to fly back home to Birmingham for Christmas. The night before, we made sure to say our goodbyes to Chloe and Gio who were going back to the US to see their families.

Chloe hugged me tightly. "Don't give up just yet," she whispered in my ear, giving me a reassuring squeeze. She was referring to my situation with Jude and had done nothing but try to get me to confess to him. I could never find the courage, though, too afraid of messing things up, although I wasn't entirely sure what Jude and I were anymore. We'd been friends and enemies sometime before that. But now, whatever this was, it was torture. In a way, I longed to go back to three months ago, back to when I'd hated his guts. Now I was unable to hold eye contact with him, but for a different reason, and I hated the hollow, aching feeling I had when I dwelled on the fact that he didn't want me.

Jude and I sat side-by-side on the plane. He'd been kind enough to give me the window seat which was perhaps the nicest he'd been to me within the last month. I was wearing the football shirt he'd gotten for me, hoping to spark up some conversation and rekindle our friendship, but Jude had said nothing when he saw me wearing it. Denise had already flown home a few days before us, unaware of the sudden tension between me and her son, and I longed for her company to distract myself from the situation with Jude.

The moment I got through the doors of my childhood home, I ran to Hayley and threw myself into her arms. "I've missed you too, little sis," she chuckled softly, not quite understanding that I was trying to hide the fact that I was nearly crying. Fortunately, by the time Mum and Dad came to greet me, I'd managed to pull myself together, at least just momentarily.

I thought I'd managed to act as normally as possible, but later that evening, Hayley and Trent cornered me in the kitchen. "What's wrong?" My sister demanded.

"Huh?" I said, looking up from the mug of tea I was making.

"You've been acting strange ever since you got back, and I want to know what's gone on."

"Nothing's gone on. I'm fine."

"Nah, something's happened, and we wanna know what," Trent piped up.

I frowned at the pair of them. "I'm not getting into this now," I told them.

Hayley and Trent looked at one another. "So something has happened?" Trent said.

"You can talk to us, Hannah," Hayley added, reaching for my hand. "We're here to listen."