Evie | H.S |

95. Snow White

It had been five days since I'd left Harry at Wembley.

Five days since I'd heard from him.

Five days of radio silence.

The old Evie would have completely crumbled. I would have holed myself away at home, cut off everyone and ran towards habits that didn't serve me positively. But I didn't.

If I'm honest, I expected more from Harry. He had witnessed a change in myself that saw me raise the bar on what I would and wouldn't accept. I just couldn't fathom that he, of all people, would fall short of it.

So, with each passing day that he hadn't reached out, I started going through a strange cycle of grief that had me alternating between self-loathing, sadness and viscous anger. But the one overarching emotion that was consistent was a feeling of heavy disappointment.

For years I'd carefully crafted and built walls around myself for this very reason. I could live with disappointing myself. My self-sabotaging meant I was still in control.

But letting someone in and then getting disappointed by them - that was something I struggled to live with. It was something I never wanted to run the risk of. It had me thinking that maybe it wasn't my anxiety screaming at me all along, and it was in fact, my intuition. I should have listened to it.

While I couldn't control the narrative that he seemed to paint up in a mind that I was once in awe of, I could control how I let it affect me; and so, I just got stuck into work.

My single was dropping in just under a week and with good progress made so far, I'd taken a break from my own recording to reset, instead booking a rehearsal space at Trident to try and work on the bank of songs I'd planned to hand over to Sony as part of the publishing deal.

"I fucking hate him today" I groaned towards my phone that sat on loud speaker from the floor before me. An acoustic guitar rested on my crossed legs as I sat on the floor with a pen and notepad beside me.

My fingers twisted a tuning key just slightly, my other hand plucking at a string while I had one ear on the pitch and the other on Annie, who chuckled sympathetically on the other end. "Just today? You said the same thing two days ago."

"Yesterday I was just sad and hating on myself" I clarified. "But today, I hate him."

"Hate's a pretty strong word, Eve" Annie sighed.

"Yeah, well he deserves it" I groaned. "So were a lot of the words he used on me, so I think it's warranted."

"I guess that's fair" she offered. "I'm so sorry Eve. If it means anything, you're doing so much better than I was expecting."

"It doesn't, but thanks" I deadpanned back. I didn't mean to be a stroppy cow, but I was well and truly in the trenches.

"What will you do if he does reach out?"

My lips pursed as I thought about but drew blanks. "I really don't know. What would you do?"

"Castrate him, maybe" she laughed. "I can do that for you, if you want."

"Tempting" I muttered, running my fingers back through my long, unwashed hair.

Unfortunately though, as much as I did want to truly, truly hate him, I couldn't. And that was what hurt the most.

"Are you still gonna go out tonight to that thing?" Annie asked, recalling vague plans I'd made with my London friends.

"I don't know" I sighed. The thought of having to wash my hair and put on a smile made me wanna pull out my hair.