'I'm beginning to think I imagined you all along'

II

Closing the door behind her, Suha took a deep breath and made her way to the elevator, she needed to get to the car park, get out of this building, get to work and just forget about everything that had happened this morning. She made a run for the elevator doors as she could see them just about ready to close and called out "can you hold the lift!" but whoever was taking the lift didn't hold the doors 'I guess that's just how my luck is gonna go today' she thought. She decided to take the two flights of stairs down to the car park instead. She walked over to the bay where her car was parked and grabbed her keys from her front pocket, only they weren't her car keys they were the keys to the flat. She patted down all of her pockets in frustration but nothing, she rummaged around in her bag but couldn't find her keys and she couldn't find her purse either. She must have left them in the flat and that is when panic struck her, she felt sick to her stomach and her knees buckled beneath her. She had also left her phone in the flat, with Aaron.

The front door burst open "Oh you will NOT believe what I've gone and done, I've left my car keys here and my purse and I've lost my pho-" She looked over to see Aaron slumped in a heap on the sofa clutching her phone with tears billowing in his eyes. "What's going on, Aaron what's wrong?!" There was a sense of urgency in Suha's voice now. "I can see why you wanted your phone so badly this morning.. why you've been acting so differently with me these last few days, it all makes a lot more sense now" he wipes the back of his hand across his cheeks, battling tears that just won't stop falling "this whole time it's been him, hasn't it? Did you even stop to think for a minute about me? How this would affect me? Or were you so busy having fun with him, that you didn't even consider my feelings? I thought better of you after everything he put you through" his voice was breaking and he could feel his throat closing up as he's spitting out the words. For the first time since she entered the room Aaron looks up at the girl that's just torn his heart to shreds, the pain unbearable, unforgivable. "Do you even love me? Did you ever?" His vision now blurred from the hurt that keeps escaping and returning wave, upon wave, upon wave, crashing down upon his cheeks, crashing down like his entire world around him. Suha is speechless, she looks at Aaron but cannot find the words. "Is that it? You're just going to stand there and watch? You aren't even going to say a single word to me?" Anger now rises in Aaron's voice, he gets up from his seat and holds Suha's phone out in front of her. "This is what you came back for, this is what you want. So here, take it" he slams the phone down making Suha jump, he brushes past her and doesn't hesitate to leave straight through the front door, closing it heavily behind him.

Suha looks around the room in complete bewilderment, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her airways constricting. What just happened? Why didn't I try and stop him? The phone starts buzzing all over the coffee table, it's Daley. Suha picks it up and answers the call with a tone as cold as ice "What? What is it that you want Daley. Isn't it enough that you keep texting me all morning when I have asked you not to? Do you even know what you've done?" Suha is fighting back tears "I can't do this, not now" she ends the call and puts her phone down on the arm of the sofa. She makes her way into the kitchen and fills the kettle before putting it on to boil, makes her way over to the fridge and sees the photo of them that Aaron pinned there. It was taken on their anniversary at the top of The Shard, she runs her thumb over the note Aaron wrote at the top 'of all the things my eyes have seen, the best by far, is you' Suha swallows the lump in her throat and opens the fridge door and grabs the milk. She sees his Arsenal mug on the kitchen counter, when they first moved in it was the only thing that Aaron wouldn't bargain on not having in the flat, he'd had it since he was a kid but Suha couldn't stand it, she hated it then and she hated it now because it reminded her of him.

She looks over to the space that Aaron occupied not 10 minutes earlier, his New Balance hoody was scattered across half of the seat, he always leaves his clothes everywhere. The kettle boils over, Suha pours the water into the mug remembering the very first time that she and Aaron met, she carries it over to the sofa, picks up Aaron's hoody, wraps it around her and sits in the space that Aaron left. His scent lingering all around her, reminders scattered across the entire room, the photos on the wall and Aaron's first Arsenal jersey framed and hung above the fireplace. Suha remembers the argument that they had over that, she didn't want it anywhere near the front room but Aaron was so proud of it and insisted that he put it somewhere that he could see it all the time to remind him of how far he'd come. He was proud of that and she was proud of him. She could hear her phone buzzing away on the arm of the sofa but all she could do was become completely intoxicated by the aroma coming from Aaron's hoody as tears streamed down her face, she searched the pockets for a tissue and came across his wallet, she pulled it out of his pocket in the hope of finding a tissue buried underneath and it fell open on the sofa exposing the first picture they took together and a ticket from that very first match where they met, she let out a sob and clutched her chest as she rested her on the side pillow of the sofa and before she knew it she was fast asleep, cocooned in the closest thing to Aaron that she could get.

Suha is woken sweetly by her face being gently caressed, she blinks slowly a few times but the entire room is a blur. "Aaron? Aaron, is that you?" The blurry figure runs his hand down her arm and grasps hold of her hand and runs his thumb softly over the top of her knuckles. "Aaron? I'm so sleepy.. where did you go?" Suha rubs her eyes a few times before slowly sitting up. She checks the time on her phone, it's gone 1pm she had been asleep for at least 4 hours, she looks up searching for Aaron's face but doesn't find what she's looking for.