all mine | ft. michael clifford

thirty-three;

Dedicated to Esther because she's cute and apparently likes this book. ;)

"How are we on a scale of one to ten? Could you tell me what you see? Do you wanna talk about it? How does that make you feel? Have you been skipping meals? We're gonna try something new today. How does that make you feel?"

***

Special POV: Michael Clifford

I was one part afraid, eight parts guilty, three parts sad and all parts in love with Charlotte Slater.

There. I've said it.

I guess I should have thought through getting on a plane to Australia to see her. I should have planned out what I would say, where I would stay, how I would go about talking to her again. But my mind over the past few days was an earthquake and my thoughts were falling off shelves, my memories being shaken to the point of breaking. And I hadn't wanted to think things through because that might have led to me staying in LA rather than going to find the one person who I knew would fix me.

And my god, she could fix me.

One look at Charlotte's face, as soon as she'd opened the door and I was just about ready to die and enter heaven. Her eyes were the same chocolate brown they'd always been and her body felt just as small and perfect against me as it had done so all those times before when I'd hugged her. She was the same Mali I'd always known. She was constant. And yeah, I was in love with her.

"You wanna know the worst part?" I asked her, reaching my hand over to hers and slipping my fingers into her tiny ones.

We were sat on her stiff leather sofa, eyes on the screen of the television. Some girly romance movie was playing and she'd wanted to watch it. I just wanted to watch her.

She didn't take her eyes off the screen but nodded.

I'd only showed up at her place twelve hours earlier and already we were back to acting as normal like nothing had ever happened. Was it supposed to be this easy or was I missing something other than one of my best friends?

Her brown hair was in a bun that she'd thrown up in seconds and her body drowned in a white t-shirt that would have been big enough to fit me. She looked like a fucking queen and my eyes wouldn't leave her no matter how hard I tried. The only thing in the world that could distract me from Ashton was sitting right in front of me.

"The worst part is that I could have said something - should have said something," I said quietly. "And someone could have done something and he'd still be here."

I'd shamelessly cried like shit over Ashton for two days straight after he'd passed away. And it had gotten me nowhere. I'd just ended up feeling pathetically worse. After a while you seem to realise that you could cry for the rest of your life and fill up oceans upon oceans with tears - and yet it still wouldn't be enough to bring someone back from the dead.

Charlotte looked at me, her chocolate orbs were watery like they had been all day. Her emotions were just as erratic as my own. I hated seeing her cry and I hated even more that I'd been the reason for it a month ago at that stupid airport. I was an asshole and I didn't deserve for her to be looking at me like she was looking at me now.

Her hand squeezed mine and she repositioned her body so that she was leaning into my side. I draped an arm around her so naturally that it felt like I'd been doing so my whole life.

"None of it's your fault, Mikey," she told me again for probably the twentieth time that day. "You were a good friend to him and he'd appreciated it."