Palas 3

6 - "Just don't go home."

The balcony is the place where I come to think. When everything else falters - ignoring my feelings, acting out, drinking them away, fucking Zayn and so on - I have learned over time that I need to think my actions through. 

Before my father died, he was the one I would call right now. I would tell him all that has happened, I would even tell him that I tried to kiss Thomas but that he painfully backed away. My father, being the man who he was would have laughed at that. It would have taken the edge off for me.

I will never see my father laugh again. He never got the chance to get to know Thomas. I have fantasized about their meeting a millions of time and I'm certain that my father would have liked Thomas. They are alike in the way they speak, without a filter and always with a laugh. If they have to they can be serious, but if possible they rather joke about something. 

It's what attracted me to Thomas in the first place. This care-free spirit, only a year younger than me, but still someone with life experience similar to mine. He lost his mother when he was only seventeen years old. Being the youngest of a family of four, his older sister became his surrogate mother, as he called her. 

I never met her because I try to keep my trips back to the U.K. as slim as possible, but I know he loves his family more than anything. It wasn't his family that drove him away from England. It was his curious personality that can't wander around one place for too long. But he always comes back home from his travels, he made it clear when he got here that he has a base, a loving family that he can't miss for too long. 

Still he stayed for me, because his love for me grew bigger than his need to be around his family. He missed them for sure, but the skype calls home to the children of his sister seemed to be enough. But where I was first always invited to sit next to him as he phoned home and his nephews and niece even started to call me auntie, that changed over the year. 

The holidays were especially hard on him, but they weren't really easy for me either. He stopped inviting me to his calls and if he was skyping them on my laptop, he would quickly stop the conversation. When I asked about it, he would make a joke and I never thought it through, but I realize now I was losing him all along. It never would have worked and me freaking out - okay, having a major panic attack - was only the last straw for him. Besides him never truly feeling at home, he also believed I was never truly feeling at home with him. 

I was though. I was as much at home with him as I was with Harry. And with Harry it feels as if we can never get back from what happened while with Thomas I feel like I can. But if my father was here, he'd tell me that even if Thomas wanted to get back together with me it would only be a fix for a little while. Eventually he'd want to settle down somewhere that isn't Palas. 

The thought of leaving Palas still petrifies me. After all these years, I don't know why. It's not as if I don't miss my father here. Lately it has even become impossible to visit the cliff. The moment I come close I can only picture his dead body and not the smiling, laughing man that I want to remember. It's always like this when his anniversary comes up, but it's different now that both my exes are back. 

They mess with my mind and honestly, I'm surprised with how well I'm handling it. I mean, I held a conversation with Harry, something I thought was impossible when Liam told me he was coming for a visit. And the fact that I tried to kiss Thomas is only a minor slip up. Something I will fix later today. 

And if not, then I'll just stick to my original plan and call Zayn for a home visit. Even if it last only five minutes, it's five minutes in which I don't feel pain like I do now. 

Because pain is what I've been feeling for a while now. I'm not sure if it is my punishment for the way I reacted after Harry told me he wanted to leave Palas and me, or that it is simply my faith to be unhappy. Either way, it has been going on for too long.