Legitimately Me ||H.S||

Chapter 41

The art of avoidance had always come fairly easy for me when it came to my friends at school. And now that my friendship with Maddy had taken a turn for the worst, this avoidance was made even more simple and painless.

Despite the disagreement between Anne and I at the beginning of the week of where I should stay, I had decided that I would rather deal with the wrath of my family than live with awkward tension with Harry. Anne tried her hardest to get me to stay when I walked down the stairs Monday night with my belongings and met her in the living room to say thank you again for everything.

But even though she had given me multiple reasons not to go, the realization of my feelings for Harry and our distant disposition while still under the same roof, made everything inside of me collapse, and my decision to leave wasn't going to change no matter what she said to me. Being there, knowing that he was too, keeping himself as far away from me as possible, burned me. I was like a ticking time bomb without the timer. I could blow up at any second without warning. I couldn't and wouldn't let it happen there, because God only knows what would have been said, or done. And things are already bad enough.

And so I took our distance and stretched it even farther. Isolated myself from the world as I did before him. Only this time, I had a broken heart and it absorbed my existence. It made getting out of bed even harder than before. It made falling asleep impossible. It made those moments I had to be near him in class, unbearable, and even sometimes I felt that breathing was challenging. And to top it all off, the period cramps and hormones made an appearance, making just about everything intensified.

It was now the end of the month, and the demand of my father's uncalled for rent money had come due. It was disappointing that I hadn't made enough money at the bookstore yet to pay for the entire month I owed, but to avoid another catastrophe in the form of discolored skin, I took the extra money from my savings to be able to pay him despite my internal fight with it all. And luckily for me, I was able to slip downstairs Thursday morning before school, and place the rent money on the coffee table in an envelope labelled 'Jayde's Rent Money,' in hopes that it would keep my father happy for at least a little while.

As content as I was that it was now the end of the week and the art of avoiding my friends could be even easier now that the weekend was starting, knowing over the next two days, I was forced to go to work with Harry, devastated me. The distance between us was needed for my sanity and soon that distance string was going to be cut short, keeping us in a room that I'm sure will feel much smaller than any other room I have stepped into. The thought of it made me feel sick.

"I think we should talk," Kate suggests as I'm about to leave my locker. I turn to meet her gaze, to see that she's looking at me with sympathetic brown eyes, anticipation written in her features waiting for me to reply. "Please? Let's just wait until everyone's gone. I'm on your side, remember? I'm not your enemy."

In behind her open locker, Maddy scoffs, making me look at her. She's rolling her eyes at me, which just makes me want to punch her. Fortunately for her sake, she doesn't say anything before walking to the other side of the hall. She looks back at us with a devious proud smile upon her lips as she stands next to Niall and Harry waiting to leave for the day with them.

Before they walk away together, Harry's eyes turn up from the ground in our direction. It's the first time we have made eye contact all week and it makes my heart pound. It makes my insides want to scream out, because for as many times as I have seen him this week, the stone cold look upon his face has disappeared with this one gaze at me, making me wonder if there's any chance he could be missing me as much as I do him. Either that, or he's completely done caring about everything.

"I'll see you at work tomorrow," Harry says, as they start to walk down the hall, his eyes still on me. He waves a small wave and all I can do is nod. He didn't sound mad, nor upset or happy. Emotionless words, unreadable eyes. Unable to show any sort of reaction, everything within me is having an uncontrollable outburst, making me wish that I was anywhere but here.