Seventeen-year old first year college student Josie Clarke would prefer not to blush the colour crimson at every little thing, but Idiopathic Craniofacial Erythema, a chronic facial condition doesn't play fair.
In fact, it's as uncontrollable...
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Outside, the world continues to turn.
It's a bright, beautiful day. My dad's in the garden painting the fence and my mum's downstairs, making lunch - bacon and eggs, my favourites.
By usual standards this would look like the perfect day, and yet, it feels like it's the end of the world as I know it.
I can barely lift my head off from my pillow.
And I don't want to. Not when everything feels so wrong.
I've been like this all morning - cocooned in my bed, wishing for a plausible way to turn back the time, rewind right back to before the stupid party, and before I ever came face to face with Maddie.
Before Max found out that I'd been casually lying to him this whole time.
Way back to when he was spinning me round his fairy light lit room, kissing my cheeks like I was the only person in his world.
Now, he won't return any of my calls or texts.
And I'm pretty sure that he now hates me. Likely forever.
Late last night, after Max had driven away and I had cried enough rivers to submerge most of Southbrook, Libby took my hand and we walked back to mine. Mainly because the thought of having to call Mel, and how she'd be towards me was enough to send me running.
When we arrived back, Libby took my mum aside and having expected a finger wag and talk about being out late, I instead got ushered upstairs with a sympathetic shoulder rub and was told we'd discuss it in the morning.
Dad even gave my hand a gentle squeeze when he caught me on the landing, face blotchy and smeared thick with mascara and the events of the night.
I remember Libby taking my phone after the ninth attempt to call Max and after she'd told him we were back safe and he thanked her for being my chaperone.
But that was it.
And it still is. Max has put me on radio silence, which I can't blame him for, but it doesn't make anything better.
I feel broken.
I keep thinking about how everything could have been so easily avoided. How I could be waking up besides him now or in his kitchen, watching him cook a late breakfast in his socks, sliding across the floor in time to the blaring music he always plays.
Fat change of that ever happening again. Not since I betrayed his trust and humiliated him in front of people who already made his life a living hell once.
