Acquaintances

Chapter 39: Friends or Acquaintances

My eyes are begging to close for the whole trip home, who’s stupid idea was it to drive to Holmes Chapel last night?

Yours. My subconscious chuckles.

Damn her.

“Where’d you go last night?” Dad asks me as I sit down opposite him at the dining table. He’s the only one out here eating breakfast, Mum and Granddad presumably not hungry, or asleep.

“Just home for the night.” I lie. “Merry Christmas.” I say, but it’s not cheerful or jolly like it’s supposed to be, it’s more an obligatory today is Christmas and we’re supposed to.

“Merry Christmas to you too dear, do you want some breakfast? I’ll have the maid whip something up for you.” He says with a small smile. He loves being able to say that.

“No, I’m not really hungry at the moment. I think I’ll wait till lunch. Are we doing presents?”

“I don’t think so. Nobody’s really had time to get anything, you know this family, always leaves it to the last minute.”

“That’s true. Have you spoken to Nan and Pa?”

“Yeah, they understand that we can’t come this year.” We were supposed to be going to his parents in Leeds tomorrow, we always spend boxing day with them, but not this year. Nothing is normal this year.

“I think I’m going to go have a shower.” I excuse myself, trudging up the stairs to the spare bedroom I’ve been inhabiting this week.

This house is so unnecessarily big, and I dread to think about Granddad living here alone, with no one’s company but the maid.

I could move in with him, god knows I don’t want to live with Gab anyway. But I don’t want to be the 22 year old, soon to be 23 year old, who lives with their Granddad. Especially when I have my own apartment that will be vacated soon enough. That is if I even stay in London. Uni sounds more tempting then ever now.

A shower does little to wake me up, and despite having a better sleep last night then I have all week, I still feel exhausted.

I slump down on the bed with my towel wrapped around me, grabbing my phone and deciding it’s time to deal with messages.

Matt: Hello?

Matt: Lol okay.

Matt: Ignoring me?
Matt: Feel free to give me a call at some stage…?
Matt: Why aren’t you answering?
Matt: It’s almost been a week since I left, what’s wrong?
Matt: Giving up now…

Matt: Seriously Charlotte, call me back.

And accompanying those messages is about 5 missed calls, well that’s actually not too bad. I just don’t have the energy to call him yet. 

Me: Hey, sorry. My Grandma passed away the other night, my phone’s been turned off. Merry Christmas, I’ll call you tomorrow x

There’s a few stupid messages from Linda and Gem, nothing too important and neither are concerned that I haven’t been texting back.

I open our group message, wondering how to word this.

Me: This is just a courtesy message to let you know my Grandma passed away on Tuesday, so I might be a bit out of touch for the next week or so. I’m fine though. Merry Christmas. Xx

I huff, lying back down on the bed, discarding my phone just as another message comes through. It feels like such an effort to pick it back up but I do anyway.

Louis: “Happy birthday Louis.” Is that so hard? Really, Lola? I can’t believe after everything we went through that you would just not say anything on my birthday yesterday. I thought we were at least friends? Which is insane for me to think because I should be angry at you, right? You’re the one who broke their promise and then just completely cut me out, I haven’t heard from you in weeks but I haven’t done anything wrong. You couldn’t even spend two seconds typing me a message? Like is it really that hard? Why do I still care what you think/do when you clearly don’t care about me at all?
My stomach sinks. Oh Fuck.