A Dreamers Dream

City of Angels. Los Angeles, California. USA.

Maddie's perspective.

Lying in bed in my hotel room in Los Angeles I idly tilt my head from side to side and look around at the whitewashed walls, thick beige carpet and paper-thin cream curtains and sigh. This is the fourth day that I've woken up here, and it still doesn't feel real. Honestly, nothing about the last couple of months does, the tour, Novak, Harry, Sammy and now Dean, it all feels like it must have happened to someone else and I keep waiting to wake up from this dream/nightmare situation that I've found myself in, but each and every morning I peel my eyes open unhappily against the glare of the bright LA sunshine streaming through the curtains that do absolutely nothing at all to block the light, feel the oppressive heat against my skin despite the air conditioning in the hotel and try to accept that this is my life now.

The hardest thing to accept, though, without a doubt, is that I am doing this alone. That when I reach over in the night, stretching my arms out, searching for comfort, he's not there.

When I walked out of Harry's hotel suite in Toronto, I was so certain that I was making the right choice, the only choice really. How could I possibly stay in a relationship with someone who doesn't believe in me? But in the days since then, I've had time to calm down and reflect. To remember not only the things that he said but the look in his emerald green eyes as he said them. The slump in his shoulders when I told him that I was leaving was expected and understandable, but what I wasn't expecting was that when I told him I wasn't just leaving the tour, but also him, all the fight went out of him, and he just let me go.

I could literally see it happen, the moment that the words were out of my mouth his entire demeanour changed, for a few moments he just sat there frozen, his brow furrowed as he had some kind of inner battle with himself. I have no idea what was going through his head at that moment, was he cursing me? Wondering if all this time I had just been with him to try and get a record deal and now that I had one I was walking away? Or was he happy? Somewhere deep down, that he wouldn't have to worry about the stress of our relationship going public or all the stress that I was bringing into his life anymore?

Ultimately whatever he was thinking led him to the conclusion that he couldn't fight anymore, because he didn't utter one single word more to try and get me to change my mind. At the moment I was grateful that he didn't, I was tired, exhausted even, of all the fighting, all of the drama and I just wanted to get the hell out of there. But now, lying here alone, a big part of me wishes he had.

Swinging my legs off the edge of the bed, I push myself into a standing position and begin trying to stretch out some of the kinks in my spine. I've noticed that the last few nights I've been sleeping curled up into a tiny ball, right on the far edge of the bed. As though, subconsciously my body is trying to keep itself as far away from the huge empty space beside me in an attempt to forget that it's there. Subsequently, I've woken up each and every day with aches and pains shooting through my neck and back, maybe I should finally take some of Harry's advice and start my mornings with a good stretching session. He spends the first 15 minutes of every day after he's gotten out of bed twisting and turning his lean, muscular body and he's always been on at me to join him in his little routine, but I was too engrossed in watching him bending about in his underwear to be remotely inclined to drag my arse up and do it too.

Grabbing my ankle I try to bend my leg gracefully behind me and lift it into the air like I've seen Harry do a hundred times easily, but somehow all I manage to do is ram the two smallest toes on my left foot straight into the solid drywall behind me.

"Fuck!" I curse loudly, clutching the toes in my hand and hopping up and down a few times as I continue to mutter expletives. "Fucking bastard wanking shit wall!"

Just when the pain starts to subside and I debate releasing my grip, my epically poor balance finally gives out and I topple down onto a big heap on the thick shaggy beige carpet with a dull thud. Seriously? I've been awake for all of ten minutes... I can't deal with this much shit this early in the morning. Defeated, I stay on the carpet for a few moments feeling utterly sorry for myself before shaking my head forcefully in an attempt to push away the dark cloud that I can feel settling over me and tugging my still unpacked suitcase from its place by the wall over to my side. I wrench it open to try and locate some clothes to wear. I am due to meet Dean down in the lobby in about an hour to head to a writing session at a local studio, and there's no way I will be able to come up with any lyrics that aren't depressing as hell if I don't manage to get myself out of this funk.