and then you left // cth

chapter 42: goodbye.

alexis

On the morning of August 14, I woke up at dawn. It was the day I was finally going to leave, and return to my real home in Seattle. This was a day that I had both dreaded and begged throughout the course of the past few months, but I surely didn't think it would arrive so fast.

I never thought that I would fear leaving, not when I had spent weeks upon weeks crying because I was being forced to spend the summer here, forced to confront everything I hated about myself, and my life. And this entire summer wasn't about Calum, really. It wasn't about Calum just the same as it wasn't about Luke, or Gram, or any particular city. Instead, it was about finding myself. I'd lost myself in the way that everybody on Earth fears they would. I had hid myself in order to love another person, another person who did exactly the same for me.

But it wasn't romantic. It was destructive.

My phone flashed with a notification, and I no longer felt my heart rate beat faster at the idea of Calum texted me- I knew better. It wasn't him. And I was right. I picked it up, there was no notification from this boy who I pretend not to love. It was only my older brother back home, wishing me good luck on the flight.

I sunk back into bed and pulled the covers to my chin. He hadn't reached out to me in the past two weeks, not since I ended things. Not since I ripped everything out of both of us and left us to drown. The silence was brutal, but it was best for the both of us.

But that doesn't mean I wouldn't spend the rest of my life missing him.

I really don't think i will ever get over him.

calum

She broke me. There is no doubt in my mind that with her words she took everything from me. But it was different this time. It was different because she was giving me something to live for: life.

The past few years of my life have been a nightmare, a rollar coaster. I moved two states away, leaving everything and everyone I knew behind. I came to Seattle and I fell in love, and I took her down with me. And in everything that came afterward, I only cared about one thing: Lex. And now I see the problems with that, the prefaces to our demise. And as much as I wish I wanted to take everything back, I don't. I never will.

This morning, I got up and I opened the blinds. I have opened these blinds every morning since she left me two weeks ago, for the first time in years. For the first time in years I am seeing the light. And only now I see how blind I was for so long.

The light is blinding, but it is beautiful.

While I am drinking my coffee, my phone lights up with a call from Luke. I answer it on the first ring.

"Hey Luke,"

"Hey Cal. You sound good," He says positively, and I breathe. He is right, somehow. Maybe he was always right.

I open my mouth to respond, but he cuts me off. "She's leaving today," He blurts out. "She's leaving today and I don't know what to do about it." I place my coffee down with a shaky grip, and glance over at the calendar that Lex had adjusted when she'd come to my apartment the first night, after the party. There was a big red circle around today's date, in Lex's delicate handwriting.

"I know," I responded carefully. I am unsure how to respond to something like this. We all have known this day was coming. As much as I used to think about the possibility of her staying here forever, it is unrealistic. She hates this city, and neither of us will ever move on if we are in the same vicinity.

Should she stay here, we would never go anywhere with our lives. It took me thinking outside of the box to realize this, but it is the truth. If she stayed here, we would be like magnets. We would always want to be together, and never apart. We would isolate ourselves for each other. We would never make a new friend, or experience anything other than laying on my couch or in my car and being alone.