Before You Go [N.H]

Chapter Eight: Fall - Apart

Lucy's POV

'She's dead. She killed herself.' Niall explains and I'm trying to wrap my head around this.

'What? How? You said she left... what? Why??'

'Because I didn't know how you'll take it and I'm afraid that it'll change your image of me.'

'No I mean... why... did she... do it?'

'God knows. Never got an explanation, a note, anything. It came out of nowhere. I was an idiot. I missed all the signs. This note... it was one or two weeks before she did it... After it happened, I read it. I re-read it. Tried to look for anything that would make sense of why what happened happened. I couldn't get it.'

'I'm so sorry Niall... No one should go through something like that. I'm really so so sorry.'

'Thanks...' He mumbles.

'Aww come here you're shaking!'

He sits next to me on the bed and I open my arms for a hug. He lets his head fall into my shoulder and I hold him as he cries. Yeah. For the first time, he cried in front of me. Usually, he likes to "stay strong" for me. He only allows himself to be upset when I'm not around and he thinks I don't know that.

'I kept thinking...' He starts. 'Why didn't I do something about it. Maybe if I opened my eyes and noticed that she wasn't okay. Maybe if I had done something about it. I could've saved her from herself. I could've convinced her from doing it. She was the closest thing I had to real love and I had lost that forever. And there was nothing I could do to bring her back. I've been feeling so guilty ever since. The what-ifs never stop.'

I don't say anything. I know from personal experience that I won't come up with something to say that he hasn't heard before. So I hold him I run my hand through his hair desperately trying to calm him down. But it doesn't calm me down. The more I think about it, the more the paranoia hits. And the worst part of it all is that it actually makes sense.

He says he's been feeling guilty ever since. And then he took an interest in me. I mean I know that I'd never... Well, I'd like to think that I would never do that to myself, but he didn't know that before. All he knew was that I was depressed from the beginning. Everything he did since then, ever since we met and he knows that I'm not really okay. All he ever did is trying to cheer me up. Get me to be happy. But what if that's not because he wants me to be happy. What if that's because that's the only way he knows how to cope with the guilt? What if he's only doing that with me because it's too late to do that with her? And if this right... Then everything is a lie!

Our relationship is not real! When he looks at me, he doesn't see me. He only sees the ghost of his girlfriend. He doesn't love me. He loves her. He's never moved on from her. Or else this box wouldn't be so close to him. It would be either thrown out or gathering dust in some attic or storage unit somewhere. And how could be move on? He said it himself. She was beautiful and funny and smart. More than me, that's for sure. To add the unfinished business. Of course, he's still in love with her. I'm no one to him. I'm just some girl he's using so that he'd feel less guilty. 

I mean it's not his fault. I don't think it is. I don't know the whole story. But I know Niall. He's nothing but sweet and caring. I don't know what drove her to do it. But I don't believe that he had anything to do with it. A lot of people don't know how bad it is for me. Danny, for example, has no idea. I mean he has a hunch that I might be depressed but he doesn't know the extent of it. Far from it actually. Ro doesn't know everything. He doesn't know about the self-harm issue. He knows about the anxiety though. Jamie knows everything for sure. But we're very close and we'd been roommates for years in the past. Maybe his relationship with her wasn't as deep as my relationship with Jamie. Maybe it's more at the level of Ro and I, adding the romance.