𝑸𝒖𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒆 [𝒍𝒓𝒉]

9 | Icecream and tears

"Leave me alone," I mumbled and put the spoon back in the container. "And I'm keeping the ice cream."

"Who cares about the stupid ice cream?", my brother walked up to me and sat on the bed. "Have you been crying?"

I shrugged my shoulders. It would have been pointless to deny it anyway. Cal had known me for my whole life, and not a day had passed on which I could trick him. All he needed was a look and he knew what was really going on with me... if he looked...

"Hey, Jade, talk to me", he encouraged me, wraping an arm around my upper body, giving me a long hug. 

As he released himself from it, his eyes fell on the children's series that was playing on my laptop. 

Suddenly his eyes widened and he looked at me with more concern.

"Peppa Pig?", he wondered, "what the hell happened?"

I just looked at him with a neutral expression. At least i tried to, but no matter how hard i tried, the corners of my mouth turned down and the tears were back, once again.

Please don't cry, please don't cry, I begged myself in my mind.  

"Luke stay here, I'll be right back, whatever you do, don't leave her alone", he ordered his best friend before he disappeard out of the room. 

So here I was, once again, alone with Luke in a room and I tried my best not to break out in sobbing. But of course it didn't work. All the emotions I had pushed away for the last couple of hours came right back to me hitting me like a truck. 

I hated it. 

I hated emotions and I hated that they always broke out when Luke was near me. He probably thought that I was just some little girl who had an attention deficit and thought that she could solve all her problems with crying. 

"Luke, please go", i whimpered, "I don't want you to see me like this."

But instead of doing what i said, he did the opposite. He walked around my bed, sitting right next to me. I could feel the warmth of his body on my shoulders and slightly flinched as he laid his arm around them, softly pulling me closer to him. 

"I'm sorry Jade, but Calum made it pretty clear, that this is the last thing I should be doing", he said. 

And to be honest, I was glad that he was there. I rested my head on his shoulders, the smell of his cologne rising into my nose.

In this moment, I had the strong desire to let it all out. I wanted to scream, to shout or to throw hands. I of course didn't punch Luke but I stopped fighting against myself and allowed the pain to flow freely.

I started with almost silent sobbing that grew louder and stronger with every second. I ended up screaming my loungs out, grabbing Luke's hoodie and thightening my grip as much as I could. I didn't do it on pupose but I couldn't help myself either. I felt so sorry for him that he had to endure this but there was no way I could hold it in. Not anymore. 

"It's fine", the blond whispered into my ears, "Everything will be fine."

"But it hurst so ba-a-a-a-d", I called out, "it hurts."

"It's okay, it's okay to feel that way", his voice was low, calming in some sort of way, "let it all out, you'll feel better afterwards."

His sentence reminded me of a quote.

It's okay not to be okay.

But i wanted to be okay. I didn't want to feel this way. Every. Breath. Hurt. There was only a certain amount of pain someone could take before they broke underneath its weight and I wondered if I had already reached my limit. It definitely felt like it. 

I still did as told, ignoring the fact that I was crying in front of Luke. At this point I didn't care about that anymore, I just wanted it to go away.

Two big hands grabbed my wrist and pulled my away from the blond boy's body, forcing me to let go of his hoodie. It didn't take much to realise that Calum had turned back and was now holding me even tighter than he did before he left.

No matter how good it felt to be comforted in Luke's arms, there was nothing in the world that could top my brother's closeness.

The only good thing that happened this day was that Calum was there for me like he hadn't been in a long time what made me, if we forget about how horrible the rest of the day was, feel a little bit happy and my body immediately felt less empty than it did a few minutes before.

It didn't stop my breakout though.

I don't know for how long it kept going on, I can't remember a lot of it after all, but I know that the two boys stayed right by my side, trying to find comforting words while giving me helpful instructions like "take a deep breath" or "think about something pretty".

I tried to think of something pretty three times but whenever I did, the pain would rush back, hitting me all at once with the doubled power of before, so I stopped doing that.

The reason why my screaming came to an end was mostly because I neither had any tears nor voice left inside of me and I was also running out of energy.

My breathing began to be flat again, a headache starting to spread inside my head. I always got a headache when I was done crying but most of the time, I embraced it with open arms because I knew that the worst part was over.

The pain of a headache was nothing compared to the pain of a broken heart.

I still whimpered every once in a while but it was far from being as bad as before.

Calum loosened the grip around my chest, allowing me to sit up straight, my back leaning against the wall.

He gave Luke a big spoon, after a few minutes of silence. I assumed that he had went to fetch it during the time he left me and his best friend alone.

"I thought it might be easier to talk about it while eating ice cream", he commented his action.

A small chuckle escaped my lips. Typical Calum. I had to admit, he had a point. Telling them about it while chewing on my favourite ice cream definitely made it seem less bad, so I straightened my back, taking my spoon back into my hand. The ice I was about to eat when the boys came in was still filling up the spoon with the only exception that the upper layer was already molten.

I directed the cold cream to my mouth and took everything at once in my mouth, the blue eyed boy following my actions, while my brother still looked at me, sorrow written into his face.

"Are you ready?", he asked.

I nodded slightly but clearly visible.

"Mason broke up with me", my voice was quiet and powerless.

"What?", he said, his jaw dropping open.

"He's - he's...", I tried to say the word but those three letters seemed to be stuck on my tongue.

Also Luke stopped eating, looking at me as if I was a cliffhanger of a Netflix show.

"G-ay", i stuttered, still not wanting to believe it, eventhough I knew it was true.

And I told them everything. From the phone call on Friday, when I triggered him by suggesting to write a song about us to the moment I put the box of all of his stuff into my armoire.

"How didn't I notice that you were going through all this?", Calum wondered, guilt reflecting in his eyes.

"Because you don't seem to care", I replied, gazing down to my fingertips.

"And that's my cue to go", Luke said, before he left the room, leaving me alone with my brother.

☆☆☆

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