Chapter 46 ~ Hannah

“I don’t understand,” Savannah blurts out, but I’m still with my face buried in my pillow. Hope is on my back, trying to get my attention but I feel lifeless, I feel lost, I feel desperate. “What happened? Why is everyone saying Harry cheated on you? Why isn’t he here?”

“Foz fhe fgavef upf,” I mumble with the pillow still in my mouth. I’m sure no one understood what I just said.

Savannah reaches her limit as well because she takes my shoulder and pulls me backwards. I feel the moment Hope runs away before she ends up on the floor or even worse, at the door. My friend makes me face her but I can barely see, my eyesight is so blurry and my eyes burn with the light.

I’ve been inside my room for three whole days. I haven’t even left to eat, though Dad keeps bringing food to my door. I only leave my bed to go to the bathroom and even if my phone goes off, I don’t move to pick up. I know it’s not Harry calling.

I still can’t believe what he did but the moment he turned his back on me and left, my heart ended up breaking. When he disappeared from my side I realised that he was right, I’m using this just as an excuse to push him away because I’m still afraid. Yet he cheated on me! How can I ignore that and just go after him? How can I forgive him for that?

Anyways, that doesn’t matter anymore. It’s too late, he told me that already. He doesn’t believe I can be better, that I can properly heal once and for all, and to be honest, I don’t believe it either. Not anymore. Only when he was with me I could believe that everything was going to be fine, that I could make it.

“My goodness, Hannah!” Savannah cries out in shock and fear, I can feel it in her voice. “Please tell me, what happened?” She begs, hugging me tightly. I hold on to her for dear life, hoping that somehow her embrace may save me from keep sinking in my black pit of self-pity.

“Harry… Harry cheated on me!” I exclaim between fits of sobs. “With a married woman.”

I feel Savannah tensing next to me, her arms stiff around my body and her breaths are sharp and short. “That can’t be true,” she whispers and I feel like crying again.

I wish it wasn’t true!

“It is. That woman is now everywhere telling the world how Harry ruined her marriage!” I cry out, closing my eyes tightly as I try to push away the image of Jennifer Jones crying like there is no tomorrow.

“But I just saw the boys on an interview this morning and he didn’t mention a thing! He smiled and was nice to everyone,” she states, very confused herself.

Her words hurt me even more because if he is not denying it publicly, that means it is true. That last hope burns out.

“Why did he do this to me? Why? I fell for him, Savannah!” I scream desperately, grabbing so tightly to her jumper in my fists that my knuckles are white. “I fell in love with him and he does this to me! Why? I should’ve never let him in! That was my mistake!” I burst out crying, holding on to my friend because she is the only one there. The only one who has been here for me all this time, always bearing with me no matter what I’m going through.

“I’m so sorry, Hannah! I– I– I can’t believe this happened. There’s must be an explanation,” she insists but I know there’s no other explanation but the fact that I don’t mean as much as I thought I meant to Harry. He clearly never felt as deeply as he made me think.

Maybe it was always a game; after he got what he couldn’t have, he got bored.

There’s a part of me that keeps protesting inside, screaming that all this is bullshit and I shouldn’t believe the lies I’m saying, but what else can it be?

“I’m sorry,” my best friend repeats pulling back this time and taking my face in her hands, cupping with tenderness and looking at me with compassion and pity. “But you’ll be fine. We’ve all been heartbroken at least once and we can all move on. I’ll help you forget about him! We can buy more darts and throw them at him the whole day!” She proposes with a big smile that doesn’t reach her eyes, but she is trying.

I try to smile at her idea, but I can’t really do that. I really feel like a zombie. I’m just here but I’m not really alive.

“C’mon! Let’s go out. You need to get some fresh air so you can clean your mind and prepare for what comes. What if we go see guitars?” I try to smile again as I know what Savannah is trying to do.

She knows I can’t talk about my feelings for too long, that this is all I can do for now and she is trying to help me take a break. She is trying to distract me because if I stay here, I’ll drown in my tears and dark thoughts.

I don’t think it’ll work, but I appreciate her trying.

“Shower and get ready, we’re going out!” She instructs more determined this time. I can’t even protest when she shoves me into my bathroom and the shower. And she doesn’t leave the room until I actually take a shower and get out, and get ready.

Somehow, she manages to take me out of the house and I’m surprised to see Dad in the house at this time on a Monday. He is supposed to be at the garage, but he is here and when I look at him I see the dark bags under his eyes, the messy hair, the same clothes he was wearing on Friday and his tired expression. I realise in that moment he’s been here all this time, trying to get to me but failing because I closed the door in his face.

I feel like I can break down right there, begging for forgiveness, but Savannah doesn’t give me time; soon she is pushing me inside her car and driving to the city centre. She makes sure to play the loudest and best music she has on her mobile so we find ourselves listening to this new band I quite like: Prodigy until she parks in front of my favourite music shop.

I’m still not sure how, but I find myself inside of the store looking at guitars and even if I still feel miserable and even more broken than I ever was, seeing all the guitars makes me feel a wee better. It’s like they bring a bit of joy in this moment when I feel there’s no way out. As I take one guitar and start playing random chords, Savannah keeps watching me, always smiling.

Without noticing, I end up playing Stomach Tied in Knots and I feel the moment my tears start falling again, remembering the night I sang this song for Harry, telling him that I wasn’t afraid anymore.

What a filthy liar I am.

“Hey, Han! Don’t cry, look at the beautiful Gibson you’re holding! C’mon, please!” My friend begs kneeling in front of me but I push the guitar aside, feeling like I can’t do this anymore. I need my bed, I need my pillow and try to lose myself in the darkness of oblivious dreams.

“No, Moni!” I heard someone screaming and that feminine voice sounds familiar. I look up in the voice’s direction and my eyes find Mila and Moni. Moni looks like she is about to jump and kill someone whilst Mila is trying to hold her back. I see the hatred in the brunette’s eyes and she is glaring right at me.

“I’ll kill her! I’m so gonna kill her!” Moni shouts calling everyone’s attention, even Savannah is looking at them now, scared and surprised at the same time. She recognises the two girls too, they got along so well the day they met. Moni fangirled so hard over finally meeting Savannah but now she doesn’t even register my friend, she can only look at me with bloodthirsty desire.

“You can’t kill her here!” Mila insists, fighting so hard to keep Moni away, but the brunette is bigger and stronger than the petite black-haired girl.

“How could you!?” Moni yells at me when she is close enough. I’m against the wall –I didn’t even notice when I started to step back–, with no escape, with Savannah trying to protect me from Moni’s fury. “How could you do that to Harry?! After all he’s done!” My heart is beating so fast and I can’t utter a single word, I can only see Moni so angry it scares me, so much. I actually believe she will attack me.

“Moni, please! They’ll kick us out, you’ll end up in trouble.” Mila tries to stop her friend and I know she is not doing that for me, she is doing it for Moni, so her friend won’t end up in jail or something. When Mila looks at me, I see the same hatred and disappointment in her eyes.

“I don’t care! She is there! She hurt Harry and I can’t just stand here doing nothing!” Moni screams then her eyes are on me again and the power of her anger is so strong it feels like it’s slapping me already. “How could you even doubt him? Harry would never, ever, cheat on someone. Even less when he is with someone he cares so much about! How could you even think, for a second, that all that shit that woman is saying could be true? How can you be so fucking stupid!” She shouts so loud everyone gasps, people are even leaving the shop, really scared whilst others step closer to see the show. “How could you fail him like that?” Her voice shatters as I keep breathing heavily, so scared I can’t even move. “You know how they are, what they would do to sell and make money, just to destroy Harry’s image yet you still believed that bitch!” She cries out again. “That woman made everything up, God knows why, but I can tell you Harry’s never seen her before ‘cos when she claims she was with him, Harry was with Ed and I. And what has Harry said about it? NOTHING! Because Harry doesn’t go around ruining people’s lives and you should know that by now! Even if half of his fans believed the bitch and attacked him, he never stopped smiling at them. That’s Harry! And you hurt him!”

Mila is not fighting to stop Moni anymore, the brunette stays three metres away from me, almost as if she is too disgusted to take another step closer. She looks at me with so much disappointment and anger, almost as if I had betrayed her. I remember how she’s always looked at Harry as her little brother and now she is just defending him.

But it’s not the way Moni looks at me, or how she is standing that shocks me the most; it is her words. She is the witness that Harry never did what that woman said, Moni is the proof that it was all a lie and Harry never cheated on me. Moni has just confirmed that I made my biggest mistake just because I was so scared that I took whatever excuse to justify pushing him away.

I’m the biggest idiot ever!

Harry was right. Everyone was right. And now it’s too late. Harry’s words keep repeating in my mind over and over again: ‘When you realise this is all bullshit, that all you’re blaming me for is rubbish, it’s going to be too late.’

I’m so ashamed, so disappointed in myself for buying this lie and hurting Harry that I can’t hold myself together anymore. I fall to my knees and neither Moni nor Mila react, though Savannah hurries to my side.

“You just lost one of the best men you could’ve ever found. You won’t meet someone like Harry ever again,” Mila states coldly, throwing even more daggers at my chest.

In that moment, I start sobbing again, bursting out crying, hiding my face in my hands.

“I thought you could make Harry happy. I wanted you to be his girl,” Moni sighs and even above the noise of my sobs and the whispers of the people around, I can feel the pain in her voice. “You rejected his help so many times, and all he ever wanted was to help you and love you, Hannah. And you threw that away. I hope that now you realise how big of a fucktard you are.”

She is being nice with her words because I deserve worse. For being the bloody idiot I am, for being the biggest arse in history, for making the most humongous mistake in my whole life. I deserve a lot of worse words from Moni and everyone else. Starting with Harry.

“I’m so sorry!” I cry out, finally speaking since Moni tried to attack me. Why didn’t she hurt me? It would have been easier to bear than this agonising pain in my chest tearing me up mercilessly. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry!”

“Too late,” Mila whispers and next I hear how they make their way out of the crowd, away from us.

I start crying even harder, holding on to Savannah with all I have because in that moment, she is all I have. I’ve lost everything else.

I lost my Mum because of an accident. I didn’t let my Dad help me, get to me. I pushed Harry and stabbed him in the back when all that he did was to help me. I pushed him away and this time there’s no one else to blame but myself. I can’t blame a drunk driver, I can’t blame bad luck, I can’t blame destiny. It’s all me. It’s not even Jennifer Jones’ fault because I believed her lies, I decided to buy her show. I’m no better. In fact, I’m worse. I’m a million times worse because I hurt the person I love with what I did. And now it’s too late.

Too late.

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Shouts out for @Iluvmusic99, @CurlyHarrytheAvacado, @Love_2_Dream, @immadancer, @immadancer, @_let_us_LWWY_, @Sheajenkins2, @RobynClarke8 and @LatonaStar

Bel, xx