"I felt it in the air, that this was our last touch. I whispered across your shoulder, clutched your elbow slightly, trailed to the back of your head and stayed, resting upon your skin just so I could feel you once more."
- m.b

**

Throwing in the last bit of clothing I have lying around the guest room, I sit on the large suitcase so I can zip it up. No matter where I am or what I'm doing, my suitcase will always be too big to close with ease. I should start taking classes on how to pack light since all I ever do with my life is pack my bags and run from my problems and leave people behind.

That's all I'm good for and I feel filthy every single second of it. But that's who I have become.

I can't take it anymore. It's been more than a week since I've been back home in London and it has piled more stress on me than I could ever imagine. My mother has dragged me to three tea parties in the last few days with her charity club 'ladies' and I have had to suffocate through all of them in bright puffy dresses while sipping tea. It's the twenty-first century and these people are still a pain in the arse.

I walk into the bathroom and pick up my toiletries around the counter, shoving them into their allocated bags. I'd clean all the toilets in this house if it meant that I got to leave on the next flight out. I haven't felt even the smallest bit of relief. Home is supposed to make you feel calm and relieved and all those good things in life.

I can hear my mother screaming at someone over the phone in the living room. I'm forced to spend the day in the house with her alone while my father is at work and my brother is at school. I wish I had friends. Actually, I do have friends, but I had left them behind too.

I haven't told anyone in the house that I'm going back to New York. I know my parents will stand their ground and refuse to let me go but I'm an adult now and I can make my own decisions. Right?

A sense of déjà vu hits me when I look around the room, trying to avoid going out there and telling my mother that I'm leaving in the morning. It hurts me that I can't feel at home with my own family.

The ugly doubt of my plan decides to sink in. What if I go back to New York and feel even worse than this?

Why don't I belong anywhere? I used to belong.

I used to have a plan. I used to have friends and family that I treasured more than anything. I used to have a soul mate I used to know what I wanted. I had it all planned out. It was perfect and now I don't have anything.

I'm left with nowhere to go for peace. I can't sleep anywhere without the nightmares threatening to consume me. I used to have a dream, I used to want great things but now I just want someone to wrap their arms around me and hold my fracturing being together till I find my own strength again.

But there is no one.

Mothers yelling gets louder from the other room and it gets harder to stand by the second. My hand flutters up to touch the necklaces around my neck. Sometimes they feel so weightless when I'm anxious that I worry I've lost them. I can't afford to lose these.

"Blue and green side by side." Luke's words ring in my head. They were such beautiful words. I couldn't stay by his side and he couldn't do it for me either because all good things come to an end. When I was up there on that hill with him I thought that was it, the sun was going down and disappearing and I thought that was my past too, my sorrow and my pain finally leaving me so I can be happy, sinking with the sun far away from me.

Gripping the necklaces tighter I open the guest room door and run up the stairs before my mother can spot me and drag me into the kitchen to bake cookies with her.

I'm a twenty-year-old adult with responsibilities, running from her hurricane of a mother and cookies because she couldn't look her mother in the eyes and tell her that she just needed comfort and a kiss on the forehead.

Running, always running.

Opening the door to my old room I step in and close it lightly behind me. Leaning against it I close my eyes and breathe in and out to try and calm my heart. It's quiet up here, the only sounds are the birds outside and the distant sound of neighbourhood cars.

I feel like someone is carving my stomach out with a knife. Moving towards the French doors, I pull the curtain aside and swing the doors open. The wind isn't that strong but it starts to blow my hair around me and the curtains flap around lightly. Turning back around to face my room, I go towards the bed to take a seat before I trip over my own feet and hurt myself. I feel the blood under my skin like pinpricks, my lungs starting their protests against me. 

"Blue and green, side by side." Luke's voice says in my head again and the tears start to pour down my cheeks.

"I hate you but I miss you so much." I choke out into the air because no one can hear me up here.

I miss them so much. Addy, Montana and the boys. Luke...I miss his hateful looks and his kind smile that takes him so much effort. His annoyed huffs of air while he followed me through that market.

Does he miss me? I'm sure I haven't even crossed his mind.

"I'm always so angry. If I can't fix myself I can't —I can't fix anything else." He said to me. I could have been there for him. He could have been here for me. I hate that I'm desperate enough to need someone who wants nothing to do with me. I have always needed someone to hold me together, when will I learn to stand on my own two feet?

I jump at the sound of one of the French doors banging closed because of the wind. The sound shakes something inside me. Looking around the room, my eyes land on the posters.

I don't need anyone.

Without another thought, I get up on the bed and start ripping the posters off the ugly purple walls, balling them up and throwing them towards the bin. Why should I love anyone when no one loves me? I rip the bands and artists and TV shows off my wall. Ripping Luke's face right in the middle.

"Fuck you and you and you!"

I hop off the bed and stuff them all in the bin. It overflows but I don't bother picking up the torn pieces on the floor.

Oh god. I'm actually going crazy.

Stalking towards the closet with laboured breaths I walk in and turn the light on. All my old clothes, the ones I left when I moved and stuff I probably can't fit into anymore still line the racks. I pull the clothes off their hangers to get access to the shelves behind. Shoe boxes start to tumble to the ground, spilling their contents around me.

I don't care I don't care.

Where is it? I kept it in here.

Bending down I pull out more boxes of shoes, finally finding the big black cardboard one wrapped in tape to keep it sealed. I pull it out and sit down on the ground on top of my clothes in the midst of all my old belongings. I ignore the distant smell of a boys perfume that I used to love more than life.

I poke at the tape with my nails, my vision blurring with the tears I can't stop.

It takes a few attempts to pry the tape off because my hands won't stop shaking. Lifting the lid off the box, I pour the contents out of it. I would have usually been more careful with things breaking and the edges bending, but why should I care about breaking anything when I'm broken too?

Hundreds of tiny Polaroid's spill out of the box. Heath's Polaroid's. The ones he always took and made me hang up around his room on strings. His parents sent them to me before I left for New York but I never took them with me.

I empty out all the Polaroid's and pull out the first layer of cardboard. Underneath it is another layer with the letters he gave me. The ones I never actually read. Because they were his goodbyes to me.

---

Three Years Ago

The lunch line is buzzing with kids as usual. I tie my hair up into a ponytail and pull a red tray off the stack.

"I have practice after school today," Heath says, leaning forward a little from behind me to lay his head on my shoulder. It's our senior year so we were both stressed out and barely had the energy to keep standing straight.

I turn around to look at him. "Again? You've had practice all week. I rarely get to see you." I pout at my boyfriend.

"I know. But it's essential if I want this scholarship." He hums, tucking my hair behind my ear.

I don't reply as our trays get loaded with food and we move away, heading towards our usual table. Pasta today. Thank god.

"Say something," Heath says.

"What do you want me to say?" I tiredly sigh at him and I see that our friends are already crowded around the table.

Heath stops to look at me so I'm forced to stop too or walk into him with my tray of food.

"That you're okay with it?" He frowns. He has been in a mood lately. His easy smile wasn't easy to find and it was worrying me but I was too stressed with studying and college plans to ask questions. Maybe I should.

"I'm not okay with it Heath. I only see you at lunch time. You're either at practice or cramming. I cancelled my study group for this afternoon because I thought you were coming over." I shake my head at him and move to walk towards our table.

I know he didn't do it on purpose but I needed him. My anxiety levels were off the charts and I couldn't help but be a little selfish child and want my boyfriend to cuddle me to sleep. Was that too much to ask for? Even though we have been together for a good three years now.

"I didn't tell you to cancel now did I?" He snaps and a couple of freshmen sitting at a table nearby turn to look at us. Eyes always followed the "soul mates" of the school, waiting for their chance to "aww" at something the two of us did.

"No, you didn't. But I did it because I wanted to spend time with you after weeks." I silently say, looking up at him. He was a couple of inches taller than me and was always looming like a dark prince.

His eyes soften a little at my words and he runs a nervous hand through his hair. He always did that when he was frustrated.

"You come over to my place tonight then." He says ignorantly and walks away from me, leaving me shocked at his attitude in the middle of the lunch room. He has never spoken to me like that before.

I'm not going anywhere. I scoff in my head and bang my tray down on a random table filled with people I didn't know and walk away. I'm not fucking hungry anymore.

I get home after school and head straight to my room. I don't close my bedroom door because I've been having trouble being around closed doors after what happened last summer. I pull off all my clothes and put my iPod on shuffle. Long Way Home by Five Seconds of Summer comes on and I get in the shower. The hot water burns my skin and makes it red. I stand under the water and replay Heath's words in my head. He loves me more than anything else in the world and I know that. But other things have come first these days and I'm fine with that too. School and his football scholarship should come first. But I need him. I'm not a clingy girlfriend but I'm used to always having him around. He's like an extension of me, I'm tired of him being pulled away from me.

"So we're taking the long way home
'Cause I don't wanna be wasting my time alone
I wanna get lost and drive forever
We can talk about nothing, yeah, whatever, baby.
So we're taking the long way home" The music drifts through the room and over the sound of the shower.

Heath was applying for a scholarship all the way in the states and I was going to be staying here. Eventually, I will have to get used to him being away from me. I squeeze shampoo onto my palm and run it through my hair. It's been hard to read him in the past few weeks, he has been very distant.

I have to talk to him.

~

Finishing my English essay, I pull out my biology textbooks to start studying. My phone is staring right at me and it's around six in the afternoon. Heath is probably expecting me to come over, and a part of me wants to get in the car and race to him but I don't. I grab my phone off the side table and open up a message to text him.

"Hope you had a good practice. See you tomorrow baby." I didn't want to fight with him, not for stupid reasons like me always needing him around to ease my pain but I wasn't going to acknowledge his ignorant comment this morning either.

I stare at my phone, waiting for his reply but he doesn't message me back. I force myself to study for a couple of hours, still waiting for a reply. I ring his phone but he doesn't pick up either.

He must be mad at me.

~

A noise sounds through my room and I wake up with a start. It's the early hours of the morning judging by the light outside. I must have fallen asleep while studying. The clock on the side table projects the time onto the wall.

5:45am

I push away the books around me and my hand hits something, I lift myself up onto my elbows to look at it, a bunch of envelopes tied together with strings lay on the bed next to me. I lift it up and pull out the little note attached to the string.

"These are the 10 reasons why I love you. Read them when I'm not around and you feel alone, when I'm busy, fighting off life so I can get back to you.

Yours,
Heath."

My phone starts to shriek and I drop the envelopes in shock. I pat around my books trying to locate my ringing phone.

"Hello?" I answer the phone without looking at the screen to check who it is.

"Sierra?" A girl sniffles from the other end of the line. I can hear a woman crying loudly in the background. 

"Carrie?" My heart starts to race as I look down at the envelopes on my lap again.

"Sierra—can you please get your parents to drive you here? Right now?" She sobs and my heart drops to my feet as I all but fly out of bed and pull open my bedroom door, screaming for my parents to wake up.

"Mommy!... Dad!"

My stomach was caving in. It's five in the morning and I felt like my whole world was about to stop for all of eternity.