Chapter Eighteen

I heard a faint knock and rolled over on my bed so my back was to the door. My lips curled inwards as I held my breath. The door cracked open and my mom stuck her head in. 

“Harper, honey?” She whispered. 

I didn’t move. I laid there beneath a pile of my oversized blanket and pretended I was asleep. I listened carefully as the sound of clattering dishes moved across the room. There was silence before my mom sighed and gently shut the door. 

A gust of air escaped my lungs and I continued to sob quietly. It was just twelve short hours ago that Nolan had found my notebook and left me for good. I had gone back to my broken down car and had a minor panic attack. I was forced to collect myself when customers leaving the gas station began pointing at me like I was some sort of spectacle. 

Down the street was a small auto shop where I decided to walk. After talking to the shop owner he agreed to tow my car over to connect the wires that had loosened. I could tell he felt bad for me. A lonely girl with a swollen face from crying hysterically and a car full of her belongings. I could only imagine what he thought. 

I could have easily called my dad, but I was too much of a mess. I needed the time alone to calm myself down before I went home. It wasn’t as easy as I thought. I ended up driving around the neighborhood for an extra twenty minutes just to make sure the puffiness under my eyes was gone. 

My parents were surprisingly excited for my homecoming. They greeted me at the door with bear hugs and kisses. Normally I would have been thrilled, but I just wasn’t in the mood to reciprocate. So, instead, I made up an excuse of being exhausted from driving cross country in a cramped little car and spent the rest of the day locked in my room. 

I cried, and slept, and sent Nolan text messages, and then repeated it all over again.

My parents believed me for the most part. It wasn’t until hour eight rolled around that they started to get concerned. Every half hour or so I could hear them walking up to my door, trying to figure out if I was awake or not. 

I peeked over my shoulder to make sure I was alone.  I wasn’t surprised to see a tray with dinner sitting on my desk right next to the tray with my untouched lunch.

The longer I was falling down this hole of darkness the less hungry I felt. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad thing. I’d been meaning to lose a couple pounds for some years now. But, I would be lying if I said I didn’t find the fried chicken gloriously sitting on top of a bed of mashed potato and gravy appetizing. I felt my mouth tingle a bit before I began salivating. I caved and crawled out of bed. 

I’d scarfed it down in record time.  It might have been the warm feeling of food inside my body, but I felt slightly better and decided to thank my mom for generously leaving the plate in my room.

“Hey, mom.” My voice was dull despite the energy I’d gotten after eating. 

She peered over her reading glasses to make sure she was seeing correctly. “Harper, honey, good to finally see you.” Her smile grew as she sat up right in her chair. My dad was across the living room in his usual spot. A brown leather Lazy Boy that was way past it’s expiration. My mom had made plenty of attempts to throw it out, but he’d some how found a way to bring it back into the house every time.

“We were starting to get worried about you.” He remained snuggled into his chair unlike my mom who was now walking towards me. 

Her hands pushed the loose hairs of my ponytail away from my face and behind my ear. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” I nudged her hand and took a step back. “I was just coming down to say thank you for leaving lunch…and dinner, in my room.” She stared at me, seeing right throw the fake charades I was putting on. I smiled even bigger to mask my swollen eyes. “I’d forgotten how good mom’s cooking was.” I shouted across the room, trying to divert the conversation to my dad.

“Sure is a blessing, isn’t it?” The smile had worked on him. He was reassured that everything was okay and went back to reading his book. 

My mom, on the other hand, couldn’t be fooled. She squinted her eyes as she silently watched the uncomfortable look swallow my face. “What’s going on, Harper?”

I widened my eyes and looked around. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” 

She looked over her shoulder towards my dad, who was now fully distracted. “I heard you whimpering in your room.” She whispered. 

I rolled my eyes. “It’s nothing mom. I was just tired that’s all.” 

“Haley’s mom told me when Haley went through depression she would stay in her room all day and night. You’re not…” She looked around again, “depressed…are you?”

I took a deep breath in. “No mom. Staying in my room all day doesn’t mean I have clinical depression.” I shook my head as I walked away.

My mom trailed after me. “Honey I’m just worried. You had a hard time in Los Angeles and now…”

I stopped walking when I realized that this was exactly what I needed to distract her from what was really going on. I turned around and held onto her shoulders. “You’re right.” Her eyes lightened when she heard the words come out of my mouth, but her smile quickly vanished when she realized what I was agreeing to. “I did have a rough time in L.A. and to be completely honest I’m not sure where I’m suppose to go from here. I’ve never told you this because I’m afraid of the judgmental comments from you and dad about picking a more suitable career. So, yeah, I guess you could say I’m a little depressed.”

The funny thing was I hadn’t even thought about anything other than Nolan since I’d been home. I relived every moment all over again in a flash of a second. It was how I could imagine overcoming an addiction would feel like. Not having that one thing and constantly thinking about when you did have it, and yearning for it to come back. This was all so unlike me. I was never the type of girl to be so completely immersed in my feelings about a guy. How could I have been so stupid. This exact feeling was why I never let my guard down. 

I snapped back to reality in the middle of my mom’s sentence. “…We know it’s been tough for you, and no matter what your father and I love you, honey. We just want you to be happy.”

“Thanks.” I mumbled. “I think I’m gonna go unpack some of my stuff.” 

“Do you need any help?” 

“No.” I shook my head as I turned around.  “I got it.” 

I sat at the edge of my bed for a while. Most of my stuff was still in the car. I’d only managed to bring in a couple of boxes, but even those few things seemed too overwhelming to rummage through. I sighed as I fell backwards onto my bed. I grabbed my phone for the hundredth time to check if Nolan had responded. Nothing. 

I pulled up our text conversation (or lack there of) and waved my thumbs over the keyboard as I tried to figure out what to say. I’d already profusely apologized, explained myself, begged for him to forgive me, asked if he could just send a simple reply so that I knew he was okay, but nothing. 

I grunted as I pressed the back button. Under Nolan’s text screen was Celeste. I clicked on it and typed, “Hey, you up?”

A few minutes passed before she responded. “Yeah, I’m three hours behind you, remember. Still pretty early here. Did you make it home okay?”

“Right, I forgot. Yup, made it home just fine.” 

I watched the three tiny dots dance on the screen as Celeste typed her next message.

“When are you going to dish about Nolan? I need an update!”

I rolled over onto my stomach as I read her text. I knew she was going to ask me about him since moment I had texted her. I guess that’s why I’d chosen to message her in the first place. A part of me just wanted someone to vent to since Nolan obviously didn’t want to hear it. 

“Long story short, he found my notebook.”

I stared at my screen until a call from Celeste popped up.

“Harper Marie, please tell me you’re joking.” Her voice was filled with anxiety.

I was silent. Maybe I wasn’t as ready to talk about it as I thought I was. “He left Celeste.” were the only words I could make out before I began wailing. Soft coos vibrated through the phone from Celeste’s end as she tried to quiet me down.

It took a few minutes of Celeste asking questions before I was able to pull myself together and tell her the whole story. From admitting that we mutually had feelings for one another, to staying at the bed and breakfast, and finally figuring out a way to stay in each others lives before it all came crashing down. 

“I’m sorry, Celeste.” I mumbled as I wiped the last few tears from my eyes. “I just kind of exploded with emotions on you.”

“Are you kidding? This is exactly the boy vent session I wish you had when you here. A nice big pint of Ben and Jerry’s and a good cry. Besides, you had to deal with so many of my break ups.”

We both laughed as we remembered how easily Celeste would fall in and out of love. I always knew she wanted me to be the typical girl friend who would comfort her, but it was never really like that. I never experienced what she was going through, so I couldn’t fully be there for her. Instead I’d give her tough love and tell her to get over it, that guys were just a waste of time.

After we hung up I sat on the floor of my bedroom and I pulled out a stack of books from one of my boxes. They were all economic books that I’d  been using to do more research on government spending. I flipped through it and remembered all the time I’d spent writing mock articles in Celeste’s coffee shop. I pulled at a folded paper that stuck out of a random page. It was a list of theories I jotted down as I read through each chapter. Reading it over and over again, I couldn’t stop thinking about how focused I was on my career. I would have never felt a heartbreak like this if I had just stayed committed. That’s when a light bulb went off.

It was the first time since I’d been evicted from my apartment and forced to move back home that I felt that spark of passion again. The same one I felt when I first moved out to L.A. I had let myself get distracted and now there was no way I was going to let a fling with a stranger stop me from what I’d originally set out to do. 

I reached across the floor for my laptop and began writing.

Old Harper was back.