Page 82 of The Two Halves of My Heart

Chapter 25

Grace 21 Years Old

“Grace?” Mum poked her head into the spare room where I’d been sleeping for the last few weeks. “I’m off to work now. I’ll grab us something to eat on the way home. Fancy anything?”

“Anything we can have with garlic bread.”

“Okay. I was expecting something that came with chocolate, but I’ll grab some pasta. Carbohydrates go well together, right?” She giggled as she left.

She’d been acting like this since I’d moved back in. Or rather, moved a handful of my clothes back because I’d been avoiding Maddison for all this time. It was a horrible thing to do, but it wasn’t as though he’d tried to speak to me, either. It was like we were on pause, neither of us prepared to take a step towards the other in case it went wrong. At least that was the reason I had in my head.

Being home had been good for me. Mum had forced me to look at job options and what I should have been doing to kick-start my career. Waitressing was fine, but I’d gone to University for a reason, and I wanted to start working towards that. Being with Maddison seemed to suck all of my ambition away. It didn’t make sense, but this time alone—really alone—had given me the space to process a lot of things.

Mads had never asked me to stop doing something or questioned my actions or goals. Yet, I’d found myself even more withdrawn when I was with him than I’d ever been in the past. His friends and parties didn’t count, at least I didn’t count them. They were fake and wrapped up with who Maddison was, not what I wanted. Having some distance made that visible to me, but it also made me sad.

The conversation I’d been putting off needed to happen, for me to move on. With what Mum had told me about my father, and how Maddison had treated me over the last few months, I knew our future together wasn’t the one I had planned and hoped for. But speaking to him—telling him we were over, made it final, and I wasn’t quite there yet. At least my heart wasn’t.

At the weekend, I borrowed Mum’s car and took a trip to Maddison’s. It had been festering all week, and I couldn’t put it off any longer. I needed to get my things and speak to him. Try and talk things through and make him understand how I felt about us now we’d had some time to think it over. It was terrifying. And the hardest part was how much I missed him—how much my heart ached. He’d see that and use it against me.

My stomach was a ball of nerves as I pulled up outside the house. His car wasn’t in the drive, which I was thankful for. I could get a few things and then wait for him to come home—try and ask him to see me? Mum had found a couple of cases and some boxes for me to pack up with. I couldn’t take the furniture, but I’d be able to pack up most of what I needed. It was such a contrast to the day we’d moved in. The sun had shone down on us as we made room for all of our things in the tiny house, and we were both filled with hopes and dreams. So much had changed, and I felt like a different person.

I’d survived losing one best friend. I knew I could live through losing another.

That thought slayed me. Like my heart was rejecting the concept of a world with neither Oliver nor Maddison a part of it. A coldness crept over my skin and coiled around the cracks in my damaged heart.

I may have opened the letters from Oliver, but I was still too angry at his words to consider them too much. Right now, all I could cope with was Maddison. He was my priority and the one I belonged to. Or at least, I used to.

The house had a musty smell as I walked in. A quick glance at the kitchen showed the piled-up dishes and pizza boxes on the side. The house was a state, and I was hit with a wall of sadness as I looked around. The only room that looked untouched was mine. It was how I left it, nothing out of place or disturbed from when I’d taken off to the safety of Mum’s. My hands made quick work of folding my clothes and packing my belongings. It didn’t take long, and when the drawers and wardrobe were empty, I sent a message to Maddison in the hope he’d come home so we could talk.

This room and this house had represented my new start, grasping for the happiness I’d always put off for the sake of others. And now it was a shell of the life I’d let slip through my fingers. I knew that it wasn’t all on me and that Maddison was as much a part in this as I was, but that was of little comfort right now.

I thought back and examined the time we spent together and saw that although the good times were there, a lot of the time they weren’t. Surely it shouldn’t be that hard? Love wasn’t meant to be painful all the time, right? I pulled my knees up to my chest as I waited on my bed and wished that Bob were here to comfort me.

I checked my phone again, but still nothing. Maddison was such a stubborn guy, but he couldn’t hide from this forever. We needed to talk and ignoring me only served to sever the connection we had even further.

Just as I’d pulled myself from the nest I’d made on the bed, the door clicked. My heart jumped into my throat as I listened for his footsteps through the house. We’d not seen each other in weeks, and now, surrounded by sadness, all I wanted was for him to take everything back and hold me.

I waited as he came up the stairs, and I stood at my door to watch him appear. Dark circles lived under his eyes, and his usually messy hair now looked wild and dishevelled.

“Hey,” I opened, suddenly desperate to see his eyes look at mine.

“Are you back?” he asked, halting on the top stair.

I wasn’t back. That was the opposite of why I’d come here, but pushing the words out was so much harder than running them over in my head. I stepped forward, hoping to ease this with some sort of contact. But he pulled away.

“Mads, don’t.”

“Don’t what? Because from where I’m standing, this isn’t going to be a conversation I want to hear.”

“We should talk. We need to talk.”

“And you want me to listen while you rip my heart out of my chest?” He stepped forward and stood over me. The urge to seek refuge in his arms was so powerful, but I needed to be strong and remember that it was time for me to put myself first. Even if it hurt.

“I don’t want to fight, Mads. But we have to sort things out between us. We can’t just leave things as they are.”

“It’s better than the alternative, Grace. Believe me.” He headed for his room. And I followed.

“You’d rather go weeks without speaking, no contact at all? How is that a relationship? How is that love?”

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